This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives is the first monograph-length comparative study on prophetic divination in ancient Near Eastern, biblical, and Greek sources. Prophecy is one of the ways humans have believed to become conversant with what is believed to be superhuman knowledge. The prophetic process of communication involves the prophet, her/his audience, and the deity from whom the message allegedly comes from. Martti Nissinen introduces a wealth of ancient sources documenting the prophetic phenomenon around the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, whether cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, the Hebrew Bible, Greek inscriptions, or ancient historians. Nissinen provides an up-to-date presentation of textual sources, the number of which has increased substantially in recent times. In addition, the study includes four analytical comparative chapters. The first demonstrates the altered state of consciousness to be one of the central characteristics of the prophets' public behavior. The second discusses the prophets' affiliation with temples, which are the typical venues of the prophetic performance. The third delves into the relationship between prophets and kings, which can be both critical and supportive. The fourth shows gender-inclusiveness to be one of the peculiar features of the prophetic agency, which could be executed by women, men, and genderless persons as well. The ways prophetic divination manifests itself in ancient sources depend not only on the socio-religious position of the prophets in a given society, but also on the genre and purpose of the sources. Nissinen contends that, even though the view of the ancient prophetic landscape is restricted by the fragmentary and secondary nature of the sources, it is possible to reconstruct essential features of prophetic divination at the socio-religious roots of the Western civilization.
Prophecy was a widespread phenomenon, not only in ancient Israel but in the ancient Near East as a whole. This is the first book to gather the available ancient Near Eastern, extra-biblical sources containing prophetic words or references to prophetic activities. Among the 140 texts included in this volume are oracles of prophets, personal letters, formal inscriptions, and administrative documents from ancient Mesopotamia and Levant from the second and first millennia B.C.E. Most of the texts come from Mari and Assyria. In addition, the volume provides new translations of the relevant section of the Egyptian Report of Wenamon, by Robert K. Ritner, and of various texts from Syria-Palestine containing allusions to prophets and prophetic activities, by C.L. Seow. By collecting and presenting evidence of the activities of prophets and the phenomenon of prophecy from all over the ancient Near East, the volume illumines the cultural background of biblical prophecy and its parallels. It provides scholars of the history, religions, and cultural traditions of the ancient Near East with important information about different types and forms of transmissions of divine words, and makes these valuable primary source materials accessible to students and general readers in contemporary English along with transcriptions of the original languages, indexes, and extensive bibliography.
Prophecy was a wide-spread phenomenon in the ancient world - not only in ancient Israel but in the whole Eastern Mediterranean cultural sphere. This is demonstrated by documents from the ancient Near East, that have been the object of Martti Nissinen’s research for more than twenty years. Nissinen's studies have had a formative influence on the study of the prophetic phenomenon. The present volume presents a selection of thirty-one essays, bringing together essential aspects of prophetic divination in the ancient Near East. The first section of the volume discusses prophecy from theoretical perspectives. The second sections contains studies on prophecy in texts from Mari and Assyria and other cuneiform sources. The third section discusses biblical prophecy in its ancient Near Eastern context, while the fourth section focuses on prophets and prophecy in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Even prophecy in the Dead Sea Scrolls is discussed in the fifth section. The articles are essential reading for anyone studying ancient prophetic phenomenon.
Magic in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Cognitive, Historical, and Material Perspectives brings together articles with the shared conviction that the category of magic remains useful in religious studies and provides new insights to biblical and related texts and artifacts. Historically, magic has been considered in both scholarly and popular discourse to be questionable, obscure, and potentially subversive. 19th century scholars of religion viewed magical beliefs and practices as primitive and inferior compared to Judeo-Christian forms of worship, which were considered true "religion". More recently, the category has been defended especially by scholars of the cognitive science of religion, who find it useful for delineating a set of beliefs and practices fundamental to all forms of religion. The volume joins current scholarship in refraining from using the concept as an othering device and in arguing that it can still serve as a helpful analytical tool. In addition to analyzing the discourse on magic in both ancient literature and modern scholarship, the articles provide individual examples of how literary and material culture attest to the existence of magical beliefs and practices in sources from the Ancient Near East to the Byzantine Period. The book is divided into three parts. The contributions in the first part approach magic from the theoretical perspective of cognitive studies, ritual studies, and cultural evolution, while the rest of the book focuses on how magic and magicians are understood in ancient sources. The second part discusses a specific set of textual material dealing with blessings and curses. The third part of the volume discusses the world of various destructive celestial beings, from which one and one's loved ones had to be defended, as well as the multitude of protective beings such as angels.
This collection of eight essays deals with a wide range of historical, literary, and methodological issues. First, what were the links between the cultic and the prophetic personnel? Did prophets have ritual/cultic functions in temples? Did prophetic actions and/or utterances play a role in the performance of the cult? What were the ritual aspects of divinations? Second, how do literary texts describe the interaction between prophecy and cult? Third, how can various theories (e.g. religious theory, performance theory) enable us to reach a better understanding of the interplay between divination and cultic ritual in ancient Israel and the wider ancient Near East? Marian Broida explores the ritual elements as described in the biblical accounts of intercession. Lester Grabbe revisits the important question of whether cultic prophecy existed in the Jerusalem temple in ancient Israel. Anja Klein maintains that while Psalms 81 and 95 may indirectly testify to a form of cultic prophecy, they do not themselves constitute cultic prophecy. Jonathan Stökl discusses the notion of "triggering" prophecy and suggests that enquiring of Yhwh may in itself be understood as a kind of ritualised behaviour. John Hilber considers the performance of the rituals that accompanied prophetic affirmation of victory in the Egyptian cult. Martti Nissinen looks more broadly at the question whether prophets in the ancient world functioned as ritual performers. Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer investigates the priests' mediating and predictive functions as depicted in the Deuteronomistic History. Alex Jassen argues that Jews in the Second Temple Period perceived the priests and the temple to be a new locus of prophetic activity.
Ice-covered Svalbard became a part of German “holy” land at the beginning of WW2. What the Germans really did there has remained a mystery. In fact, the Allies had tracked the abnormal density of German warships in the Far North, but they connected that traffic with their own convoy activity. The British had their chance to open up the secrecy in 1943. Then a Catalina flying boat flew over the Spitsbergen. To the great surprise of the pilots they met a big fleet of German warships heading to the inner waters of Svalbard. The pilots reported the heavy battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst with at least ten destroyer-class ships there. For what purpose was that fleet there? The Admiralty, however, was tightly focused on the convoys. Inner Svalbard appeared a useless objective. So, officially, the pilots' report wasn't registered and the further investigation was rocked by anti-aircraft fire.In this techno-thriller the author Martti Nissinen takes us on extraordinary voyage and guide the reader into the guarded wartime mystery of the North. Well-researched war history, professional knowledge of the physical details and personal experience of the Svalbard regions support the narration.
This book is a companion volume to SAA 9, Assyrian Prophecies, by Simo Parpola. While SAA 9 presents and discusses the corpus of Neo-Assyrian prophetic texts, SAAS 7 collects, analyzes, and discusses the references to prophecy in other genres of Neo-Assyrian texts: royal inscriptions, treaties, letters, and even an administrative text. Nissinen's work is not a comparison of Assyrian prophecy with biblical prophecy, but rather an attempt to define Assyrian prophecy as it was viewed in its own culture, the uses that were made of it, and how it was related to other methods of determining the divine will.
Annotation A study of the phenomenon of prophecy as documented in ancient Near Eastern texts and the Hebrew Bible as well as Greek sources, from the twenty-first century BCE to the second century CE.
Prophecy was a wide-spread phenomenon in the ancient world - not only in ancient Israel but in the whole Eastern Mediterranean cultural sphere. This is demonstrated by documents from the ancient Near East, that have been the object of Martti Nissinen’s research for more than twenty years. Nissinen's studies have had a formative influence on the study of the prophetic phenomenon. The present volume presents a selection of thirty-one essays, bringing together essential aspects of prophetic divination in the ancient Near East. The first section of the volume discusses prophecy from theoretical perspectives. The second sections contains studies on prophecy in texts from Mari and Assyria and other cuneiform sources. The third section discusses biblical prophecy in its ancient Near Eastern context, while the fourth section focuses on prophets and prophecy in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Even prophecy in the Dead Sea Scrolls is discussed in the fifth section. The articles are essential reading for anyone studying ancient prophetic phenomenon.
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