God and Dreams

Is There a Connection?

John Pratt Bingham

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781606086674, 9781498253697
• eBook ISBN: 9781498271707
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Religion
• Index: Social Sciences

At one time when an individual wanted a direct, personal experience of God that person turned to his or her dreams. The early third century Christian defender of the faith, Tertullian, observed, "Is it not known to all people that the dream is the most usual way that God reveals himself to man?" Yet by the eleventh century, King William II of England states, "They are not good Christians that regard dreams." Why did this reversal of opinion occur, not only in Christian thinking, but in Jewish and Islamic attitudes also? God and Dreams: Is There a Connection? traces the historic connection between God and dreams and examines why this shift happened. While particular attention is given to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought, several secular disciplines are discussed also. After investigating the different points of view, an argument is made that the connection between God and dreams still exists.

1

Historic Perspectives

Most of the late-antique theorists of dreams agree that dream-speech was divine speech. Apart from nightmares and nocturnal visions inspired by demons or anxiety, dreams were thought to be somehow significant and divinely appointed, although the mechanics of their relation to the gods was subject to debate.17

Introduction

The story of God’s involvement with dreams begins with some of the earliest preserved writings. It is fortunate that records preserved in the Near East during the 2,200 years before the birth of Jesus include passages that describe dreams in detail. Typically these records contain a description of the setting of the dreams, including who experienced them, when, where, and under what noteworthy circumstances the dream occurred, as well as the content of the dreams. It was not uncommon for these texts to include the reactions of the dreamer. The preserved texts also note how the dream was actually fulfilled if it contained a prediction or promise. It is typical of these reports to begin with the words that the dreamer “has gone to bed and is deeply asleep.” These records make it possible to understand the attitudes these people had about God and dreams. This chapter surveys the more common attitudes from this ancient period.

Ancient Near East Attitudes about God and Dreams

Indicative of the attitudes about God’s involvement with dreams are those found in Mari,18 one of the great city-states of Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze age. Archeological research has found many documents, written in Akkadian, that were created there between 1800 and 1750 B.C. E.19 Scholar Dr. Abraham Malamat studied these documents. He observed:

The divine-prophets at Mari were of two types: professionals, recognizable by their distinctive titles. . . and lay people with no title whatsoever. . . . More than half of the “prophetic” documents from Mari deal with lay persons not functioning as professionals attached to a sanctuary. . . . Among the lay prophets the dream is prevalent as a prophetic means, while this medium is totally absent among the professionals. . . . The professional prophets enjoyed direct revelations while awake; the lay persons . . . were usually dreamers of dreams. . . . From a third to half of all published prophecies from Mari originated in dreams. . . . The credibility of prophetic revelation was obviously a sensitive matter, not to be taken for granted. Thus it was often verified by means of accepted mantic devices, which were considered more reliable and preferable to intuitive prophesying. . . . In contrast, in Israel the prophetic word . . . is never subjected to corroboration by cultic means; it is simply vindicated by the test of fulfillment (cf. Deut.18:22; Jer. 28:9; Ezekiel 33:33)20

Types of Dreams

Another scholar of the dreams from this period was Dr. Leo Oppenheim. Dr. Oppenheim identified three types of dreams preserved in the ancient Near East: message dreams, symbolic dreams and mantic dreams.

Message Dreams

Message dreams provide a command or warning to the dreamer from the dreamer’s god.21 It did not matter which god the dreamer worshipped, since it was a commonly accepted fact among all the people of the region that all gods communicate through dreams.

A distinguishing characteristic of message dreams is their clarity. The meaning of these dreams was so obvious that they did not need an interpretation. For example the Hittite King Hattushili wrote that he married his queen “not blindly but I took her [as wife] upon the command of the deity. The deity assigned her to me in a dream.” Truly this was a marriage made in heaven!22

Message dreams typically contained either a reference to the presence of god being in the dream or that god sent a spirit to function as a messenger. Frequently a description of the towering size and beauty of the deity or messenger was included in the report. Sumerian, Akkadian, and Greek message dreams shared a common phrase that means the appearing deity “stood at the head of the sleeper.” Greek accounts, in particular, give the impression that the god actually entered the sleeper’s room. They also indicate the voice of the visiting god was heard at the very moment of awakening. Some later Nordic dream accounts say the sleeper, after awakening suddenly, caught a glimpse of a “person just leaving his room.”

Another feature shared among the various reports of message dreams was that of the sleeper hearing his or her name called by their god before the god presented the message. The story of Samuel found in Hebrew Scripture is an excellent illustration.23 Message dreams often began with the deity or messenger saying, “Be not afraid!”24

It was common also for dream reports to conclude with wording that indicated the dreamer was startled awake by the experience of encountering a divine presence in their dream. One of the oldest dreams in literature, the second preserved dream of the great Mesopotamian King Gudea (2141–2122 B.C.E.), is an illustration of this numinous experience. The King’s dream concludes, “He woke up with a start, it was (but) a dream!”25 King Gudea believed his god spoke to him through his dreams. In another of the King’s dreams he was instructed by his god to build the Temple Erinnu in his city-state capital of Lagash (southeast Iraq). In response to his god’s directive, King Gudea built the temple using precious stones, copper, and tin.

Symbolic Dreams

Dr. Oppenheim identified a second type of dream from the ancient Near East, the “symbolic” dream. He wrote:

In such dreams man meets a world whirling with strange objects and unprecedented activities and happenings, teeming with gods, demons, humans and beasts; a world which extends in sweep, variety and intricacy far beyond that to which the duller senses of man’s waking consciousness grant him access.26

Dr. Oppenheim noted that whereas message dreams were addressed to men almost exclusively, symbolic dreams tended to be more frequently experienced by women.

Unfortunately, Near Eastern censorship was rigorous. Not many symbolic dreams were preserved. The dream’s images, in spite of Dr. Oppenheim’s name for this type of dream, were understood literally. Consequently the dream’s content and message was baffling. Nevertheless, symbolic dreams were so impressive that the dreamer had no doubt they were full of meaning. Dr. Oppenheim found that the meaning of the dreams always dealt with future events, never the past or present.27 It was probably because these dreams so emotionally touched their recipients that the dreams were recorded and preserved. To gain access to the dream’s meaning, symbolic dreams needed to be interpreted. The dream and its interpretation were usually preserved together as a unit.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, Dr. Oppenheim noted, symbolic dreams are reserved for Gentiles. God sent the Egyptian Pharaoh of the Exodus and Nebuchadnezzar such dreams but also provided them with an interpreter—Joseph and Daniel, respectively—to make his message understandable. Most of the symbolic dreams found in the Hebrew Scriptures emphasize not the importance of the dream message, but the piety and interpretative capacity of the god-inspired interpreter.28

Because symbolic dreams were difficult to understand and inspired interpreters hard to find, elaborate rules were created and collected into handbooks to guide clergy in dream interpretation. Some of these handbooks have been discovered in Assyria and Babylonia.

Mantic Dreams

Mantic or predictive dreams are the third type of dream Dr. Oppenheim identified from the Ancient Near East. Dreams containing predictions were believed to occur slightly before dawn. In Akkadian literature some predictions are public and some are private. Public predictions concern the king and the country. Private predictions concern individual citizens. The Mesopotamian attitude, according to Dr. Oppenheim, was that mantic dreams were warnings sent by a concerned god to those who paid attention to their dreams and could understand them. When a mantic dream predicted a misfortune, the recipient could protect himself by means of apotropaic rituals. The correct ritual was considered potent enough to obviate all of the bad consequences suggested in the dream.

Dr. Oppenheim wrote about the following incident which illustrates the perceived power of rituals to cleanse the bad consequences a dream may bring.

The Hittite king Murshili was traveling to a distant city dressed in festive garments for some sort of a cultic ceremony when there was an especially loud thunderclap. The experience shocked Murshili so severely that he lost his ability to speak (aphonia). With time Murshili recovered and forgot the entire incident. After several years, however, Murshili began to dream of this thunderstorm. Each time he did he re-experienced the original shock. Finally Murshili had such an intense dream that it felt like the ‘Hand of God’, to use Murshili’s own words, struck him. When he awoke he could not speak at all.

What follows are a series of ritualistic attempts to cure the troubled king. One of these rituals involved taking the contaminated garments of the king’s, along with his chariot and the horses involved in the thunderstorm and sacrificing them to the Weather-god. The royal paraphernalia involved included also the king’s shoes, weapons, the very table, bed, bowl and wash basin and every utensil he used. All of these were taken to the temple of the Weather-god and were burnt as an offering. A substitute for the king himself was used: a bull upon whom Murshili laid his hands. This ritual ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Historic Perspectives
• Chapter 2: Jewish Perspectives
• Chapter 3: Christian Perspectives
• Chapter 4: Islamic Perspectives
• Chapter 5: A Few Other Religious Perspectives
• Chapter 6: Some Non-Religious Perspectives
• Chapter 7: Another Perspective
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Bibliography