Israel's Prophets and the Prophetic Effect of Pope Francis

A Pastoral Companion

Udoekpo

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781532647192
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Given that Pope Francis is a popular global religious leader, and in the light of the lessons drawn from the nature, meaning, and functions of Israel's prophets, this tripartite work historically, pastorally, and theologically examines whether, and how Francis' teaching, visits, outreach to the poor, preaching, and recent biblically based writings (Lumen Fidei, Evangelii Gaudium, Amoris Laetitia, Laudato Si', Gaudete et Exsultate, Letters, and Messages) have had any prophetic effects or impact on contemporary society.

Part I

Israel’s Prophets in Light of Pope Francis

Israel’s Prophets: Meaning, Function, and Nature

Defining Israel’s prophets, their function, and their nature in light of Pope Francis requires two things. First, we must appreciate the fact that the Israelites lived within the larger context of the ancient Near East; their neighboring countries had a sense of the phenomenon of prophecy that was parallel to the Israelites’. These neighbors include the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Mesopotamians. Israel shared with these countries some basic practices and beliefs about “gods and heavenly rule, kings and earthly rule, as well as priests and temple.”1 Affirming this point, Gerhard von Rad writes:

We may take it for granted that men possessed by the spirit only appeared in Israel after the conquest of Canaan. In the eleventh-century Syria and Palestine there are signs of the rise of an ecstatic and mantic movement whose origins are apparently outside that area and perhaps lie in the mantic of Thrace and Asia Minor. Canaanite religion must, then, have been the medium by which the movement came to Israel.2

Vawter agrees with von Rad that, from the beginning, a common pattern of seers and diviners existed throughout the ancient Near East.3 These seers and diviners were employed in discerning the will of their protective deity.4 Huffmon also ascertains belief in the existence of such deities. He points out that, during the Old Testament period, seers and diviners who acted as prophets and intermediaries were common in royal palaces throughout the ancient Near East (Syria-Palestine, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt). He argues that evidence abounds in stories told in Egypt and in the eighteen-century BC texts from Uruk (Southern Babylonia) and Mari (Middle Euphrates), and particularly in the Assyrian texts from the reigns of Esarhaddon (680–669 BC) and Ashurbanipal (668–627 BC).5

In studying these texts, we discover a variety of titles worn by those persons who sought to mediate the will of the gods to their kings and communities. These titles include: Āpilu/ᾱpiltu (“answerer”), Assinnu (“cult functionary”), Muḫḫȗtu (“ecstatic”), Nabȗ//nᾱbȋ (“diviners”), and Qam(m)ᾱtum (probably meaning “speaker”).6 Evidence in Babylonian temples points to the existence of bᾱrū priests, who delivered a tērtu (“a message”; probably a cognate to Hebrew Torah) to their client using liver divination. There was no distinction between prophets and priests in the ancient Near East—except in Israel. (It is worth noting that priesthood in Israel was hierarchical and hereditary, while prophecy was charismatic. Prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel probably were also priests, though the prophet Amos was not.7)

However, the recognition of this common pattern in the ancient Near East, especially as presented in the Mari Texts, does not detract from the uniqueness of true prophecy in the Old Testament. Rather, as noted by Leclerc, both the form and content of prophecy in the ancient Near East and in royal courts was very different from what we have in biblical Israel.

The Mari archive contains letters sent by an official who may have been instructed by the prophet to write to a king. The prophecies in these letters differ from those in the Bible in several ways. For instance, unlike biblical prophecies, the Mari letters were contaminated with other businesses and administrative issues. Additionally, the Old Testament prophecies were directly delivered to the addressee. Furthermore, while the Mari letters are privately limited to the kings, Israel’s prophecies had a broader audience (kings, the elite, priests, the poor, the rich, and all nations and kingdoms). The contents of the Mari texts concern mostly politics, the cult, and the military. In contrast, the major concerns of authentic Old Testament prophecies, even when read in light of the New Testament, are ethics, spirituality, society, and the common good.8

Besides the shared concept of prophecy between Israel and their ancient Near Eastern neighbors, when dealing with the meaning, nature, and function of Israel’s prophets and how these prophets have served as treasures to Francis’s prophetic effect, we must also consider that the words, semantics, and language used in defining prophets and prophecy could be misleading unless measured in proper perspective and used in the right context. To this second point of proper contextualization, the English words “prophets” or “prophetess” semantically and linguistically come to us from the Greek word prophētēs, which literally means “the one who speaks for another, especially for a deity.”9 In Hebrew we have the corresponding term nᾱbȋ’ in singular and nəbȋ’ȋm in plural, which is very close to the Akkadian verb nabȗ, meaning “to call, to an...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword I
• Foreword II
• Introduction
• Part I: Israel’s Prophets: Meaning, Function, and Nature
• Part II: The Life, Writings, and Ministry of Pope Francis & His Prophetic Effect
• Part III: Prophetic Effect of Francis and Challenges to Contemporary Society
• Summary and Conclusion
• Bibliography