Doctrine

Prophecy

Also Known As Nevuah · nubuwwa · the prophetic officeOriginal Term nevuah (Hebrew); propheteia (Greek); nubuwwa (Arabic)

Revelation, Covenant and Prophecy

A prophet in the Hebrew Bible is a spokesman. The office is one of confrontation far more than of foresight: the prophets denounce the king, the court and the cult, and where they speak of the future they do so to say what will follow from present conduct. Reading the prophetic books as an anthology of predictions is a later habit imposed on material that is mostly doing something else.

Christianity read them predictively, as pointing to Christ, and that reading is constitutive of the New Testament's use of the older scriptures. Judaism does not accept it, and the disagreement over particular texts, the young woman of Isaiah 7, the servant of Isaiah 53, is one of the oldest continuous arguments between the two.

Whether prophecy continues is answered differently in each tradition. Rabbinic Judaism holds that prophecy ceased with the last of the biblical prophets and that authority passed to the sages; the tradition of a lesser residue, a heavenly voice, is precisely what the famous ruling on the oven of Akhnai declines to obey. Christianity has never fully resolved the question: the New Testament lists prophecy among the gifts, the second-century Montanist movement claimed new prophecy and was rejected, and the modern cessationist and continuationist positions divide churches today. Islam is unambiguous, Muhammad is the seal of the prophets, and the finality of prophethood is a settled doctrine whose contested application to a nineteenth-century movement produced constitutional exclusion and criminal law in Pakistan.

Traditions outside the Abrahamic family often have no equivalent office. Oracles, mediums and diviners are widespread, but a figure who bears a moral message from a single God to a nation is specific, and the parallel is frequently asserted where it does not hold.

Facts

Status

Status Within the Tradition

Defined and binding within this tradition 1Islam

Belief in the prophets is an article of iman

Status Within the Tradition

Standard teaching, not formally defined 3Judaism

Prophecy and the primacy of Moses are the sixth and seventh of Maimonides's thirteen principles

Standing as a Comparative Category

A standard analytic category in the study of religion 4

Doctrinal Category

Revelation, Covenant and Prophecy 1

Origins

Held By

Judaism; Christianity; Islam 1

Historical Origin

The Hebrew Bible's prophetic books, from Isaiah to Malachi, and the succession of prophets recognised in the Quran, are the principal scriptural sources for the concept across the Abrahamic traditions. 2

Doctrinal category (class)

Revelation, Covenant and Prophecy 5

Belief

Defining Doctrinal Position

Abrahamic traditions generally hold prophecy to have closed with a final prophet, Muhammad in Islam and, in most Christian and Jewish reckonings, with the biblical canon, though Pentecostal and charismatic movements affirm continuing prophecy. 2

The Claim

That certain individuals receive and transmit communication from the divine, ranging from foretelling future events to forthtelling moral and religious truth to their own time. 4

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Speech That Originates with God

Prophecy, across the Abrahamic traditions, is chiefly the claim that certain human speech originates with God rather than with the speaker, and only secondarily, and often not at all, the prediction of the future. The prophet is a mouthpiece and a messenger; foretelling, where it occurs, is a by-product of speaking for a God who is not bound by time.

The three traditions inherit and reshape the office. In the Hebrew scriptures the nevi'im, from Moses to Malachi, deliver God's word to Israel, mostly as summons, warning and consolation rather than forecast. Christianity keeps the Hebrew prophets, reads them as pointing to Christ, and adds prophetic gifts within the early church. Islam sets prophecy at the centre of its account of history: God has sent a long line of prophets (nabi) and messengers (rasul), Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus among them, each bringing the same essential message of submission to the one God, with Muhammad as the last of them, "the Seal of the Prophets" (Qur'an 33:40).

Has It Ended?

The traditions disagree sharply about whether prophecy is a closed chapter, and the disagreement is doctrinally charged rather than merely historical.

Classical Judaism holds that prophecy in the full biblical sense ceased in the Second Temple period, after the last of the writing prophets; the rabbinic tradition says the Holy Spirit departed from Israel with Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, and that guidance thereafter comes through the interpretation of a completed revelation. Christianity treats the scriptural canon as closed but divides over living prophecy: most churches confine it to the biblical past, while Pentecostal and charismatic movements affirm that the Spirit still grants prophetic utterance. Islam makes the finality of Muhammad's prophethood a defining doctrine, no prophet comes after him, and this belief is culturally and legally sensitive: the principal modern dispute concerns the Ahmadiyya movement, founded in 1889, whose understanding of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad's status is rejected by the Sunni and Shia mainstream as incompatible with the seal of prophethood, with serious consequences for the community in several countries. The atlas records the disagreement without adjudicating the theological claim.

Connections

Associated With

Musaylima

He claimed prophethood in his own right. The whole record of him is in the Muslim sources that call him al-Kadhdhab, the liar, and nothing he composed survives except as quoted by his opponents.

Source The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh CenturyHugh Kennedy

Belongs to Tradition

African Initiated Churches

Source Aladura: A Religious Movement Among the YorubaJ. D. Y. Peel

Anabaptism

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Anglicanism

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Baptist

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Calvinism (Reformed)

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Charismatic Movement

Source The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, 1901-2001Vinson Synan (ed.)

Christianity

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Conservative Judaism

Prophecy is held as real, and this stream reads the prophetic books critically as historical documents without treating that reading as a denial.

Eastern Orthodoxy

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Haredi Judaism

Prophecy is held as real, closed, and preserved in the written record, with no continuing prophetic office.

Ibadism

Nubuwwah, prophethood culminating in Muhammad, is affirmed doctrine in Ibadi Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Islam

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Ismailism

Nubuwwah, prophethood culminating in Muhammad, is affirmed doctrine in Ismaili Shia Islam.

Source The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines, 2nd editionFarhad Daftary

Jehovah's Witnesses

Scriptural prophecy is read as a running commentary on present events, and the interpretation of Daniel and Revelation is central to this body's teaching.

Judaism

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Karaite Judaism

Prophecy is held as given in the written Torah and the prophets, and it is that text rather than its rabbinic interpretation which carries the authority.

Lutheranism

Scriptural prophecy is received as the word of God and read as pointing to Christ, rather than as a continuing office in the church.

Methodism

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including Methodism.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Modern Orthodox Judaism

Prophecy is held as real and closed, and the prophetic books are read as scripture rather than as historical literature.

Oriental Orthodoxy

The creed confesses the Holy Spirit as the one who spoke by the prophets.

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Orthodox Judaism

Prophecy is held to have been real and to have ceased with the later biblical prophets, its record now closed and read through the tradition.

Pentecostalism

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Presbyterianism

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Reform Judaism

The prophetic tradition is the centre of gravity here. Classical Reform described itself as prophetic Judaism and made the prophets' demand for justice the test of everything else.

Roman Catholicism

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Seventh-day Adventism

Old and New Testament prophecy is affirmed as a mode of divine revelation across Nicene Christianity, including this tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Shakers

Source The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of BelieversStephen J. Stein

Shia (Twelver)

Nubuwwah, prophethood culminating in Muhammad, is the second of the five usul al-din in Twelver Shia Islam.

Source An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ismMoojan Momen

Sufism

Nubuwwah, prophethood culminating in Muhammad, is affirmed doctrine in Sufism.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Sunni

Prophecy, culminating in Muhammad, is affirmed as the mode of divine revelation in Sunni Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Zaidiyyah

Nubuwwah, prophethood culminating in Muhammad, is affirmed doctrine in Zaydi Shia Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Held Differently

Ahmadiyya

Nubuwwah, prophethood, is affirmed doctrine in Ahmadiyya, which additionally holds its founder to have received prophetic revelation subordinate to Muhammad, a claim most other Muslims reject.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Latter-day Saints (Mormonism)

The seventh Article of Faith receives the gift of prophecy, and a living prophet leading the church is the ordinary condition rather than an exception.

Source The Pearl of Great PriceJoseph Smith

Rejected Here

Humanistic Judaism

Supernatural revelation is rejected. The prophets are read as human moral teachers whose demands stand on their own merit rather than on their source.

Depicted In

Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem (Rembrandt van Rijn, 1630)

Depicts prophecy's own vindication rather than merely a prophet's likeness: Jeremiah witnessing the literal fulfillment of what he had foretold years earlier.

Source The Rijksmuseum, "Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem," object SK-A-3276Rijksmuseum, catalogue entry