In the earliest Jewish source, the
Torah,
prophecy often consisted of a warning by
God
of the consequences should the society, specific communities or
their leaders not adhere to Torah's instructions in the time
contemporary with the prophet's life. Prophecies sometimes
included promises of blessing for obeying God, and returning to
behaviours and laws as written in the Torah. Warning prophecies
feature in all Jewish works of the
Tanakh.
The rabbinic teachings, notably
RaMBaM, suggest there were many levels of prophecy, from the
highest such as that experienced by
Moses,
to the lowest where the individuals were able to apprehend the
Divine Will, but not respond or even describe this experience to
others, such as
Noah.
Maimonides' theory of prophecy contains two elements 1)
an explanation of what prophecy is, and 2) a ranking of the
various types of prophecy and prophecy-like phenomena. I
think we can use the ranking of prophecy implicate in
Maimonides to substantiate our thesis that the rationalism
of Maimonides is essentially a moral rationalism.
Maimonides in his work,
The Guide for the Perplexed, outlines twelve modes of
prophecy
from lesser to greater degree of clarity:
- Inspired actions
- Inspired words
-
Allegorical
dream revelations
-
Auditory dream revelations
- Audiovisual dream revelations/human
speaker
- Audiovisual dream revelations/angelic
speaker
- Audiovisual dream revelations/Divine speaker
- Allegorical waking
vision
- Auditory waking revelation
- Audiovisual waking revelation/human speaker
- Audiovisual waking revelation/angelic speaker
- Audiovisual waking revelation/Divine speaker (that
refers implicitly to Moses)
Of the twelfth mode Maimonides, focuses his attention on its
"implicit superiority to the penultimate stage in the above
series", and therefore above all other prophetic and
semi-prophetic modes.
Experience of prophecy in the Torah and the rest of Tanakh do
not restrict it to Jews, or even to human beings if
one episode is to be interpreted literally. Nor is the
prophetic experience restricted to the
Hebrew language, since much of the prophecies of
Daniel are in Aramaic.
Many of the
Tanakh prophecies are accompanied by radical changes in the
life of the prophets, and their experience is often accompanied
by physiological change, including physical stress, experience
of extrasensory perception (visions),
physical collapse, and changes in their psychological state as a
result of the encounter with the Divine.
The prophetic experience is always bestowed on the
individual, usually unprepared for the experience, by the
Divine, and this often causes the
prophet to undergo travel, and often privations and
persecution due to the unwelcome contents of the message he or
she bring to those for whom it is intended.
In the Christian New Testament prophecy is often referred as
one of the fivefold ministries or
spiritual gifts that accompany the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit. From this many Christians believe that prophecy
is the
supernatural ability to receive and convey a message from
God or the divine. The purpose of the message may be to "edify,
exhort and
comfort" the members of the church or an individual
believer. In this context, not all prophecies contain
predictions about the future. The
Apostle Paul also teaches in
Corinthians that prophecy is for the benefit of the whole
Church and not just the individual exercising the gift.