How the body reshapes our understanding of biblical prophecy

In common parlance, a “prophecy” is a special kind of utterance. Perhaps an oracle about the future, words of approval or condemnation, critique or consolation. Scholars often define prophecy as a kind of message, issued from a deity to their people and mediated through an individual called a prophet. The books of the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament preserve numerous writings considered “prophetic”. Some of these writings record words attributed to prophets. Some tell stories about prophets. When we attend closely to those stories, we begin to notice that prophecy is more than words. It always also involves the body.

Scholars have long studied the words of the prophets. Expanding our focus to include the body reshapes our very understanding of prophecy. But it is not either/or. To say that prophecy involves the body is not to deny the importance of words, both spoken and written. Instead, prophetic word and body act in synergy. The call of Moses—a narrative that was paradigmatic for other prophetic call stories—emphasizes this synergy by focusing attention on two parts of his body, his mouth and hand. This programmatic pairing places the prophet’s words and actions on equal footing.

Indeed, if “prophecy” is the mode of mediation performed by prophets, it quickly becomes evident that prophecy takes many forms. It is often a form of speech. But sometimes it is not an utterance at all. Sometimes a prophecy is an act of healing. Sometimes a meal. The prophet may be a mime or a dancer. The diverse forms of prophecy correspond to a diversity of functions. Like other forms of divination, prophecy—and the prophetic body—mediates knowledge. But they also mediate divine power, presence, provision, and relationship.

The body of the prophet is not incidental to this work, but necessary. That is because the prophet does not mediate between two disembodied parties. The prophetic body mediates between an embodied God and embodied people. Detailed written descriptions of the prophet’s bodily encounter with divine realities help to facilitate the audience’s own religious experience. Although biblical writers understood divine bodies to be different from human (or other animal) bodies, they conceived of a deity that could see and hear, speak and touch. The body of the prophet does not simply stand between God and people but makes possible their encounter and ongoing relationship.

This mediating work does not leave the prophet’s body unchanged. The mediating prophetic body undergoes transformations that mark it as other and help it to bridge divine and human realms and modes of being. Sometimes these transformations are visible. After his encounter with the deity, Moses’ face shines so brightly he must wear a veil; in some traditions, he becomes more monstrous, horns now protruding from his face. In punishment for her challenge to Moses’ prophetic authority, Miriam’s body is afflicted with a visible skin disease that requires her exclusion from the camp. Prophets also transformed their bodies through askesis, practices such as fasting, abstention from water, and isolation, that could prepare them to receive revelation or contribute to their mediatory power. In a more temporary transformation, music and other triggers could elicit altered states of consciousness. Such religious ecstasy was a further pathway for the prophet’s body to bridge divine and human realms.

The mediating body of the prophet was rarely static. It was, instead, a body in motion. If the deity often instructed the prophet to speak, the deity also often instructed the prophet to “go.” To places, yes, but more importantly, to people. The prophetic body in motion catalyzes movements of people and links deity and people across boundaries of space and time. The movements of the prophet’s body mirror the movements of the deity; they also help set the people in motion toward the future God has planned for them. The converse was also true. The immobilized prophetic body could be a portent of siege, captivity, or exile. In this way, too, the body prophesied.

Related to motion are emotion and affect. These embodied phenomena are not the property of one body alone. Affect and emotion are social phenomena that circulate. And they are vital components in decision-making, action-readiness, and relationship. Study of prophetic literature quickly reveals the centrality of affect and emotion to biblical prophecy. Ezekiel ingests words of woe and embodies the people’s devastation. Jeremiah instructs the people to lament and cry out. He also paints future consolation and joy. The book of Daniel aims to replace fear with wonder, exhaustion with hope. Affect emerges as both a means of mediation (how the prophet mediates) and its object (what the prophet mediates); it is vital to prophetic persuasion and to the transformation of the prophet’s audience.

Asking new questions about the body’s role in biblical prophecy helps to expand and reshape our understanding of prophecy itself. There is yet more work to do, sounding the body’s role in prophecy’s reception, charting the role of an embodied creation, or mapping the materiality of prophetic power through the agency of “things”. The prophetic body is a great place to start.

_{Featured image by Carolingian book illuminator circa 840 via Wikimedia Commons.}