Prophets, Prophecy, and Oracles in the Roman Empire

Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman Cultures

Leslie Kelly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351243513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire antique

This book surveys the uses and function of prophecy, prophets, and oracles among Jews, Christians, and pagans in the first three centuries of the Roman Empire and explores how prophecy and prophetic texts functioned as a common language that enabled religious discourse to develop between these groups. It shows that each of these cultures believed that it was in prophetic texts and prophetic utterances that they could find the surest proof of their religious beliefs and a strong confirmation of their group identity.

1 Jewish prophets and prophecy

First-century sectarians, visionaries, and rebels

When referring to Judaism in the Roman Empire, it is commonplace to distinguish between Judaism as it existed before the revolt against the Roman state in the first century CE, which is designated “Second Temple Judaism,” and the “Rabbinic Judaism” that existed after this period. The first Jewish revolt occurred in 66–73 CE. At the end of this war, the Temple, around which a large portion of Jewish practice had revolved for centuries, was no more and Jews were forced to pay a special tax. A smaller-scale rebellion broke out in 115–117 CE in Cyprus, Cyrenaica, and Egypt. This was followed by a larger full-scale war, the Bar Kokhba Revolt, 132–136 CE. After this war ended, Jews were forbidden to live in Jerusalem, which was renamed Aelia Capitolina.

The loss of the Temple and Jerusalem necessitated a new form of the faith. In early Israel, the Temple, first begun under King Solomon and completed under David, had been the locus of Yahweh worship. This was destroyed in 587 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia. After a period in exile in Babylonia, after Cyrus the Great had defeated the Babylonians, Jews returned to Judaea and a second temple was built and temple cult resumed. How much this cult resembled the pre-Babylonian Israelite religion is difficult to decide. In any case, the Temple was once again central from this point up to the destruction in 70 CE. For this reason, this period of time is designated Second Temple Judaism.

There were Jews living outside of Judaea in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial era. Some Jews did not return from Babylon. Egypt also had a large Jewish population from an early period. Jewish mercenaries were serving the Egyptian crown by the fifth century BCE in Elephantine, guarding the border between Egypt and Nubia. They built themselves a local temple. A particularly impactful event that led to a splintering within Judaism was the conflict between the Seleucid ruler of Judaea, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (approximately 215 BCE–164 BCE) and conservative, traditional Jews, living in Jerusalem. Our sources for the Maccabean Revolt are few, and certainly biased, but it appears that internal and external pressure to “Hellenize” as well as desire for political autonomy led to an outbreak of hostilities between the Jews and their Seleucid rulers. In the shifting political and religious alliances of that period, Onias IV, of the line of high priests, left Judaea and created a Jewish community with its own temple at Leontopolis in Egypt. It is also possible, though not certain, that the Jewish community at Qumran, the owners of the texts known today as the Dead Sea Scrolls, broke with the community in Jerusalem at that time.

Jews living outside of Judaea are called “Diaspora Jews” (diaspora meaning “dispersion”). Jews living in the Diaspora sent money to maintain the Temple in Jerusalem, and some may have traveled there for particularly significant festivals, but this would have been impractical for most. Egyptian temples aside, the faith of most Diaspora Jews, as we can see from their extant writings, was not Temple- centered. At some point, the synagogue, a meeting place set aside for communal worship, developed. The earliest archaeological evidence for synagogues has been found outside of Palestine (though they certainly existed there as well). Jewish writings of the Hellenistic Diaspora indicate that Jews were very open to influences from surrounding cultures. Diaspora authors produced such works as drama (influenced by Greek culture), and prose narratives about biblical figures (influenced by Greek romances), which we today call “parabiblical” literature. Philo, a prolific Jewish author from Alexandria in the first century BCE, wrote about the Jewish religion in philosophical terms; Josephus, a Jewish officer in the First Revolt, produced an apology (that is, a defense and explanation, of the Jewish faith) and a history of the Jewish people and a history of the Jewish war. Historical writing had been produced by Jews living in the Hellenistic period, but it survives today only in fragmentary form. The Hellenistic period also produced wisdom literature and apocalypses (influenced by Persian religion), and finally, oracles (influenced by Greek and Ancient Near Eastern paradigms).

We will take up apocalypses below. Two oracles that were composed by Hellenistic Jews were the Orphica and the Sibylline Oracles. In both cases, a pre-existing Greek oracular tradition was appropriated by a Jewish author to create a pagan oracle interlaced with Jewish themes. According to the early Church historian, Eusebius, the Orphica was a second-century BCE work by the Jewish theologian Aristobulus. The narrator is the legendary Greek seer Orpheus, who writes to his son, also a legendary, superhuman seer, Musaeus. The content is monotheistic and it alludes in a veiled way to the Jewish Scriptures. Lines 25–29 of the work refer to a man from long ago, of the race of the Chaldeans, who is granted the ability in spirit to travel through air and water and who was unique. This must refer to either Moses, perhaps the most celebrated Jewish prophet in the Second Temple Period, or Abraham, since there was a tradition that he knew and taught astrology (Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.17.3 and 9.18.2; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.154, 158).

Oracular texts associated with the Sibyls of ancient Greece appeared in Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman cultures. The Sibyls were legendary female seers of the Greek world. By the time of the Empire, there were at least ten canonical “Sibyls.” Varro, the Augustan-era antiquarian provides a list. The Greek travel writer Pausanias (who lived approximately 110–180 CE) in Book 10 of his Description of Greece surveys the legends of the various Sibyls. Oracles associated with them floated around the classical world. The pagan versions of these oracles preserved in literary texts such as Pausanias’ indicate that the oracles dealt with such topics as wars, politics, and natural disasters.¹ In 10.12.9 Pausanias notes that one of them was thought by some to have been a Hebrew. A Hellenistic Jewish author adapted these pre-existing oracles. They were then later assembled into twelve books by a Byzantine scholar in the sixth century. We have today Books 1–8, with large portions of Book 7 missing; Books 9–10 are lost; then Books 11–14. Books 1 and 2 go together, and Books 11–14 form a set as well, but these books were not composed all at once. Book 3 may be from a much longer work.² Scholars are divided on the provenance and dating of these texts. Later, Christian authors would appropriate the collection and add Christian themes.³ The Sibylline literature in different forms was still circulated in the Middle Ages. Many scholars think we can get some idea of what the original Jewish layer looked like in Books 1–2 and 3 which have decidedly Jewish material (with occasional Christian interpolations).⁴ The Sibyl who speaks in this text is the daughter-in-law of Noah (1.288–90; 3.809–27). It is the Hebrews who will rule (2.174–86). There is a eulogy of the Jewish people in 3.218–64; 3.573–600. Other additions to the oracles include moral exhortations (1.56–148), and apocalyptic scenarios and scenes of cosmic judgment (2.2124–338).⁵

We also see in these Jewish Sibyllines a mixing of the origin stories of pagans and Jews: Noah and the generation after the Flood (1.125–282) appear, but also the Titans (1.307–23). In the oracles, the pagan and Jewish chronologies are combined into one timeline to create the sense of a shared past.⁶

In the case of both of these Jewish oracular compositions, the Orphica and the Sibylline Oracles, there may be an apologetic function. By appropriating an established, authoritative, pagan voice and having her affirm the Jewish faith, the author seeks to legitimize his religion to his pagan neighbors. This is a pattern that we will see repeated throughout the period of Empire.

Jews of the Roman Empire often interacted with prophecy through texts. They read in the first three centuries old prophecies, including the Sibylline Oracles, but also the prophetic passages from their emerging canon of Scripture or holy texts. This consisted of many books of the prophets from Israel’s past. There were eventually twenty-four books in the Jewish Scriptures. These were divided into three parts: Torah (that is, “the Teaching,” the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (“Prophets”), and Ketuvim (“Writings”). It is not known exactly when this canon of books was closed. Josephus provides evidence of twenty-two books marked out in some way by the first century CE (Against Apion 1.8).

It is from these that we can reconstruct the paradigm of the prophet in Jewish tradition that would, presumably, have influenced the way that prophets and prophecy was perceived and how it functioned in the Roman Empire. The prophets of Israel were commissioned by God himself (Jeremiah 1:4–5). They did not work for the state. They were tasked with bringing messages from God to the people. Most often these were cautionary messages, exhortations to the people to shape up, and a warning of what the consequences would be if they did not (Ezekiel 33:11). They received visions of the future of Israel and of the heavens. They sometimes engaged in symbolic public acts like the marriage of the prophet Hosea to a whore (symbolizing the relationship between God and Israel). We should note that the Prophets included what we might call histories or chronicles (the Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) and that Moses and David were also considered prophets by Second Temple Jews and the early Christians. These were men who, according to the Jewish Scriptures, had received special revelations from God.

The word that gets translated as “divination” is in the Jewish Scriptures differentiated from Israelite prophecy. We can see this reflected in the quote from Origen that headed the introduction of this book. The Jewish Scriptures contain injunctions against practicing divination.

When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord.

(Deuteronomy 18:9–12)

This seems to be one of the ways that Jews were to set themselves apart as a special, holy people. Since they had a special relationship with God, they did not need these other mediums of access. God would tell them what they needed to know without prompting.

Injunctions against divination in some form or other occur in all three of the cultures we will study. This did not mean that these rules were obeyed. There is evidence for Jewish use of amulets, spells, and divination (and also Christian use), but the evidence is for Late Antiquity – post-third century, for the most part.⁷ Bohak writes that there is a lack of evidence for divination in the Second Temple period.⁸ There is, however, some. The Treatise of Shem (first century BCE) is one example.⁹ The work characterizes each year according to the sign of the zodiac under which it began. Astrology is attributed to an early, primeval figure, Shem, the son of Noah. Earlier we noted Jewish sources which attributed it to Abraham. Among the writings found at Qumran, there were horoscopes or astrological physiognomies dating to the end of the first century BCE. In one of these texts, the stars at the time of one’s birth are paired with one’s physical features and so with one’s destiny. There is also a record of the interpretation of various prodigies or ill-omens related to the sound of thunder on certain specified days of the month.

[If in Taurus] it thunders … [and] hard labour for the country and sword [in the cour]t of the king and in the country of … to the Arabs (?) […] starvation and they will pillage one anoth[er…]. [there is a lacuna here] If in Gemini it thunders, terror and affliction (will be brought) by strangers and by… .

(column 8, 4Q318)¹⁰

We will address briefly the presence of the themes of prophets, prophecy, and oracles in Late Antique Jewish texts below.

Apocalyptic writings first appear in Judaism in the Hellenistic era. These are works that describe a vision or revelation given to an individual who appears in the Jewish Scriptures.¹¹ The visions included typically a review of the past of Israel, its current state of woe, and a war...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Jewish prophets and prophecy: first-century sectarians, visionaries, and rebels
• 2 The early Christians: prophecy, apology, and heresiology
• 3 The Greco-Romans: pagan oracles and Christian persecution
• Conclusion
• Index