Jeremy Rosen
Biblical Prophets

Jeremy Rosen | Biblical Prophets | 05.10.22

- Thank you very much, Lindsay. I, have a very interesting but complicated topic to discuss this session, and that’s of prophecy. And the question of course is why we don’t have any prophets anymore. What were prophets? What was their role? What was their function? And I want to start with not the first reference to a prophet, the first reference is simply in the Bible to say that this man will pray for you because he is a , literally means a prophet. It comes from the Hebrew word , which is to bring and present information. Now, in the Torah, in Deuteronomy, in the chapter 13, you have a specific description of what the prophet is supposed to do and be. And it goes like this. It says, “If a , or a , or a dreamer, gives you a sign or a wonder, and this sign, and this wonder, actually comes to, comes true, and the message is that we should go and worship other gods.” In other words we should betray our tradition, , don’t listen to that prophet. , or that dreamer. , because God is testing you. , to know, , if you love the Lord your God, , with all your heart and soul, then you will obey his commandments as given on Mount Sinai, , and this prophet, , he is a fake. He is dangerous and you shouldn’t pay any attention.

So two things come from this. One of them is signs, miracles, wonders, are irrelevant. What counts in prophecy essentially is the message. It’s the message that counts and that matters. And the message essentially is, look, you’ve been given a covenant, you’ve been given a constitution, this is what you should stick to. And the role of a prophet then is to make sure that you do stick to the constitution, that you do follow the tradition, and that you don’t go off after some, either, very, more permissive, or more attractive, or less intense version of what you’ve been given. Now there are four terms that the Bible uses to describe this process of prophecy. There’s the as I mentioned, somebody who brings you some information. There is the , the man who has a vision, a vision of the future. There is the , the seer, which is very similar to the , somebody who sees things more clearly than other people do. And this role of the prophet is remarkable in that it stands in stark contrast to two other models of leadership that the Torah offers. It offers the leadership of the king, and the king if you like is a political leader, who is subject to the constitution, but that’s not his job.

Then you have the priests, the priests have two roles according to the Bible. One of them is to make sure that the sanctuary functions effectively, and the sanctuary started off as a tabernacle, and then moved in, graduated, to the temple, and their job was to service it, together with the Levites, in terms of sacrifices, in terms of ceremonial, which involved singing, and music, and everything that went with making the sanctuary the focal point of religious life. Of course we know that disappeared 2,000 years ago, and we’ve developed a different form of worship since then, but those two functioned, and in addition the priests and the Levites had what we would call the role of the civil service, and the role of the medical and psychological services. Their job, and education, their job was to teach the masses, to take responsibility for the masses. Not sit alone in their ivory tower but go out and look after their needs. Medical, social, psychological, and so forth. And they were maintained by the community, and maintained by the community to perform these tasks. Now we know that both the kingship and the priesthood failed more often than they succeeded. And in this failure they tended to betray the values and the ideals of the constitution.

The priesthood, as throughout the ancient Middle East, was in alliance with a king, and supporting the king, the temples were always nextdoor to the palaces, and that was their alliance and their allegiance. And in a sense what happened was that they in neglecting their main purpose, ended up opening the way for this third leg of the table, the leg of the prophet. The prophet, unlike the priest, unlike the king, was not hereditary. The prophet was somebody who emerged through his, or interestingly, her, charisma. That’s one of the things about prophets, there were women prophets. There weren’t any women priests, and the only time there was a woman queen in Judea was when the pagan Athaliah took over the kingship when her husband died, and killed all the sons, except for one who was rescued, so she wasn’t much of a good example. But women prophets run right through the Bible. So the prophet was somebody who was, well one since meritocratic, in other words he had to deserve this role, in another sense, he was charismatic. He only had his personality to rely on. He didn’t have wealth, he didn’t have power, and the result is the prophet was on one hand the most popular of all the characters of ancient Judea, of ancient Israel and Judea, and at the same time the most vulnerable. It’s prophets who end up in prison being beaten up.

The prophet, that emerged, in the Torah, the prophets that emerged in the Torah, fall into two categories. There are those who are known for the way they have tended to the poor, looked after them, supported them, and performed miracles to support them. And you have those who are known primarily for their message, message of condemnation, and at the same time, message of hope. And I want the course of today to go through these different functions, and these different personalities to illustrate their roles. The first prophet who is a prophet and has no other role, I mention this because Samuel was a mixture of prophet, and was a mixture of, political leadership, was during the period of the kings were the prophet Nathan. And you will remember that Nathan was fearless in facing up to King David when King David seduced Bathsheba, who at that stage appeared to be a married woman, married to Uriah the Hittite, and took her into his home, sorry, slept with her, impregnated her, and then when, she showed that she was pregnant had to find a way of killing her husband Uriah, to get out of the way, Uriah realised something was going on, and was not cooperative, and so he arranged, King David arranged with his uncle, who was the general, to put Uriah in a particular position where he was going to be killed.

In comes the prophet Nathan. And he tells this story to King David of there was a local man, a poor man, who only had one sheep. And nearby there was this wealthy landowner who had lots and lots of sheep, and one day the wealthy landowner has to offer a meal to a guest, and he goes and the takes the sheep of this poor little, poor man, and kills it, and offers it up. And when, “What on Earth,” says prophet Nathan, “What does the king think about it?” And the king said “We should put that guy to death.” And Nathan said, “But that’s you mate. You could have had any woman you wanted, why did you have to steal another man’s wife?” So this showed the fearlessness of Nathan, and his ability to stand up to the king. Remarkable; you can’t imagine anybody doing that to Putin in our day and age. So the first appearance of Nathan is of somebody who stands up, but we, he didn’t write any books, we only know of him from the books of Samuel. And Nathan establishes this tradition. After the kingdom is split by Solomon’s son, Rohobom, because he was not prepared to make any concessions, and so Jeribome led the 10 northern tribes out in open rebellion.

Rehoboam massed an army, was ready to attack to force them back, and it was the prophet who got him away and said, this prophet, known as Shimei, “Don’t fight.” Jews, Israelites shouldn’t be fighting Israelites. Now very few of the successors listened to that and there was constant battle. But that was the important position that he took. There are various other prophet figures that are mentioned in the Bible, with no specific or great stories about them. Ahijah ha Shilonite, Jehu Ben Hanania, all of them intervening in political matters to try to put kings right. Now it’s interesting, the prophets were not oracles. They were not expected to predict this, that, and the other. That wasn’t their role. The role of the priests were the oracles, the , and the . These jewels in the breastplate. So our idea that they performed miracles is very subsidiary and ancillary to what their real role was. But the first prophet we learn about in the Bible, who is described, but again wrote no book, and performs miracles, is Elijah. And following up with his, replacement, Elisha.

Both of them are men who go and live and work amongst the poor. Who spend their time with the needy. Who look after people who are suffering. Who are able to perform miracles that produce oil and flour when there was none, or water when there was none. These remarkable people were able to tend to the needs of the masses at a time when the priests seemed to have completely abandoned their role. Elijah is known of course because he is the prophet who encounters King Ahab of the north. King Ahab who marries Jezebel. And the famous story of Elijah’s intervening with him is of the battle over the prophets of Baal. The prophets of Baal who have taken over because that’s who Jezebel have put in charge, have killed most of those who supported the old guards, and Elijah who is being chased and hounded around the countryside by Ahab, hiding in caves, mourning his lot. And as with all prophets, in fact going back to Moses, says, “I don’t want to do this. Why do I have to take this on?” It’s not as though they willingly have a, you know, great job to go to. They are reluctant, every one of the major prophets is a reluctant prophet.

So the famous challenge, as you know, was on Mount Carmel where the prophets of Baal and, on one side, Elijah on the other side, were supposed to present a sacrifice and wait for their gods to set it alight. And the prophets of Baal tried on Mount Carmel, and they tried, and they tried, all day long, and no luck. And then when it comes to Elijah he steps forward and he brings water, and he pours it over the sacrifice, and all of a sudden it ignites, so you know, people like to say maybe it was paraffin, who knows, but anyway it ignites, and there’s this great victory, and the prophets of Baal are destroyed, and their power is eradicated, but unfortunately Elijah’s victory is a Pyrrhic one, the queen is after his life and he has to retreat again and go into hiding in the desert. And then we have the famous case of Naboth’s vineyard. This is a vineyard where Ahab, king of the north, looks out his window, sees this plot of land next to his garden, he says, “Oh I’d like to have that,” to which his queen says, “Well go and take it.” He said, “Look, no, let me do the right thing first.”

He approaches him, he approaches Naboth, and he says, “Can I please buy your land, I’ll pay a full price,” and Naboth says, “I’m sorry this is inherited from our family, family inheritance, I’m not prepared to sell.” He goes back Ahab, bit of a wuss, and he’s depressed, and he’s sitting in his chair, and in comes Jezebel and says “What you depressed about?” He says, “Well this land he won’t give it to me.” And Jezebel says, “You’re the king for God sake. I’ll deal with it.” And so she arranges for false witnesses, and they claim that Naboth was guilty of treason, and Naboth is put to death, and then she comes in to, Ahab, and says, “There you are, you can go and take it over, it’s all yours.” And in comes the prophet with the famous phrase, , you’ve killed and now you want to inherit, and condemns him, and interestingly enough, he has an impact. Ahab regrets what he’s done. And in fact Ahab did begin to change. And so you have this role of the prophet who gets somebody to change. What’s going funny? Is something going funny here? I don’t know why, but something is funny. Ah, sorted it out.

Elisha dies, and he goes up to heaven, sorry, Elijah dies, and he goes up to heaven in a chariot of fire. And this for many people is the origin of the link between prophecy and mysticism. That this idea of fire, of Moses at the burning bush, encounters something, a phenomemon, not a natural one, not a physically explicable one, is the beginning of the association of prophecy with what is going to turn into Kabbalah much later on, but the idea of mysticism and so the chariot, the chariot of fire, is the association that Elijah has with mysticism, which is one of the reasons why he figures so prominently in both the passover and also when a child is born at a circumcision, and also is the person who is going to put the world to right, as the prophet says, “There will come a time when Elijah will come, and he will reconcile fathers and children, and there’ll be peace and happiness on Earth”, so to speak, “And everything will be fine and glorious, and dandy, in the future,” so it’s a prediction of things getting better, not necessarily in the apocalyptic sense but we’re going to come to that in a minute. So Elisha very similar to Elijah.

He has a poor woman, who looks after him, always spends time with, he makes sure that when things are bad she’s looked after. If she wants a child provides for the child. The child then dies and miraculously, both of them, Elijah and Elisha, manage to resurrect dead children by laying on top of them, breathing, so it sounds a little bit I suppose you could say, like artificial respiration, and bringing people back to life, rather than completely dead, but either way amongst the various things that they’ve done, these are the signs of the prophet. And you can see how later on these were the sort of people that Christianity modelled its examples on to a very large extent. Looking after the poor, being with them, supporting them, bringing them succour, spiritual help, as well a physical help. So Elijah and Elisha, no books of their own, mentioned in the, the books of Kings, in their particular case. And they are, if you like, the only explanation we have as to how it was that when the priests became idolaters, when the kings became idolaters, how was it that the tradition was kept alive? If the temple was in pagan hands, the king was acting like a pagan, as at least half of the Judean kings were, who was keeping the religion alive?

And the only explanation you have is that the religion was being kept alive by what were called the prophets, or the , the sons of the prophets. Their acolytes, those people who they were training and taking around the countryside, and meeting people, and encouraging people, and stimulating them, the happy clappys. So, that’s interestingly why when you come to the time later on of the Talmud, and the Talmud talks in Avot, in the of Avot, how was the tradition handed down? It says that tradition came down first of all from Moses, Moses handed onto Joshua, Joshua handed it onto the elders, the elders hand it onto the prophets, and the prophets handed it onto the men of the great assembly. No mention of the priests in that. Just elders, to prophets, to the men of the great assembly, which is coming back from Babylon and establishing a kind of Sanhedrin. And a meritocratic leadership. Although the priests carried on after that in the second temple, they weren’t very successful then either, and so clearly this is an agenda that it was the prophets who were really the people responsible for keeping our tradition alive.

Now, then the question is, fine, now what did the prophets actually say? Because we’ve heard all kinds of stories where the prophets say, “Ah, get rid of the religion, it’s not the religion that counts, it’s not all the rituals and the sacrifice that counts, it’s being a good person that counts.” Well of course being a good person counts. A whole lot of Torah is predicated on loving your neighbour as yourself, doing justice, being good, and being kind, and being a good person. The only question was, how do you express that culturally? And their belief clearly was that we express it culturally through Torah, but the question is, what happens when most people, from the top down, are no longer adhering to Torah? And this is where we come to what we would call the major prophets. As well as the minor prophets, but the major prophets are these three prophets, Isiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and to remember them in a simple way you could say that Isiah predicted that eventually the kingdom would collapse and then go into exile, Jeremiah experienced the exile, and Ezekiel, Yehezkiel, comforted them in exile in the land of Babylonia, what was Babylonia, became Persia, the eastern Jewish community. So I want to just briefly, briefly, briefly, just give a precis of these three absolute giants. And I’ll start with Isiah.

Isiah lived at the time of kings of Judea, roughly speaking, if we go back, it’s about 700 years before the common era, actually it’s a bit earlier than that, more like 650, before the common era, the country is divided between the north and the south. The kings in Judea are Uzziahu, who was a good king, Yotam who was a bad king, and Hezekial, who was a very, very good king. And in this situation in Judea, you have this man, Isiah, Yeshayahu, who is forced in a sense to take on the role of a prophet. His mouth is burnt in the way that Moses’ mouth was burnt. He was forced into it, and often said “Let me alone I don’t want to do it”, and he starts off the first chapter with this crushing condemnation of the Judeans. You are a corrupt, dishonest, disgusting group of people. You are as bad as the men of Sodom. And if it were not for a couple of good people still there you would have disappeared in fire and brimstone a long time ago. And so his message is a message of condemnation. It’s a message of hating hypocrisy. He says, “I don’t want you to come to the temple and think by giving a sacrifice that atones for what you’ve done.”

Doesn’t mean to say he didn’t want the temple to be there, but it was like we would say nowadays. You guys, you come to synagogue, you’re so full, you’re so religious, you shuckle and you shake, and you cheat in business, and you’re dishonest, and you’re nasty people, you know, stop being such bloody hypocrites. Doesn’t say you shouldn’t come to , doesn’t say you shouldn’t come to the temple, you just shouldn’t think that I can do bad and then I pay my Peter’s pence, or I confess, or whatever it is, and everything’s fine again, it isn’t. Unless there is a fundamental change. In which case we’d say, well all right, what does he want? What kind of state does he envisage? And he envisages two kinds of states. State number one, second chapter, is, there will come a time, the Hebrew is, , which is translated by the Christian translators as the end of days. Some apocalyptic end of the world. Where as Isiah doesn’t say anything about an apocalyptic end of the world. It just says after a period of time things are going to get better, and my dream, like King, I have a dream, and the dream was, is, that Jerusalem, that Zion, will be a centre for everybody.

People will come from all around, they don’t have to be Jewish, humanity, there’s a humanitarian dream that I have, that people will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks and there’ll be no more war. 2,700 years ago, and look where we are today in Ukraine. So, his prediction is not predicting Ukraine, he was talking about human nature. The dream is we’ve got to get there, but we know that human nature will not let it happen, but that doesn’t mean we must give up on the dream. The next thing he does, is say that to achieve this dream, we need a leader. We need somebody who’s going to be honest. We need a king who will not judge on the basis of who pays him more money, will not judge on the basis of political power, but will seek justice and truth in the land. And in the famous phrase he says, “And the lion will lie down with the lamb,” and obviously I don’t think he means that literally, that suddenly lions will start eating straw, and everybody will, the natural world will completely change, it’s a metaphor, it’s a metaphor for aggressive people, non-aggressive people, strong and weak, being able to live together, “That is my dream,” he says, “And I want a king to emerge who will bring this about.”

Now of course Christianity believes that he’s talking about Jesus hundreds and hundreds of years later. None of the prophets really are talking about hundreds and hundreds of years later. They’re all talking short term. He’s talking about King Cyrus. He’s talking about the Babylonian exile, and above all he’s talking about King Hezekiah, because King Hezkiah, or Hezekiah, was a crucial king, and he was one who did change, who did bring about a reformation, who did care about the poor, who established education, who was a man who was a great man but also challenged at the time by the Assyrians. The Assyrians had taken off the northern kingdom into exile, they had besieged Jerusalem, but the king had disappeared, one version is because of the plague, another version is ‘cause his two sons back home in Assyria were plotting against him, and he had to get out of there in a hurry. But either way, the king turns to Isiah and says, “Listen, they’re so strong, what am I going to do?” And Isiah’s saying, “Hang in there , keep your mind, don’t worry, don’t panic. Everything will be all right.” And in the end it was right.

But as again Isiah keeps on saying, you’ve got to make sure that this country is an honest, fair, and a straight one. And, you know, for a long time, he did that. Unfortunately as happens time and time again, a good king, is followed by a bad king, and after him he came, a man called Manasha, who was an absolute disaster, and undid all the good that was done before. At the same time as Isiah was the great man prophesied, there were others. There was prophet Micah, Mikah, he was at the same time prophesying that similar to Isiah we’ve got to be better human beings, we’ve got to do the right thing. And he also copies the idea from Isiah, he also has this chapter about Mount Zion and all the nations flowing up there, and everybody’s going to be living in peace. So these prophets are interchanging, exchanging ideas. And at the same time you have another prophet contemporary with those called Jonah, and Jonah was a prophet in the northern kingdom. And Jonah was also sent to try and get them to behave, and he failed.

And in the end God said to Jonah, as I’m sure you know the story, “You have to go to Nineveh capital of Assyria, and tell them they’ve got to repent”, and Jonah didn’t want to because he knew that Nineveh was going to come and destroy the northern kingdom, his land, he didn’t want to do it. And basically God said, “Listen, I want human beings to be good human beings, if your people won’t maybe the Assyrians will. Give them a chance.” And of course we know the end of the story. So the message is consistent throughout. And these guys are not necessarily performing miracles all the time. That was what Elijah and Elisha did at that earlier stage. Maybe people needed it at that stage. But by this moment they are focused almost entirely on this idea of getting the place right. Now, again, Christianity talks about Isiah predicting Jesus. They talk about this idea of a child will be born indicating virgin birth, a young woman, , not a virgin, because the Hebrew word for virgin is , and this in Isiah is , a young woman. A mother will produce a child.

And if you look at the Bible you will see throughout the period of the kings they always mention the mother of the king, the mother producing the king, the importance of the mother, and she produces this leader who will be a good leader, and do a good job. So he’s not talking about a person hundreds and hundreds of years ahead. He actually describes King Cyrus as the Messiah, but Messiah to him means , a king, an anointed person, a leader, who will bring about an improved condition in the Jews, in the relatively short term, not in the long term. It’s the idea of who God is. This spiritual message of God is also important to the prophet. Chapter six he has this vision of something which is a mixture of everything possible that you can imagine, all jumbled together, as if to say it’s a composite of everything physical and spiritual that you can think of, all together, and beyond your imagination. So, he has this great book, there are arguments as to whether the book of Isiah that we have, which is a big book, was half of his, all of his, added to, subtracted from, that is as far as I’m concerned an academic debate, what is important to me is the message essentially is, you’re a mess. You’re going to be destroyed if you don’t change, but remember, there’s always a way back.

There is always hope. Never give up. But human nature being what it is, I know you’re going to screw up guys, you always have, you always will, but still you’re going to survive it somehow or other. Of course, the great guy coming after Isiah then is Jeremiah. Jeremiah one feels so sorry for. Because every time he tells the kings of Judea by this time the north had disappeared altogether, you know, you’re going to end up in trouble, don’t make the wrong decisions, the poor guy gets thrown into jail or beaten up, and he again, he is somebody who says, I don’t want to do this. And God says, “You have to,” and not only that, but what’s interesting is that the text of Jeremiah says, “I want you to be , I want you to be a prophet to everybody, I don’t want you just to confine your message to the specific community, certainly you can’t do that, but you’ve got to reach out to a much, much wider audience.”

Now, Jeremiah is talking at a moment in Jewish history when the Jewish state is sandwiched between Egypt, great world power to the south, Syria, the great power to the north, which is going shortly to be taken over by the great power of Babylon. And poor Israel in the middle, sandwiched between these two, always gets beaten up. And amazingly, every single time, almost, the Judean kings back the wrong horse. One of the few good kings of Judea, Josiah, he was caught between treaty with Babylon, treaty with Egypt, , Pharaoh comes marching up in order to attack the Mesopotamians, Josiah tries to stop him, and he gets killed in battle, and that’s the end of him. And then, power is transferred for a while to Egypt, but then it’s transferred to somewhere else, to the Assyrians and then the Babylonians. And each time the Judean kings back the wrong horse. Which is why in due course they are destroyed. And for all that Jeremiah tried as best as he possibly could to get them to change their ways, to be just, to be caring, to be good people, he failed.

But he left behind this incredible document, of these amazing chapter after chapter of beautiful poetry all of them complaining about how terrible the Israelites were, the Judeans, and how disgustingly they had betrayed their values. But no record of miracles, of hocus pocus, or anything like that. That’s not there. It’s the message that they’re concerned with doing, and getting and achieving the whole of the time. And as you know in addition to his own book, the books of Jeremiah, Jeremiah also is attributed the book of Lamentations, , at the destruction of Jerusalem, which he experienced. And the murder and the rape, and the exile, and the horrors of a city being burnt to the ground, unfortunately is something as we know that keeps on going on and on and on, writing that, and it is the document we read on the ninth of, when we talk about the destruction of the temples. And it’s a very, very moving, very, very powerful document, and a painful one to read.

So he wrote these books, Isiah, and , sorry, Jeremiah, and Lamentations, and when Jerusalem was destroyed he was given the option of going to Babylon with the exiles in safety, and living in a community which had been built up in several stages, because they had several exiles, and was doing very well, and was in fact at that stage the biggest Jewish community. And Jeremiah said “No, I’ve got to stay behind with those poor people, the dregs, who are left behind. Under charge of a man called Gedaliah, I’ve got to tend to them, I don’t have to look after my own comfort,” and he stayed behind. Gedaliah was assassinated, Jews killing Jews again, we’re a terrible lot. And as a result those who are left fled down to Egypt, because they feared reprisals, and again Jeremiah did not want to go to Egypt but he went down to be with them to help and to support them.

A wonderfully, just a wonderful man. But while he was there he was sending messages, and he was sending messages back to Babylon, and he said, listen, you’re going to be here for a generation or two, build houses, establish your community, keep up the tradition, don’t abandon it. And at the same time in a famous example, he arranged to buy family property in Israel, in Judea, in anticipation of eventually coming back. And all these guys, they were talking about the fact that the Messiah, that is to say a king of Judea, or a king of the north, will come back and rebuild our state. And that is how we have always understood these books and his message. In Babylon, slowly the Jewish community rebuilds itself, and that’s one of the topics I’ll have for the future to talk about. And the prophet there is Yehezkel, Ezekiel. Now we also have book of Daniel, but Daniel isn’t regarded as a prophet so much as a religious leader, a lay leader so to speak, a powerful guy, who did write, in his book about some later stage, but it’s Ezekiel who has two very important chapters that are relevant.

Chapter number one is the first book, first chapter of the book of Yehezkel, Ezekiel. Those of you who have read Erich Von Daniken, who believed that spaceships came down to Earth, based himself on this first chapter of Ezekiel. Because the first chapter of Ezekiel is all about this vision of God, which is multiple, animal, mineral, and vegetable, which is eagle, which is lion, which is ox, which is human, and there’s fire, and there’s whirligigs whizzing around there, and the legs are on fire, and slowly lifting up, and coming down, and moving backwards, and moving forwards, it’s a phenomenal, you know, like a rock concert or something, but it’s amazing visual image in which as with Isiah it’s a combination of a animal, mineral, fire, water, and everything like that. Ah, these spam calls get my nerves. Anyway, this is known, and became known, as . The same word that was used of Elijah’s prophets going up to heaven in a chariot of fire. And this chapter is the basis, the foundation, of what came many years, a thousand years later, practically, to be called Kabbalah, but is basically Jewish mysticism, the hidden, the (indistinct). And again it is an image of God as this combination of everything, there is no theology in the Bible.

The prophets were not interested in theology for one minute. Do you believe, don’t you believe? They were concerned with two things, how to behave, and what is your relationship with God, I should add a third one, and of course your relationship to the Jewish people, because the land of Israel, Jerusalem, is constantly at the core of everything they believe in, Zeeon, Zion, and it’s there, and these are books that were written long before the common era, and long before there was any issue of Palestinians and Israel, and who builds the land, and who does the land come from, and who conquered it in the first place, who conquered it in the second place, who conquered it in any other place. This was part of the core of the Messianic image, the vision of returning to Zion. But Yehezkel also has this famous chapter called “The Valley of Dry Bones.” In which he has a vision, and there’s no question that he says it’s a vision, and God takes him around this valley, and he sees all these dead bones, and he turns to Ezekiel and he says, “Do you think these bones can ever come alive?” And Ezekiel says, “God, I don’t know.”

And all of a sudden there’s a wind. And all of a sudden these bones begin to move, and they acquire sinews and flesh, and they stand up, a huge, big army, and God says to Ezekiel, “This is the house of Israel. They say we are dry bones, we’ve lost hope, we’re dead, we’re gone, we’ll never come back again, I’m telling you they’ll come back again.” A message that particularly in the light of the Holocaust is such a relevant message thousands of years later. And this idea was then much later turned into the question of resurrection, resurrecting dead bodies. Now you might argue that Elijah and Elisha also in a sense resurrected dead bodies, brought them back to life when they were sick and when they were ill, but that’s not the same thing as talking about resurrecting everybody. And in the Talmud there’s a whole debate about whether this was a vision and a parable, or whether it was true. And some people said it was true, and then other people said, I am descended from these bones, which actually is another way of saying, I’m descended from those of Babylon who came back to Israel and rebuilt the land of Israel.

So here you have another example, like Messianism, of resurrection, that is retroactively imposed upon the prophets, whereas the prophets are really not concerned with that issue. The issue, as I say again, is the issue of how do we be good human beings, and not forgetting that, we have still have to have follow the law, follow tradition, keep tradition alive, but that is a means to an end, and not just an end in itself. So you have this story of these three great prophets, you can read it all again if you look at the book of Kings about various, the one example I think that you have of a miracle is not in what Elijah and Elisha did, those various stories that we have, but it is if you like, the miracle of survival. Both as individuals, of people who were thrown into jail, who are beaten, and attacked, and still survive. And of the nation, the nation surviving, and the nation going forward. Now, the question of who else counts a prophet is another very interesting question. There were a whole lot of other prophets.

In addition to Isiah, Jeremiah, and Yehezkel, the three so called major prophets because they wrote major books, there are of course lots of other ones. And the other ones come partially in a book called , which is the 12 minor prophets that include men like Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Amos, Joel, Jonah, and these other ones had small books. Doesn’t mean to say they were less powerful, less impressive, just they wrote these small books. That these books were all included in the section of the Bible, which is divided into three, there’s Torah, the five books of Moses, there’s Na, the Navi'im, and then there’s Ka, the Ketuvim. The Ketuvim includes books like Psalms, and Proverbs, and Job, Chronicles, Ezra Nehemiah who help rebuild Judea after people came back from Babylon, and, the book of Daniel if you like. These are all, but when we talk about prophets, we talk about the three, and the, the 13 other ones, sorry I get confused between 12 and 13 sometimes, of the minor prophets. And this document, or this era, is an era that seems to have come to an end when the return from Babylon, the last prophets who came back from Babylon, with the exiled who returned, were those who brought the era of the prophets to an end.

Now, why then, do we not have anymore prophets? And this is something that the Talmud was concerned with. The Talmud going into what the role of the prophet was, made a very important statement. And its statement was that, , the role of the prophet is not to get involved in constitutional issues, that’s not his role. By then, by the return to Jerusalem, the Jewish religious life was fundamentally one run by the meritocracy of scholars. It was a life based on study and worship through and in addition to study, even though the temple was rebuilt and the temple functioned for another couple hundred years, before it finally ended in 70 AD. And the idea of prophecy ending can be explained in one of two ways. Either there were not people who had the charisma and the power to be able to prophesy, or to have that influence, even though as we say, the prophet was never heard in his own country. The voice of the prophet was ignored. But it had to be out there for everybody to look at, and to listen to. So on the one hand the prophet’s role primarily was one that was no longer viable when there weren’t people prepared or able to take it on.

There is a famous line which says in the Talmud that since the end of the prophets, prophecy has been taken away and given to children and fools. In other words, that’s understanding prophecy as predicting, any idiot can predict, and I think it’s probably because this issue of prediction, which was associated with prophets became so important later on, that the rabbis wanted to distance themselves from it. Remember, predictions, oracles, were in the hands of the priests in the Bible. It wasn’t the job of the prophet to make these specific predictions, who’s going to win the Kentucky Double? Who’s going to win the next war? They were just saying, “We see danger, we see a collapse of the system. We see a moral collapse as well as a physical collapse, and unless you get your act together, we are telling you disaster is coming”, they’re talking about consequences. It’s not a matter of predicting something out of the ordinary. But once you enter the Greek Roman system, of astrology, and prediction, and fortune telling, then of course people assume that that was the role of the prophet, but it wasn’t. That is the role of children and fools, so to speak.

So that the transition was a transition from one kind of world to another kind of world. Just as now we’ve transitioned from in one sense the old rabbinic way of solving problems, both medical, and social, with, come from assuming that dreams are accurate predictors of what’s going to happen, and we’ve moved on to a more scientific approach, although some of us are still hung up in the past and still think the old ways are the better ways. Well good luck to them if they think, you know, hocus pocus is going to solve your brain surgery, then good, maybe it will, you never know. But basically the transition was a transition of eras as well as a transition of people. And because people were starting to talk about predictions and signs and auguries within the Christian and indeed within the Muslim world. And, many Jews, at some stage, followed them. But nevertheless there was the idea that this is not what we mean by prophecy. Prophecy is a clear, clear message, that tells you how to be a better human being, how to be a better Jew, and how to contribute to the welfare of the world, of the universe, in the wider sense.

So these were the great names of the Bible. Wonderful literature, wonderfully worthwhile reading, very inspiring, and we read a part of the prophets every , after, and festival, after we’ve read the part of the five books of Moses. And that is originally because the Romans and then the Christians, had strong, made strong attempts to stop the Jews reading the Torah, and therefore this was a substitute to find something in the prophets that echoed important message of the Torah for that , so people wouldn’t forget it. And when the threat disappeared of course they kept up the dual system, which also had the educational value of teaching people what beautiful literature we have. And it always upsets me when I see people in synagogue who not interested in praying, can’t follow the service, bored out of their little minds, instead of taking out a Bible, and instead of reading, and they, all synagogues have translations, instead of reading this beautiful, instead of talking and being bored, they could read this beautiful literature, and most people don’t bother. And it’s such a shame, and it’s such a loss.

Okay, so, this is the moment at which I conclude this discussion and see if anybody has any, questions that they’d like to ask.

Q&A and Comments

Muriel asked something, “As to your comment about Nathan and Putin, I would like to point out that Navalny was prepared to challenge Putin.” Yes, that’s an excellent point, Navalny did, I wouldn’t call him a prophet, and I don’t think he’d claim to be a prophet, but on the other hand I think it’s pretty clear that he is a man of courage and guts who ought to be supported. I fear for him, I am sure he is going to get a bitter end because Putin is not like the Judean kings that at some stage had some constraints imposed upon them, and were not always surrounded by yes men, or a lot of the time they were.

Q: Rosalind asked, “The prophets had very intense visions, did the people believe them at the time, or were they not publicised?” A: Rosalind, I think people were very credulous, I think they relied on miracles, they relied on them, I do believe they were prepared to worship idols all the time, anything they thought might help them, when people are desperate they’ll turn any which way in order to find some sort of solace, so I’m sure people believed miracle workers, they believed people who were doing these things. Maybe in the early stage, in the Elijah Elisha stage, they actually did, or at least that’s what the Torah, the is saying, that there was a moment, the Elisha Elijah moment, in which miracles were regarded as important, but by the time you get to Isiah, Jeremiah, Yehezkel and that lot, they are much more concerned with the moral message and how to behave.

Q: Lindsey, “Best way to encourage others to read in sure and not speak?” A: I wish I knew what the answer to that was. I’ve not succeeded, I’ve tried all kinds of approaches to get people to stop talking, and they can’t, and they usually throw back at me that the synagogue is a social centre. And yes it was, but it was a social centre after the service, not during the service. And this is very disturbing, and which is why I really only like to pray if I’m praying somewhere where everybody else is praying, and there’s an atmosphere and an excitement, and a commitment, that I enjoy. Unfortunately as a rabbi in a community, my professional job has required me to be the rabbi of communities that were not orthodox, not particularly, not always orthodox, although officially they were, not always interested, and going to serve has been a struggle. Which I will confess one of the beauties of COVID was that I didn’t go and I was able to pray the way that I wanted to pray.

Saul Rosenberg, another one, thank you very much Saul, nice to have you on here. Alredina, “First prophets Eldad, Medad, and Bilam.” Well this is interesting. It’s true that Eldad and Medad are two people who were part of the elders who were in, not included in the, appointment of the 70 elders, 'cause there were too many, they were left out of the camp, and it was said that they were prophesying, in the camp. But there was no message. We don’t have any message from them about what they were prophesying, what that meant, or how they understood it at the time. They are not regarded as prophets even though at that moment they were prophesying. Bilam is interesting for another reason. Bilam is interesting because we have archaeological evidence of, from non Jewish sources, from Petra and the east bank, of a book of Bilam, who was a well known sorcerer, and he is known as a sorcerer rather than a prophet. So I suspect in his case, prophet was, if you like, an honorary title. Even so he is regarded as a prophet to the non Jews. So that is if you like a rabbinic tradition, appointment, rather than a Jewish appointment.

Thank you Jennifer, I’m glad that your mother’s listening too, I hope she enjoyed this, thank you. Rosalind, I don’t think prophecy was given to fools and children because they’re stupid, but because they’ll say things no one else dare to say. “A king’s fool, a boy in the story,” Rosalind that’s an absolute excellent point, a very, very good point. I should have rephrased it that way, but you are right, absolutely can’t disagree with that.

Q: Carla, “Thank you for this lesson, understandable. But now, do you think Ezekiel was one of magic mushroom, amazing visions?” A: Well this is an interesting issue that we have all the time, about magic mushrooms, and psychedelic, LSD, other ways, alcohol, of getting to God. My view is that anything that is an artificial way of reaching something spiritual to me is problematic. Because although I think psychedelics, certain drugs, can be very helpful in curing certain states of depression, of giving you interesting experiences, I don’t believe these experiences are experiences of God. They’re experiences of something in the brain, so I don’t think that Ezekiel as a prophet, certainly didn’t mention anything about magic mushrooms, I don’t think he took or needed to take magic mushrooms. So, that’s my position. People want to take drugs, good luck to them, but I don’t think that they have, or alcohol has anything to do with religion whatsoever. I know Habad will disagree with me, and say alcohol is very necessary in sort of, releasing, getting rid of your inhibitions, but that’s their position and whatever I may admire Habad for, the good work that they do, a lot of their attitudes are not ones I can identify with. The old joke, “Goldstein goes to to pray, Greenburg goes to visit with Goldstein.” I don’t know that one, that’s a nice one, I’ve heard lots of other ones like that.

Q: “Is it correct that the big prophets were not taught in (speaking foreign language), if yes, why not?” A: Well Judith, the truth of the matter is that in general, in the traditional main , the curriculum, the main curriculum, is almost entirely Talmud. Now the fact is that the Talmud is chock-a-block full with constant references to the prophets, and quotationals from them. So you can’t be a scholar of the Talmud without knowing a great deal about the prophets. But it is true, the prophets, and , are documents that are left to students to study outside of the main curriculum. It’s not that they’re not studied, or not considered important, they are not part of the main curriculum, which is an intellectual struggle to understand the texts, and the meaning of the Talmud, that’s the main part of the curriculum. The others are part of the unofficial curriculum. And so when I was in yeshiva, my curriculum was during the day, there was some time we took off for what’s called , or moral improvement, there was time we took off to study Talmud in vast quick amounts rather than in the very detailed analytical way we did in the main curriculum, and when we had time, , festival and others, or in the day we take a break and we’d study Bible too.

Thank you Joan, lovely to hear from you. Adrian thank you too. Nanette Spain, “Thank you I learned a lot, maybe because I’m more interested in my age now.” Yeah that’s all of us, we learn as we get older, and youth being wasted on the young.

So thank you everybody, that’s where we’ll leave it for today, hope to see you again in the future; bye.