Volume 50, Number 15 · October 9, 2003
After Strange Gods
By Avishai Margalit
The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are
by Norman Podhoretz
Free Press, 390 pp., $30.00
On the right bank of the Euphrates, near the Syrian border with Iraq, was once the ancient kingdom of Mari. From the immensely rich archive in the king's palace, found by archaeologists in the 1930s, we learn that prophets and prophecy were already known before 2000 BC. At that time divination, sorcery, augury, soothsaying, and the like were practiced in ancient Mesopotamia. But there was nothing parallel to the kinds of prophecy presented in Mari. The prophets there had a strong sense of divine mission. Through ecstatic visions, they told the king what the fertility god Dagan wanted them to tell him. Indeed the term used by the Mari to describe a prophet is akin to the word 'madman,' which is also one of the terms used by the Bible to describe a prophet: 'The prophet is a fool, the man of spirit is mad' (Hosea 9:7). All of this took place hundreds of years before prophets who believed they were responding to the call of God emerged among the Israelites.[*]
Review, 5289 words
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