Ancient Views Of Prophecy And Fulfillment: Mesopotamia And Asia Minor -- By: Harry A. Hoffner, Jr.

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 30:3 (Sep 1987)
Article: Ancient Views Of Prophecy And Fulfillment: Mesopotamia And Asia Minor
Author: Harry A. Hoffner, Jr.


Ancient Views Of Prophecy And Fulfillment:
Mesopotamia And Asia Minor

Harry A. Hoffner, Jr.*

I. Prophecy = Divine Knowledge

OT prophecy is the communication of God’s superior knowledge to human beings, not always involving information about the future and sometimes in matters quite mundane. Samuel told Saul where to find his father’s stray donkeys (1 Samuel 9–10). In words describing Mesopotamian divination, which we shall apply to prophecy, A. Leo Oppenheim expressed the matter well: “Basically, divination represents a technique of communication with the supernatural forces that are supposed to shape the history of the individual as well as that of the group. It presupposes the belief that these powers are able and, at times, willing to communicate their intentions … and that if evil is predicted or threatened, it can be averted through appropriate means.”1

II. Interest In Acquiring Divine Knowledge

Among the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Hittites there was considerable interest in acquiring such divine knowledge.2 In a prayer uttered during the course of a prolonged plague in his land the Hittite emperor Mursili II succinctly expressed the avenues of divine revelation open to the ancient Near Easterner:3 “If people are dying for some reason other [than the sins we have discovered thus far], then either let me see it by a dream, or let it be determined by oracular inquiry, or let an ecstatic prophet declare it, or, as I have instructed all the priests, they shall practice incubation.”4 What Mursili was seeking from

* Harry Hoffner is professor of Hittitology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

the god through these channels was more in the nature of information about the known past than about the unknown future—to wit, just what deed had triggered the wrath of the deity. Yet it is true that for very practical purposes ancient man, like his modern counterpart, needed and wished to know what the morrow might bring. Success of many enterprises depended upon anticipating contingencies. Kings regularly took prophets or diviners with them on military expeditions. Faced with a very dangerous Philistine attack, King Saul of Israel sought to induce revelatory dreams and consulted the priestly Urim and Thummim and, when these failed to give an answer, even used a necromancer in order to learn from God or Samuel how to cope with the Philistine threat (

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