Peter’s Call to Repentance (2:14–40)

Peter’s Call to Repentance (2:14–40)

The speech uses some judicial rhetoric (see especially the indictment, Acts 2:23, 36), though its conclusion (and perhaps overall purpose) is deliberative (2:37–40); such mixed genres were common. Though it includes some clearly early and possibly distinctively Palestinian elements, Peter’s speech reflects some forms of argumentation known to rhetoricians; Luke does not portray Peter as a poor speaker (4:13). When, in the larger context of Luke-Acts, one recalls that Jesus called Peter not as a member of the educated, hellenized urban elite of Jerusalem or even as a traditional scribe but as a Galilean fisherman, one recognizes the remarkable character of his transformation. Jesus had promised that Peter would become a fisher of people (Luke 5:10); Peter’s success glorifies not himself but his mentor (Acts 4:13).

Nevertheless, this speech does not follow Hellenistic rhetorical patterns the way most speeches in later sections of Acts do; Peter probably had relatively little exposure to rhetoric, and none of Luke’s audience would have expected otherwise. Regardless of how much information they had available, Hellenistic historians worked hard to offer speeches at least suitable to the speakers. When reporting speakers of an earlier era, for example, they often archaized their speech; since Peter is a Jewish Scripture expositor, Luke uses a style heavily shaped by the LXX.

Though the speech purports to be a spontaneous composition, it reflects the sort of careful structure that could be marred by even minor changes at points (cf. Cic. Or. Brut. 70.232). The speech’s end echoes its beginning, in good rhetorical fashion, on two points: baptism in Jesus’s name (Acts 2:38) fulfills “calling on the Lord” (2:21), and the promise of the Spirit (2:38) alludes to Joel’s quoted words in 2:17–18 (as well as to Jesus’s words known to Luke’s informed audience, albeit not Peter’s—what “the Father promised” in 1:4–5). The peroratio (closing exhortation) of 2:40 echoes the end of 2:21 (“saved”). Many ancients criticized those who wished to speak without training (cf. 4:13) or preparation, though people also praised those quick-witted in debate and skillful in spontaneous composition. While not fitting all conventions of Greek rhetoric, Luke’s summary depiction of Peter’s spontaneous speech should impress Luke’s audience.

One simple way to structure the speech is to see the addresses in 2:14, 22, 29, and 37 as structural markers. Such markers seem reasonable if 2:29 marks the transition from laying out Scripture evidence to appealing to present circumstances. An analogous shift appears in 13:26 (cf. 13:16).

This speech also displays what appears to be a certainly elaborate chiastic pattern in one section (2:22–36). Granted, chiasmus has often (perhaps usually) been overdone (often choosing nonrepresentative points and radically asymmetrical blocks of material to fit the pattern), but this particular occasion appears to be a legitimate instance of the inverted parallelism technique. A simple chiasmus may simply invert word order in the second of two successive clauses and in many cases may be accidental, but the pattern is much larger and more deliberate here.

Such an extensive inverted parallelism was not as common as with many other forms of parallelism, but it does occur. The label “chiasmus” is first attested in Hermogenes (Invention 4.3), but the practice is much older and is often noted by classicists in classical texts; it is clear at points in Homer as well as in the biblical tradition. Thus it could have been recognized and appreciated by the rhetorically astute in the first century. Chiasmus serves a purpose, as John Harvey notes: “Chiasmus serves to make ideas memorable. In so doing, it may perform any of three functions: (1) emphasis, (2) comparison, or (3) contrast.”

The chiastic pattern some have pointed out here corresponds at so many points (and with far fewer gaps between elements than in many of the proposed chiastic structures in the NT) that even if one found some possible breaks in the pattern, it would not call it into question.

A This one . . .  you crucified and killed (Acts 2:23)

B But God raised him up . . .  (2:24)

C David says + Psalm 16 quote involving right hand (2:25–28)

a. Men, brothers, b. it is necessary to speak c. to you boldly (2:29)

D the patriarch David died . . .  (2:29)

E Being therefore a prophet, and knowing (2:30)

F that God had sworn an oath to him (2:30)

G that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne (2:30)

H he foresaw and spoke (2:31)

I of the resurrection of Christ (2:31)

J that he was not abandoned to Hades (2:31)

Jʹ nor did his flesh see corruption (2:31)

Iʹ This Jesus God raised up (2:32)

Hʹ of that we are all witnesses (2:32)

Gʹ Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God (2:33)

Fʹ having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit (2:33)

Eʹ he has poured out this [phenomenon] which you see and hear (2:33)

Dʹ For David did not ascend into the heavens (2:34)

Cʹ But he himself says + Psalm 110 quote involving right hand (2:34–35)

c. Assuredly therefore b. let it be known to a. all the house of Israel (2:36)

Bʹ that God has made him Lord and Christ (2:36)

Aʹ this Jesus, whom you crucified (2:36)

The weakest points in this proposed parallelism are probably B, E, F, H, and J, but Luke’s explicit connection among the Spirit, prophecy, and witness (1:8; 2:17–18) may also support E and H. If we link A with J (questionable), B with I (stronger), C with H (likely), D with G (likely), and E with F (possible), the weaker points of the chiastic structure are strengthened, yielding an even more complex literary structure of double chiasmus:

Death

Resurrection

Witness

Enthronement

Coming of Spirit

You crucified>

God raised>

David says>

David died (not enthroned)>

Prophet knew>

<Hades Corruption>

<resurrection God raised>

<Saw and spoke We are witnesses>

<His throne Exalted to the right hand>

<(God swore) Promise of the Spirit>

You crucified

<God made him Lord and Christ

<(David said)

<David did not ascend

<Spirit poured out

Not every element works at every point, but the cumulative force of much of the structure seems compelling. In most proposed chiasmi, observed “patterns” simply involve repetition of themes without particular concern for sequencing, but in this case, for the programmatic speech of Acts, a strong argument can be made for deliberate, large-scale patterning. Ancient readers would not expect someone to compose such an extended structure extemporaneously, but some might perhaps attribute it to inspiration, which might perhaps be implied here (See comment on ).

Careful literary design does not exclude historical tradition in the speech. The following points offered by James D. G. Dunn in support of authenticity might indicate only that Luke knows basic tradition from early Christianity, but they would also prove consonant with the idea that the sermon reflects someone’s genuine reminiscences of the heart of Peter’s Pentecost speech:

Some scholars object that Peter’s use of a quotation from Joel cannot be primitive, since this would imply that the church already knew its place in the events of the end time. This objection, however, misses the frequently cited point that the early Christians, believing that the Messiah had come, were more apt to recognize that they were in the end time (cf. 1:6) than they were to recognize the likelihood of a delay in its consummation.

Authenticity of essential substance does not mean that a speech is verbatim or that a historian would feel inhibited in creatively filling in where needed (see introduction, ); it certainly does not imply that the speech was preserved and transmitted to Luke in Aramaic, as some have suggested. It is unlikely that Peter originally preached the sermon in Aramaic, in any case. Granted, some of Peter’s hearers in 2:9–11 (especially the Mesopotamians in 2:9) spoke various dialects of Aramaic, but most of his hearers (especially from Asia, Egypt, and Rome) would find Aramaic unintelligible; the LXX quotes also support a sermon in Greek. Granted, even if Luke’s source did not use the LXX, he could have reframed the text in that more familiar form. But Peter on a regular basis probably could speak passable Greek (See comment on Acts 21:37, 40), if not yet at this point the carefully constructed rhetoric of Acts 2, and so his use of arguments that depend on Greek cannot be used against basic authenticity. Some themes recur in Peter’s speeches in Acts, but these speeches have different emphases suiting their different settings.

Peter, backed up by the other apostles, deflects the hecklers’ charge before developing his biblical explanation of the event. This is “a witty aside to the audience” and hence would presumably employ a vocal inflection implying irony.

Given the ancient characterization of inspired speech (or being “full of a deity”) as rapid, Luke’s audience might imagine, and the lector might dramatize, a rapid delivery style. If following the usual rhetorical custom, the ancient public reader of Acts would imitate Peter’s presumed gesture, “the common gesture of address,” as Peter was ready to speak.

Although Peter gave the speech, the “eleven” (cf. 1:26) stood with him. Possibly they already act, in proleptic fashion, as the proper judges of Israel’s twelve tribes, foreshadowing the fulfillment of Jesus’s prediction in Luke 22:29. Certainly, their stand together fits the model of joint ministry in Luke-Acts, where only Jesus ministers without peer (cf., e.g., Luke 10:1; Acts 6:3; 13:2; 14:23; 15:6, 22–23, 40; 20:17, 28–30). Peter refers to the group as a whole when he claims that they are “all” witnesses (Acts 2:32).

That they “took their stand” (also 5:20; 17:22; 25:18; 27:21) presents them in the regular posture for a Hellenistic orator or other public speakers. One who was seated would rise to speak, a practice helpful both visually and acoustically. In this period rules for when to stand or sit when expounding Torah or reciting prayers were not yet standardized (t. Ber. 1:3; Sipre Deut. 34.5.3).

That Peter “raised his voice” (again in Acts 4:10) is a frequent idiom in the LXX but also appears in Greek from the classical era forward. One would expect Peter to project his voice loudly to address more than three thousand people; although we have grown dependent on sound systems today, there is no reason to doubt such a scenario. Charles Spurgeon (in the Tabernacle, in the late nineteenth century) and Aimee Semple McPherson (at Angelus Temple, in the early twentieth) preached to many thousands in their acoustically designed megachurches without voice amplification. Since these sites were designed for acoustics, an outdoor analogy might work better for Peter’s preaching here (perhaps from the steps to the Court of Women, in the outer court). Benjamin Franklin, skeptical of reports about George Whitefield’s audiences, experimented and discovered that as many as thirty thousand people could hear him at a time.

Had the tongues speaking (2:4) and probably ecstatic behavior (2:13) not attracted attention, Peter’s hearing might have been smaller; so many noises competed for attention at festivals that it was difficult for any one speaker to command attention. That Peter “uttered” (ἀίεφθέγξατο) his words may suggest inspiration (see 2:4), though the term is applicable for any sort of solemn pronouncement (See comment on ). Teachers often lectured in temples, and there is no reason to believe that the Jerusalem temple was an exception. At least in the Hellenistic world, public speakers often gave speeches at festivals, and the more effective of them may have drawn significant crowds.

Both the objection and Peter’s response reflect the familiar challenge-and-riposte scenario of ancient public speech. Often speakers made points, for the entertainment of the audience, at their adversary’s expense. Peter instead deflects the mockery with a potentially humorous response that does not shame the hecklers. This reflects the rhetorical desire to win over parts of the audience one may need, not any deficiency in the boldness expected of an orator; Peter has a more serious target in mind for explicit denunciation after his speech has turned to a more serious note (2:23). The transition to 2:16 sounds abrupt, but we should keep in mind that this is a speech summary, not a complete speech (cf. 2:40).

Speakers in Acts address crowds appropriately as “men of Galilee” (1:11), “men of Judea” (2:14) or “of Israel” (2:22; 3:12; 5:35; 13:16; 21:28), “men of Athens” (17:22), and “men of Ephesus” (19:35); although Luke has varied the expression less than he could have, it was a common form of address. Peter’s address to “Judean men” and “residents of Jerusalem” ought not to be pressed as if Peter welcomes all Jerusalemites to listen but only adult males from the rest of Judea. Thus classical Athenian orators regularly addressed their audiences as ὦ ἄνδρες or (very often) ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, or occasionally other combinations with ἄνδρες, especially ἄνδρες δικασταί (men who are judges or jurors), as in Aeschines, Isaeus, Lysias, Demosthenes, and military speakers in Xenophon. In classical Athens, an honorable man in public addressed only “men,” who constituted citizen assemblies and could vote in them; when women and aliens were present, a speaker might even be obliged to omit a salutation. But Jerusalem is not classical Athens, and it is reasonable that an honorable man in other settings (e.g., theaters, amphitheaters, and synagogues) might retain the convention of explicitly addressing only adult males even though others might be welcome to listen and profit.

The custom of explicitly addressing “men” hardly died out in classical Athens; one addressing assemblies elsewhere employed the same language. In the late first century, Dio Chrysostom still addresses his audiences as “men of” various locations: “men of Rhodes” (ἄνδρες Ῥόδιοι, 31.8); “men of Tarsus” (34.37); Apameans as simply “men” (ὦ ἄνδρες, 35.1); “men of Nicomedia” (38.1, 5, 21, 30); “men, citizens” for Prusans, his fellow citizens (40.1; 44.1; 45.1; 50.1; simply “O men” in 46.1, 5). We read addresses to “men of Athens” (Lucian Dem. 11) and to jurors as “men of the jury” (ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί; Lucian Hall 32); when all Ephesus attends Apollonius’s lecture, he addresses his hearers as ὦ ἄνδρες (Philost. Vit. Apoll. 8.26).

In using ἄνδρες rather than the normally more gender-neutral ἄνθρωίοι, Luke simply employs the language considered appropriate in his era’s rhetorical culture. The vocative plural for ἄνθρωίος appears in biblical Greek, the Apostolic Fathers, and Josephus only at Prov 8:4. By contrast, the vocative plural for ἀνήρ appears thirty-two times in the NT (albeit twenty-nine of them in Acts), seven times in 1 Esdras (1 Esd 3:18, 24; 4:2, 12, 14, 32, 34), as many as three times elsewhere in the LXX (Jer 4:4; 19:3; 4 Macc 8:19), four times in 1 Clement (1 Clem 16.17; 37.1; 43.4; 62.1), and fourteen times in Josephus. This is the usage we would have to expect unless Luke had a deliberate program of gender inclusivity unexpected for his era (in contrast to our own) and one that took precedence over rhetorical acceptability for his apologetic target audience.

The use of the masculine might presuppose an androcentric society, but it did not necessarily exclude female hearers from being present (see clearly, e.g., Acts 25:23–24); a later philosopher regularly speaks of the wise ἀνήρ (e.g., Porph. Marc. 32.497), even when writing to exhort his wife. When Zeus addresses the deities of heaven as ὦ ἄνδρες θεοί (Lucian Z. Rants 15), both genders are apparently present (Aphrodite is there, Z. Rants 10). Following a useful rhetorical strategy, Peter shifts from the more formal “men” in Acts 2:14, 22 to build more rapport with “men and brothers” in 2:29; the audience’s response of “men and brothers” in 2:37 is a sign of his effectiveness. Rhetorical histories often created different, appropriate introductions for different speakers; Luke lacked either desire or ability to do so for his précis summaries.

Rhetoricians sometimes advised calling attention to important points in advance. Peter’s invitation for his audience to “hear” him (also 2:22; 4:10; 7:2; 13:16, 40; 15:13; 22:1; 26:3) has a long history of rhetorical precedent, both Jewish and Gentile. “Let it be known” (2:14) reflects daring speech, typically confronting Israel (4:10; 13:38; 28:28); it may seem daring by implying the speakers’ ignorance (generally not complimentary; see comment on Acts 17:23). (Of course, Peter had no rhetorical training at all [cf. 4:13], but rhetorical texts at least provide us an objective control for understanding speech conventions of the era.)

Speakers often took the subject of their exordium from the nature of the case before them and used it to attract hearers’ attention, inform them, and secure their favor. Before Peter can explain what the disciples’ speaking in tongues means (2:16–21) and its consequences for the audience (2:22–40), he must briefly answer (hence dispense with) the hecklers’ objection (2:15). Peter would have many hearers at this time of day. Undoubtedly, they were on the Temple Mount (see discussion on Acts 2:1), and the temple courts would have been “quite busy” at about 9:00 a.m., when Peter was speaking. Given the temple’s morning offering and prayers, the day was already well under way. If the synagogue’s three hours of prayer known to us in later sources were observed in this period, the disciples and other Jews may have been praying at this hour (2:15), as at the sixth (10:9) and ninth (3:1) hours when prayer was held, although this cannot be certain (see comment on Acts 3:1).

Days and nights were rounded to quarters, and hence the most common hour designations in Luke-Acts are the third hour (Acts 23:23), the sixth hour (Luke 23:44; Acts 10:9), and the ninth hour (Luke 23:44; Acts 3:1; 10:3, 30).

Different peoples calculated hours from different chronological points: Babylonians between sunrises; Athenians between sunsets; the Roman and Egyptian official day, from midnight to midnight; but most ordinary people from sunrise to sunset, though such day lengths changed with the seasons. The days here would be calculated from sunrise; this was common practice and also the standard Judean practice. Although most people would have simply estimated time based on the position of the sun in the sky, sundials could be very precise.

As suggested in Acts 2:15, however, the favored time for drunkenness was evening banquets. (Peter here assumes this obvious premise, which would complete his argument that they are not drunk.) Scholars estimate mealtimes for some ancient Mediterranean cultures. Normally the major Roman meal (the cena) started around the ninth hour, which began (depending on the length of the day) between 2:31 and 3:46 p.m. by modern reckoning in summer or between 1:20 and 2:13 p.m. in winter and lasted for at least two and a half hours; it could last after dark and, for Greeks, often lasted “well after dark.” The wealthy might begin normal meals at the tenth hour and more formal banquets at the ninth (Mart. Epig. 4.8); those maligned as particularly decadent might start even at the seventh (Hor. Sat. 2.8).

Although such hours supposedly allowed banqueters to finish before dark, evening banquets sometimes lasted into the night (Rom 13:12–13; 1 Thess 5:7). Thus we read in many texts of people partying into the night, walking home drunk in the dark, and so forth. Admittedly, it was exceptional for a person to leave a night banquet so late that he would come across another who had started the day early (Dio Cass. 69.18). One who partied till midnight and (having drunk too much) could not get up the next morning was subject to ridicule (Lucian Hermot. 11). All-night parties appear in connection with weddings (Xen. Eph. Anthia 1.8) and festivals (5.1, 7; Libanius Descr. 5.9). On other occasions, however, all-night revels could be subject to ridicule or criticism.

Thus lazy banqueters (and even a few people considered efficient in their daily business) might spend most of their night in banquets, sleeping over the hangover until noon. Staying up as late as one wished and sleeping in as long as one wished were marks of excessive leisure, though tolerable for rulers (m. Ber. 1:2), the retired (Pliny Y. Ep. 3.1.4; 7.3.2), and those on vacation (9.36.1).

If some condemned late-night partying, it was in any case thought better (and far more common) than partying during the day (2 Pet 2:13). The few people who were said to start drinking in the morning and continue through the day were considered exceptional and viewed quite negatively. Lucian satirizes the wine deity Dionysus as drunk even early in the day (Lucian Parl. G. 4). That the Germans reveled in the day as well as the night without shame was considered unusual enough to be noteworthy (Tac. Germ. 22). Some Jewish sages contended that morning sleep (as well as noon wine) would exclude a person from the coming world (m. ʾab. 3:10). Those who banqueted all day were viewed as lazy even if they slept at night (Dio Chrys. Or. 8.13).

Before modern lighting, sleep schedules often followed sunlight. Many felt that night was properly for sleeping and that a disciplined person should rise early; sleeping at night and being awake during the day were considered universal customs. But not all nocturnal activity was condemned. Staying up after dark to write letters or speeches by lamplight was not, of course, attributed to laziness. Some Gentile intellectuals and Jewish teachers studied at night, especially those who had to work during the day. A biographer who mentions that Pythagoras was awake at night hastily explains that this was due to his attention to astronomy, not partying. Sometimes one reads of individuals who simply experienced difficulty sleeping at night. Ancient literature attests a wide variety of causes for sleeplessness then, as today.

Peter’s argument will be that the disciples’ inspired praise in other languages (Acts 2:4) represents the promised eschatological prophetic gift (2:17–18); this being the case, the eschatological time has arrived (2:17), the time of salvation in which this gift is available to all who call on the Lord’s name (2:21, 39). The longest component in Peter’s attempt to persuade will be a midrashic argument contending that the “Lord’s” name on which they must call (in baptism) is Jesus (2:24–36, esp. 2:38).

In 2:16, Peter begins to interpret the phenomenon of speaking in tongues for his audience. Peter comments on “this” (τοῦτο, 2:16), referring back to the crowd’s question about “this” (2:12), which presumably referred in turn to “this” (ταύτης) sound (2:6, referring to the disciples’ speaking in other languages in 2:4): “this” sound of other languages fulfills Joel’s promise of Spirit-inspired speech in the eschatological time (Acts 2:17–18). Like the Paul of the epistles, Luke and the apostles he cites read their own time in light of Scripture, as a time of fulfillment.

Most scholars recognize the quotation from Joel (Acts 2:17–21) as programmatic for Acts in the same way that Isaiah’s quotation about Spirit and mission was for the Gospel (Luke 4:18–19). Functioning programmatically, this passage conditions how we should read most later “references to the Spirit in Acts.” Choice of a new explicit programmatic passage for his second volume does not nullify the use of Isa 61 in his first volume, as if Isaiah’s eschatological justice emphasis were meant to be forgotten. The outpouring of the Spirit actually has social implications and effects (Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–35), but this is not Luke’s central focus in this volume (cf. 6:2–4). Moreover, in view of Luke 24:45–49, Isaiah remains implicitly in view in Acts 1:8, which summarizes the theme and plot of Acts. What all these “programmatic” texts have in common is God’s Spirit empowering God’s agents for their mission.

Greeks as well as Jews valued quotations from ancient authorities (albeit from different authorities); Aristotle opined that ancient witnesses (the poets) were better than recent ones because they were universally known and not susceptible to corruption (Arist. Rhet. 1.15.13, 17, 1375b). In the broader urban world, hearers expected orators to demonstrate mnemonic proficiency, and introducing appropriate literary allusions was a sign of intellectual respectability.

Quoting the words of prophets, however, was more authoritative than simply citing a text from the amorphous Greek literary “canon”; it was God speaking. Thus Peter can say, “God says” (λέγει ὁ θεός), a Septuagintal expression (2 Sam 23:3; Isa 40:1; 41:14; 44:6) equivalent to the more pervasive “The Lord says.”

Commentators most frequently cite parallels to the kind of exegesis found here in the Qumran scrolls, where the pesher application of texts to the present time is most obvious. The writers of the Qumran scrolls did not necessarily deny a historical meaning relevant to an earlier generation (e.g., 1QpHab II, 3–4) but insisted that it also held a special meaning relevant to the final generation, that is, their own time (e.g., 2.5–6).

As Fitzmyer notes, early Christians shared with Qumran “the common conviction that they are living in the ‘end of days’ (1QpHab 2:5; 9:6; 1QSa 1:1; 4QpIs^a A:8; 4QFlor 1:2, 12, 15, 19; CD 4:4, 6:11; etc.; cf. Acts 2:17; . . . ). This conviction enables both groups to refer sayings of the Old Testament prophets and writings to events or tenets in their own history or beliefs.” Longenecker finds examples of pesher interpretation in Peter’s speeches in Acts (and in 1 Peter), in contrast to Paul’s speeches and letters. But he believes that whereas Qumran’s eschatology was mainly proleptic and anticipated, early Christians believed that the messianic era had arrived because Jesus was in fact the Messiah. Pesher thus supplies some interpreters with one background for christocentric interpretation. The approach is much more common in Luke’s Petrine sermons than in, for example, Paul; not distinctively Lukan, it might reflect Luke’s knowledge of early apostolic preaching.

“Pesher” sorts of interpretation might also appear in some other sects considered peripheral to common Judaism. But pesher methods also bear resemblance to interpretive techniques of the later rabbis, probably reflecting some more widespread principles. Certainly, the rabbis were able to apply many prophetic promises specifically to the messianic era (cf. also Acts 3:18, 24). Abraham saw not only Egyptian bondage in Gen 15:13 but also the four kingdoms (Gen. Rab. 44:17). Likewise, “Esau” in the biblical text could become Rome (Gen. Rab. 63:9). For that matter, the point of all midrash was “to make yesterday’s text (which is the word of God for all time) meaningful and nourishing for today.” Even Josephus is ready to loosely apply biblical prophecies of a coming king, applying them to Vespasian (War 6.312–13).

We should not think that Luke’s slight changes to the text of Joel reflect ignorance of the text’s correct wording, either on his own part or attributed by him to Peter. Jewish teachers of Torah peppered their expositions with numerous biblical allusions, and most changes in quotations appear to have been deliberate. If we object that Luke portrays Peter earlier as an unlearned fisherman, we may betray class prejudices: whereas fishermen were not among the urban elite, they were better off economically than rural peasants (the majority of Galilee) and hence probably had some of the boyhood schooling in Torah that Jewish people were famous for worldwide. Further, Luke presents Jesus’s education as more than sufficient (Luke 4:16–17); Joel may well be among the texts in the Prophets that Luke implies that Jesus taught his disciples (24:44–45). It is doubtful that Luke himself (in contrast to Paul) had advanced formal training in Scripture; some particularly Judean elements may suggest that Luke depends on an earlier Christian source (though possibly an oral one).

Peter adds to Joel’s text at various points to bring out the implications, especially that this is the eschatological gift of prophecy and hence that the eschatological time of fulfillment of the promises has come (cf., similarly, Jesus’s explanation about Isa 61:1–2 in Luke 4:21). Jewish interpreters reworded textual allusions where it suited them or where they regarded their interpretation as a reasonable inference. Qumran texts sometimes altered the biblical text to adapt it to their purpose (e.g., 1QpHab XII, 1–10; V, 8–12). Sometimes Jewish interpreters read the letters differently so as to give an eschatological application (Sipre Deut. 357.5.11). Greeks and Romans also felt free to adapt quotations, whether to update archaic language, improve language, or make the text more relevant. Accidents of memory could of course produce inexact quotations, but often they were deliberate.

On page 876 is a comparison of Joel 3:1–5 LXX (2:28–32 ET) and Acts 2:17–21, 39, with the changes emphasized.

Some of these changes are more critical and rhetorically strategic than others. The most significant seem to include: (1) emphasis on the gift’s eschatological character (though already in Joel), (2) emphasis on the prophetic nature of the gift (though already in Joel), (3) an ethnically universalized application (not in Joel) in Luke’s later context (“far off” in Acts 2:39, and the larger context of Acts), and (4) an emphasis on the present fulfillment (not in Joel) by linking the earthly “signs” with 2:22. Luke probably presupposes that his ideal audience will catch at least some of these changes (though, for all their biblical literacy, most of any writer’s audience are not perfectly “ideal”; the clear verbal connection in 2:22 might catch more attention than Luke’s redaction of Joel).

Joel 3:1–5

LXX

Acts 2:17–21, 39

3:1: and it will be that after these things I will also pour forth from my Spirit on all flesh

*

†

and your sons and your daughters will prophesy

and your sons and your daughters will prophesy

and your elders will dream dreams and your young men will see visions

‡

3:2: And in those days I will pour forth from my Spirit on the male and female slaves

§

3:3: And I will grant wonders in the heaven and on the earth: blood and fire and smoky vapor

#

3:4: the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and obvious day of the Lord comes!

2:20: the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and obvious day of the Lord comes!

3:5: and it will be that everyone who calls on the Lord’s name will be saved

**

because in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem will be survivors (those saved), just as the Lord said

††

εὐαγγεΛιΖόμενοι

πΡοσκέκΛηται

πΡοσκαΛέσηται

^*Luke reinforces the eschatological nature of the gift already indicated by Joel’s context.

^†Luke or his source adds, “says God,” to clarify the speaker but perhaps also so that Luke can “specify the promise as that of the Father (cf. Luke 24.29; Acts 1.4)” (Turner, Power, 270).

^‡Luke does emphasize visions more than dreams; he may also emphasize or appeal to honorable youth (cf. Acts 5:6, 10; 7:58; 20:9; 23:17–18, 22), but this cannot be certainly ascertained from the slight change.

^§Luke emphasizes that the recipients of God’s Spirit (Acts 2:38–39) will be his servants, like the prophets; see below.

||Luke hereby underlines the emphasis on prophecy already in Joel; commentators naturally recognize frequently Luke’s redaction here (Menzies, Development, 221, 224).

^#The addition of “signs” allows for Luke’s application to Jesus’s ministry in Acts 2:22. Luke’s hermeneutic here resembles that which earlier in his work allows salvation both from physical enemies (Luke 1:71) and by forgiveness (1:77).

^**Peter stops here to explain the name on which they are to call (Acts 2:34–38).

^††Although Peter had reason to stop with calling on the Lord’s name (above), his omission of the specifically Israel-centered part of the quotation seems significant in view of the fact that he could have appropriately picked it up, with what follows it in Joel, in Acts 2:39. At the same time, his preaching does produce a remnant in Jerusalem, presumably (though not explicit here) on the Temple Mount.

Luke may well also hope that some of his ideal audience will recall the term in the Septuagintal context that he elsewhere uses for preaching the good news (εὐαγγελιζόμενοι, Joel 3:5 LXX [at 2:32 ET]; a form of the verb appears twenty-five times in Luke-Acts), which would apply to Peter’s preaching to the crowds. Luke omits that wording, however, whether because he or his tradition knows that it is not in the Hebrew or because he could midrashically assume it. (Then again, it is not impossible that Luke overlooked the connection, surprising as this would be; he could easily have inserted it into Acts 2:39, and he also fails to use this verb anywhere between Luke 20:1 and Acts 5:42.)

Some later rabbis characteristically (and possibly also polemically) applied this passage in Joel to knowledge of Torah by connecting it midrashically with Ezek 36:26. More important, they also recognized that this passage applied to the messianic era or the age to come; it could be fulfilled only when the Messiah, resurrection, and other events of the end time arrived. The relatively scant attention paid to the passage in the earliest rabbinic sources could represent a polemical response to early Christian claims that Christians possessed the Spirit, though this is not clear.

Litwak argues that Joel’s passage provides continuity between Israel’s story and Luke’s story in Acts, defining the prophetic church as the prophetic community of God’s people. As Hays shows for Paul, early Christian readings are sometimes ecclesiocentric (and here also pneumatological), not exclusively christocentric (although the Spirit’s outpouring here has a decisive significance not only for the community’s identity but regarding that of Jesus, Acts 2:32–36). Eschatology here provides a line of continuity with promises to Israel; this continuity has apologetic value, both in relation to Jewish detractors and probably Roman courts, in identifying Christ’s followers as heirs of the biblical covenant.

One of these additions is at the beginning of Peter’s quotation of Joel, to underline the eschatological character of the era in which he is now speaking (in view of the coming of the Messiah and the Spirit). Peter substitutes “In the last days” for Joel’s “afterward,” simply bringing out the implications of the context that he does not go on to cite (cf. Joel 4:1 LXX [3:1 ET]). This offers a sort of inclusio with the conclusion of 2:18, “in those days” (which does appear in Joel). “In the last days” (and related expressions such as “last times”) was a biblical phrase for the period of Israel’s restoration, which Jewish hopes now fixed in the eschatological time (Isa 2:2; Hos 3:5; Mic 4:1; Dan 2:28). This title for the eschatological period of restoration also applied to a period of great suffering just before that restoration (Jer 23:20; 30:24; Ezek 38:16; Dan 10:14); it would be a period of apostasy for the insincere (e.g., ἐν ἐσχάτοις καιροῖς, Test. Iss. 6:1). Christian texts likewise mention an eschatological period of suffering and apostasy (1 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 3:1; 2 Pet 3:3; cf. Mark 13:9–13; Rom 8:22; 1 John 2:18). As a time of final suffering, the last days prefigured the final “day of the Lord”; as a time of Israel’s restoration, they were identical with it or followed it. Thus the phrase roughly means “the eschatological time.”

Early Christians consistently viewed this eschatological time as their own (Acts 2:17; 1 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 3:1; Heb 1:2; Jas 5:3; 1 Pet 1:20; 2 Pet 3:3; Ign. Eph. 11.1), as in the Qumran scrolls (e.g., 4Q162 I–II, esp. II, 1–10; 4Q163 23 II, 10–11). The Qumran scrolls used their pesher interpretation (psalms, etc.) to apply much of Scripture to the special situation of the last days, a special era of fulfillment (e.g., 4Q162 I–II; 4Q176 12 + 13 I, 7–9; 4QpNah 3–4 IV, 3; see also 1 En. 108:1); Peter does the same, believing the time of fulfillment has come (Acts 3:18–26). God would expose the wickedness of Israel’s compromising leaders in the end time (4QpNah 3–4 III, 3).

Thus commentators often note that, from Luke’s perspective, the church has entered the eschatological era. Some doubt that we should make much of Luke’s alteration, given the signs of the new era already in the birth narratives. But the Davidic kingdom announced at the beginning of the Gospel (Luke 1:32, 69) enters a new phase with Jesus’s exaltation (Acts 2:33–36), and the issue of eschatology suffuses the context (1:6–7).

Greeks and Romans did not share Jewish ideals about an ultimate end time, but some had looked for a restoration of a golden age (especially popular a century earlier as Romans celebrated Augustus’s era, e.g., Virg. Ecl. 4.4–25; Calpurnius Siculus 42–45). Many Roman texts refer to a primeval golden age; in the golden age of Cronus, there was no poverty, the earth brought forth without effort, and rivers flowed with wine, milk, or honey. Greeks as early as Hesiod (W.D. 109–26, esp. 110–20) spoke of a golden race, and the idea of a golden age appears often in both Greek and Roman literature.

After the Augustan era, however, many had grown disillusioned with the idea that the empire, full of corruption, had ushered in such an era. Many implied a present decline from the glorious Augustan age, although some spoke of a few individuals recovering that primitive life in the present (cf. comment on Acts 2:44–45). Even without reference to a primeval age or future hope, many Greeks and Romans recognized the need of their own times, considering them degenerate by comparison with those of their heroic ancestors. (Of course, as in many other periods in history, elders sometimes also complained that the morals and discipline of the younger generation had declined from their own day.)

Jewish people also hoped for a restored Eden, paralleling the end time with the primeval beginning. Because Acts 2:44–45 may evoke the image of utopian communities, Luke’s “last days” (recalling biblical prophecies about the future restoration and its ideal bliss) might recall, for some, utopian hopes. Luke’s primary horizon, however, is Scripture, which often employs the phrase; his usage here indicates a partly (cf. 1:6–8) realized eschatology through the present activity of the eschatological Spirit. For Luke, both the expected end-time evils and the future utopia beyond it can partly coexist because the future hope is partly realized in the Spirit-empowered church, in anticipation of the kingdom’s consummation.

Peter’s “last days” fits the expectation that the disciples had entered an interim era between the first and the second comings of the Messiah (see comment on ), called to testify to the nations by the eschatological gift of the Spirit (see comment on ). Although it is not clear that later first-century Christians struggled over the parousia’s “delay” nearly so much as scholars have suspected (see comment on Acts 1:6–8), the earliest disciples probably did not expect an interval sufficiently long enough to anticipate two distinct comings. Luke’s portrayal here is realistic: even though Luke writes for a later generation, his Peter still appears to anticipate (or at least hope for) a quick repentance and restoration of Israel (3:19–21).

If the Messiah had come, his followers were necessarily in the last days in some sense. Many early Christians struggled with overrealized eschatology, undoubtedly partly due to future linear eschatology’s incompatibility with Greek thought (e.g., 1 Cor 15:12; 2 Thess 2:2; 2 Tim 2:18), but the very affirmation that the Christ had come constituted the basis for a realized eschatology alongside a future one. This “already/not yet” tension is a major feature of Paul’s theology; many scholars also see it in Jesus’s teaching about the kingdom (see further comment on Acts 1:3, 6–8).

The Spirit’s presence marks out the eschatological people of God (or remnant of God’s people), God’s “slaves” (Acts 2:18). The Spirit identifying God’s people appears widely in early Christianity (e.g., Rom 8:9, 14–17; Gal 3:2–5, 14; 4:29; Eph 4:30; 1 John 3:24; 4:13; 5:7).

The Spirit as an eschatological gift attested clearly that the eschatological time had dawned, and functioned as a primary apologetic tool for the early Christians (who seem to have explained the interval between comings partly by citing Ps 110:1 and the model of a salvific interval between redemption and inheritance in the exodus, e.g., Rom 8:23; Eph 1:14). If its unique possession of the Torah or of prophetic endowment identified Israel as the elect in some other early Jewish circles, the Jesus movement’s distinctive possession of the prophetic Spirit could be used to identify Christians as the elect remnant.

Peter explained that this marvelous power to speak in other tongues . . .  was the outward sign of the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy that God would pour out his Holy Spirit on all his people. In Joel this promise was associated with the Day of the Lord; Peter asserts that this event has now occurred in history. It results from the fact that God had exalted the crucified Jesus, had enthroned him at his right hand, thus inaugurating his messianic reign; and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon his people was nothing less than the blessing of the messianic age.

The apologetic would be difficult to refute for those who considered visions, prophecies, or other prophetic activities to be signs that a person had received the Holy Spirit. (The natural polemical response would be to qualify the value of such signs: sometimes they were merely tests of faith [Deut 13:3] or were performed through sorcery.) Such an apologetic would have made no sense had Luke believed that the eschatological era of the Spirit had ceased (See comment on ). Instead of focusing on explaining the parousia’s delay, Luke viewed his own era as continuing in the last days, presumably seeking to fulfill the mission of Acts 1:8 before Christ’s return (see comment on Acts 1:6–8). No one could read Luke’s “last days” as a temporary event in Jerusalem that had given way to a cessation of signs and revelations in Luke’s own day, unless they viewed the “last days” as a failed experiment.

Luke clearly believes that prophetic empowerment should characterize the entire church. His focus is on this empowerment to speak for God in terms of apostolic, cross-cultural evangelism (1:8), but clearly the empowerment extends beyond the apostles (2:38–39). Joel’s prophecy applies not just to the apostles as the primary witnesses (1:8; cf. 1 Pet 1:12; Heb 2:4) but to all who became Jesus’s followers (Acts 2:38–39). That Christians as a whole constituted a prophetic community is implied by some other early Christian writers (e.g., Rev 19:10; probably also 11:18).

Both Luke (cf. Acts 11:27; 15:32; 21:9–10) and Paul (1 Cor 12:28–29; 14:29, 32; Eph 4:11) reserve the title of prophet for specific individuals (though in Paul it applies to any who prophesy, 1 Cor 14:29–32). For Paul, perhaps all Christians can prophesy in principle (1 Cor 14:24, 31), though in practice only some are prophets (12:29), and it is a good gift for others (or the community) to seek (14:1, 5, 39; cf. 12:31). Luke, whose narrative emphasizes disciples’ role in the world more than in the church, focuses on disciples’ prophetic witness for Christ, proclaiming the prophetic “word of the Lord” (e.g., Acts 4:31; 6:7; 8:25; 12:24; 13:49; 15:35, 36; 19:10, 20). Perhaps depending on Israel’s role as witnesses in Isaiah (Isa 43:10, 12; 44:8) or in Joel, some streams of early Jewish thought may have also envisioned all God’s people as prophets in the end time.

Although Peter would not so understand it at this point in the story, Luke undoubtedly interprets “all flesh” as referring not simply to the men and women, young and old, and servants stated in Joel 2:28–29 but to people from all nations. Luke may expect his informed audience to recall another programmatic quote that defined John’s mission: through his mission, “all flesh” would see God’s salvation (Luke 3:6; Isa 40:5); because Luke quotes beyond his source (Mark 1:3 in Luke 3:4, quoting Isa 40:3), he surely knows the Isaian context (on which see comment on ). This mission quotation is Luke’s only other use of “all flesh” (or, for that matter, any other use of σάρξ in Luke-Acts except in discussing Jesus’s resurrection, Luke 24:39; Acts 2:26, 31). Moreover, Luke will complete his allusion to Joel in Acts 2:39, where he augments it with an allusion to Isa 57:19, confirming (given its function in Luke’s narrative) that Luke understands the prophecy as applicable to Gentiles. As Luke’s narrative continues, the Spirit clearly is poured out on Gentiles (10:45). The Spirit on the Gentiles is a very different eschatological vision than the best of Gentiles being subjugated to slavery.

Luke surely means his programmatic use of Joel as theologically prescriptive and not merely historically descriptive; that is, he believes that the church of his day continues, or should continue, to experience the outpouring of the Spirit. Luke must view the promise as valid for all believers in his day, given his appeal to a text referring to “all flesh” (Acts 2:17) and his emphasis that the gift was for their descendants, even those far away (2:39).

The idea that such empowerment or its prophetic expressions had ceased in his day, or was scheduled to cease before the Lord’s return, is one that could not have occurred to Luke. For Luke, such activity characterizes the eschatological era in which the church lives; Luke would hardly emphasize that this era was inaugurated on Pentecost and then expect us to infer, without clear evidence, that the era would be phased out before its consummation at Christ’s return. God would hardly pour out his Spirit, then pour it back again! Indeed, such a conclusion would have played into the hands of those who questioned whether the eschatological Messiah had even come, and would undermine Luke’s entire apologetic and theology of fulfillment.

Further, Luke presents the interim messianic era of Christ’s reign at the Father’s right hand (2:34–35) as in continuity with God’s activity in Scripture. If this eschatological era continued “biblical” experience, then it is relevant that despite ebbs and flows, prophetism was always active in biblical history (3:18, 21, 24); those who received the message would, indeed, be “children of the prophets” as well as of Abraham (cf. 3:25). For that matter, Christian prophecy did continue in later centuries, and later opponents of Christianity continued to attack it.

Joel’s prophecy declared the eradication of any gender barrier in the Spirit of prophecy. Although some women prophesied in the OT (Exod 15:20; Judg 4:4; 2 Kgs 22:14; Isa 8:3), Luke more explicitly balances women and men in this gift (Luke 2:25–27, 36; Acts 21:9). In this period, respectable women did not typically speak publicly to groups including men (see introduction, , ). People would have to make exceptions for inspired speech, however, and Luke certainly does emphasize women’s participation in inspired speech here.

Prophetesses appear in Hellenistic literature, although some are tragic victims of their escape from Apollo. Apollo gifted Cassandra prophetically but cursed her with no one believing her prophecies. The Sibyl likewise received immortality without perpetual youth; Romans did heed books of Sibylline oracles, however. That some of the prophecies were forged was known. (There is also a strong Jewish Sibylline tradition, naturally purified of polytheism.) Dio Chrysostom claims to have met a woman who prophesied accurately by the mother of the gods yet without ecstatic raving. In late antiquity a source claims a young woman astonishingly accurate in her revelations. Some oracular centers, such as Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, employed a mantic priestess. Germans were said to depend on women for prophecies.

Much more relevant, however (especially in view of the explicit citation of Scripture here), are biblical traditions about prophetesses. Far fewer in number than male prophets in ancient Israel (as one would expect in most patriarchal societies), they nevertheless appear, sometimes prominently: Miriam (Exod 15:20), Deborah (Judg 4:4), Huldah (2 Kgs 22:14; 2 Chr 34:22), and Isaiah’s wife (Isa 8:3). Most Jewish sources continued to recognize Deborah as a prophetess. Although the biblical picture of Huldah is wholly favorable, attitudes toward her in Jewish literature range from positive to negative. Some rabbinic sources amplified the number of biblical prophetesses (adding Sarah, Hannah, Abigail, and Esther) but continued to attribute to them the negative traits they attributed to women in general. In some sources, the matriarchs became prophetesses. See further discussion on prophetesses at Acts 21:9.

Paul certainly expected women to engage in prophetic gifts (1 Cor 11:5). Some later Christian writers, both “orthodox” and sectarian, sought to reduce biblical claims about women’s prophesying, reflecting broader trends in the church (and society) of late antiquity; some others, however, preserved the notion of spiritual gifts not distributed according to gender.

It is unlikely that Peter himself envisions eradication of a gender barrier here; he did not yet even envision eradication of the ethnic barrier on which Luke focuses his account (Acts 10:14, 28). But Luke expects the ideal audience to recognize some ethnic implications of Peter’s speech that Peter would not have recognized (“all flesh” in 2:17; “afar off” in 2:39), and may therefore invite readers to consider other implications as well. Luke’s narrative confirms the charismatic gender egalitarianism of his programmatic statement here, reporting prophetesses as well as prophets (Acts 21:9; Luke 2:36). A significant measure of functional charismatic egalitarianism could exist without disrupting social hierarchy, a hierarchy reflected in Luke’s culture and his sources, including in his picture of early church offices (e.g., Acts 6:3; 15:7, 13; perhaps 20:30; but cf., again functionally, 18:26). Whether Luke would have recognized a summons to still further egalitarianism in the principle he espouses here is difficult to infer from the narrative of Acts; at the least, we can say that Luke’s positive attention to women presses beyond that of many of his male contemporaries (see more fully discussion on Acts 1:14). Some church fathers recognized from Acts that spiritual gifts (such as tongues) were given to women as well, and subsequent readers have long drawn from the Joel quotation a justification for women’s ministry.

The gift is not only for both male and female but for “young and old,” and Luke illustrates this principle: Simeon and Anna are aged (Luke 2:26, 36–37), but Philip’s daughters are virgins and hence likely teenagers (Acts 21:9). Following good Hebrew form, Joel encompassed entire ranges by listing opposite extremes; “young” and “old” together mean people of all ages. On “youth,” see comment on Acts 7:58. Some pagans used children’s words at play to divine the will of deities, but this was analogous to the flight of birds or other forms of divination. More relevant illustrations would be the use of Jeremiah as a youth (Jer 1:6–7), and especially Samuel as a boy (1 Sam 2:11, 18, 26; 3:4–19), as well as probably more numerous aged prophets, such as Moses (Deut 34:7) and Ahijah (1 Kgs 14:4–6).

Joel’s prophecy also challenged the class barrier, mentioning God’s enabling Israel’s servants to prophesy (Joel 2:29). But while Luke certainly is interested in confronting such barriers (note especially the emphasis on the poor in his Gospel), he changes the wording to provide a different theological nuance also relevant to his interests. These prophets are all God’s own “slaves.” God’s prophets were often called his servants in Scripture (as were David, Moses, the patriarchs, and Israel as a whole), though John the Baptist had implied that he was not worthy to be even Christ’s slave (Luke 3:16).

The title is certainly appropriate for those empowered by the Spirit to speak God’s message. Although “servant” was not a position of high status relative to the master, a servant of a powerful person could wield more social status than some aristocrats. Some people became slaves of Caesar voluntarily, for example, to advance their career. To be slaves of God himself would thus constitute the highest of all human honors; not surprisingly, biblical prophets issued God’s orders to kings (albeit as messengers). (On slavery in general, see the excursus at Acts 12:13.)

Luke’s model for God’s female slave (δούλη) is Mary embracing God’s call (Luke 1:38, 48) through the gift of his Spirit (1:35). (As the only explicit Spirit-empowered “servant” from the previous generation to be present for Pentecost [Acts 1:14], Mary may indeed constitute the primary model for all God’s servants here.) For a male slave (δοῦλος) of God, Luke provides as a seminal example Simeon (Luke 2:29), who had the Spirit on him (2:25–27) and accordingly prophesied about Christ (2:29–35). As Mary asked that she might fulfill her role as God’s servant (1:38), so all the believers request boldness as God’s servants in Acts 4:29; in response, they are filled with the Spirit and speak God’s word boldly (4:31). The title “slaves” applies to all believers but especially to those with the greatest responsibilities (Luke 12:37, 43–48; 17:7–10; 19:13, 15, 17; 20:10–11; cf. 14:17, 21–23; Acts 16:17).

Through his allusion to Elijah and Elisha in Acts 1:9–11, Luke has already emphasized that the disciples receive the Spirit of prophecy; the allusion to the mission of Isaiah’s Spirit-empowered servant in 1:8 also involved Spirit-empowered speaking for God. But Joel’s prophecy is much more explicit.

For further discussion of the Spirit, including the Spirit’s relationship to prophecy, see the lengthy treatment (including of early Jewish pneumatology) in our introduction, , , which also emphasizes the pervasive early Jewish association between the Spirit and prophecy, the phenomenon probably most widely linked with the Spirit. Here, however, I address issues especially regarding early Jewish views of prophecy in more detail. Although placed at Acts 2:17–18, this excursus serves the many references to prophets and prophetic phenomena in Acts; comments on pagan prophecy here are relevant for Acts 16:16.

Because the focus in this commentary is on historical setting and because most readers of NT commentaries are already very familiar with the biblical prophetic tradition, this survey of Israelite prophetism will focus on Israel’s broader prophetic milieu. Because entire books address Israelite prophetism, these few paragraphs represent only a brief summary of some themes to set the stage for a discussion of prophetism in the early Christian period; not every feature can be mentioned. Yet because early Christians’ primary textual models for prophecy were found in Israel’s Scripture, it is inappropriate to simply jump to early Jewish or Greco-Roman oracular traditions without at least mentioning ancient Israelite prophetism.

The Hebrew term for prophet (נביא) refers to a divine spokesperson and is widely attested in Semitic languages; another term used in the early Israelite period, “seer,” is also attested elsewhere. Even “man of God” is attested elsewhere; Hittites used it for those who through dreams could provide answers from the deity. Israel’s “sons of the prophets” may refer to trainees within a prophetic guild. The value of divinely guided prediction was widely accepted.

Some scholars compare the prophets’ role as divine messengers to that of other authoritative messengers in the milieu. The common prophetic phrase “This is what YHWH says” was also a common messenger formula of the era (e.g., Exod 5:10; Josh 22:16; 2 Kgs 18:19, 28). A comparable messenger formula appears at Mari, when the prophets speak outside the temple. A royal messenger stood in the court of the great king (the suzerain ruler) and then, as his ambassador, might deliver his message to a vassal king (as Israelite prophets often delivered messages to Israel’s king). This formula seems to fit particularly well Aramaic suzerainty treaties and messages to vassal kings in the period of the Israelite monarchy and lends itself well to the covenant lawsuit imagery of some of the prophets.

In contrast to Israel’s prophetic experience, most Mesopotamian “prophetism” was simply divination, though carried out by “seers.” The Hittites received revelation in ecstasy and dreams, but they viewed as more reliable divination in the form of extispicy (entrails), augury (movement of birds), and (possibly) a “lottery” by female soothsayers. Traces of nondivinatory prophecy are comparatively scarce not only among the Hittites but also at Ugarit, Hamath, and elsewhere, with divination predominating.

Mari provides better parallels to the forms of Israelite prophetism, though it is going too far to suggest that the activity originated there. (Still, even at Mari, divination was used for the final evaluation of prophetic claims.) In addition to Mari, Egyptian prophetic literature offers a parallel to Israelite prophetism, especially where its emphasis on justice overlaps with that of the writing prophets starting in the eighth century B.C.E. That Israel’s prophets sometimes traveled or worked in bands (e.g., 1 Sam 10:5; 19:20; 2 Kgs 2:3, 5, 7; 4:38; 6:1) is also not unique, since prophets at Mari sometimes acted in concert.

Often seers in the ancient Near East served the function of political legitimation or to confirm impending victory in military campaigns. Apparently, a truce was established with a rival Egyptian dynasty on the basis of a prophetic message, and Akkadian oracles contain optimistic prophecies concerning Esarhaddon’s successes. Omens by seers (probably diviners) affected the actions of armies from Mari. This practice may have had a magical function in weakening the enemy; certainly Hittites and Egyptians used ritual accusation and execration oracles. Oracles against nations were thus not necessarily delivered to those nations; an oracle against Babylon at Mari was given to the king of Mari, not to that of Babylon. Israel also had its share of oracles to the nations (e.g., Isa 13–23; Amos 1:3–2:6), prophetic insight before battles (e.g., 1 Sam 23:2, 4; 30:8), and other prophecies that had military significance (e.g., 2 Kgs 6:8–14). Military use of divination continued in the Greek and Roman spheres.

Prophecies also validated royal enthronements and reinforced political perspectives. This was also the case in Israel (e.g., 2 Sam 7:12–16; Ps 2:7–9). Naturally, prudent ancient Near Eastern prophets typically gave favorable oracles concerning kings (cf. 1 Kgs 22:10–13; 2 Kgs 8:10); some were likely even on the government payroll, as apparently sometimes in Israel (1 Kgs 22:23; 1 Chr 25:5; 2 Chr 18:22; 29:25; 35:15; cf. Jer 37:19). (Although Israel’s prophets could address anyone on any subject [e.g., Num 11:25–29; 1 Sam 9:6, 20; 10:5], the interest of the biblical writers in God’s purposes in history led to a frequent mention of prophecies to kings, both positive and negative.)

Nevertheless, kings were bound to obey the words of the gods through the prophets, unfavorable though they might be. Thus even Assyrian kings took military actions based on oracles, and in some cases at Mari, prophets even dared pronounce judgment on rulers. Certainly, in Israel in normal times, prophets exercised authority over kings in their role as YHWH’s messengers, even when their messages were harsh; they also enjoyed prophetic immunity from being harmed for their words.

Despite some oracular forms shared with various surrounding cultures, Israelite prophecy was distinctive in many respects. Thus, for example, despite some parallels with Mari prophetism, there are significant differences. Many of Israel’s prophets address moral issues and reprove rulers for personal morality, exposing themselves to ridicule or death for the message, in contrast to extant prophecies from surrounding cultures. The lengthy succession of countercultural prophets over the period of several centuries is also missing elsewhere. Most distinctive, of course, is that Israel’s prophets spoke for a different deity: they spoke for only one God, indeed a universal God with absolute and exalted moral interests. We turn now to approaches to prophecy in early Judaism and its Greco-Roman context (although some further comments about Israelite prophecy will appear below at relevant points).

Although the rabbis emphasized the cessation of prophecy more than others, it is an exaggeration to claim that only they believed that prophecy had ceased. Most early Jews of the Maccabean and later eras allowed that prophecy continued in some form but not through official “prophets” on the same level as in the era of earlier Israel.

Some scholars have traced the belief that prophecy had ended to late in the OT period, but stronger arguments have been made for this belief’s arising in the “intertestamental” period. Hill, for example, arguing for the “intertestamental” period, points to the use of pseudonymity in apocalyptic texts and argues that no prophets appear who speak with the authority of OT prophetic messengers. Aside from the activities of prophets chronicled in Josephus (below), Hill’s arguments depend ultimately on assuming that prophetic authority would be conveyed by the same genre conventions in all periods, which does not hold true even in the OT itself.

There are, however, indications that prophecy no longer maintained the role it once had and that some parts of Judaism did not believe that prophets continued in the biblical sense. First Maccabees 9:27 speaks of the cessation of prophecy, and 4:45–46 and 14:41 speak of the coming of a prophet as a future expectation. Against some scholars, “prophet” in Scripture normally connoted inspired authority, and so there is no reason to assume a new definition here. First Maccabees 14:41 need not relegate prophets only to the end time, but it does clearly indicate that none were known or acknowledged in that time and that Simon’s divinely given leadership ability was not regarded as making him a prophet.

Josephus contends that there has been no exact succession of prophets since the time of Artaxerxes, which was why no books had been accorded canonical authority since that time. Josephus does report continuing prophetic phenomena, but he fails to associate them, unlike prophetic activity from the biblical period, with πνεῦμα. Moreover, although prophecy continued, the title “prophet” belongs only to the past and to the future. Josephus used the term “prophets” for his own time only when he spoke of “false prophets.”

Other texts also seem to imply that prophets are no more in the present time (2 Bar. 85:3; perhaps John 8:53); Sir 36:14–16 probably implies an eschatological restoration or multiplication of prophecy (36:14, λόγια) and perhaps prophets (36:15–16). Fourth Ezra 12:42 suggests that “Ezra” alone remained. Some scholars argue that examples of continuing prophecy appear especially in circles believing that the end time was at hand.

Of course, while there may have existed in various circles a belief that prophets no longer existed as they had in biblical times, no one denied that revelatory experiences continued to be possible. But biblical prophecy was seen as different from postbiblical prophecy; thus, in Josephus and Philo, “πνεῦμα is confined to prophecy in the biblical period,” giving a special role to the canon.

If the concept of the prophetic Spirit’s departure already existed in early Judaism in some sense, the rabbis certainly developed it further after 70 C.E. The Holy Spirit might have departed from Israel after Elijah was taken up to heaven or (with minor exceptions) in the time of Jeremiah, but the usual rabbinic timing associated with the Holy Spirit’s departure was the death of the last of the biblical prophets. Some later rabbis dated the departure of the Holy Spirit to the destruction of the temple, but the net effect was the same: the Spirit of prophecy had ceased to be available in their own time. This departure has been widely noted by modern scholars. Some note that by relegating prophecy to the past, the rabbis also reduced competition with their own role as interpreters of past revelation.

This does not mean that revelations were not available, since the heavenly voice (bat qol) functioned as a surrogate for the Spirit of prophecy. But this substitute was at best an inferior one, and there was thus sometimes an expectation of a future time when the prophetic Spirit would be restored. The giving of the Spirit had been associated with the eschatological salvation of Israel in the Hebrew prophets and was similarly associated with eschatology in early Christianity. Lack of emphasis on an eschatological role for the Spirit in Diaspora Jewish texts fits the lack of eschatological emphasis in Diaspora Judaism. Its apparent absence from Palestinian Jewish texts, apart from the writings of the Qumran covenanters, leads some scholars to suppose that the doctrine was not widespread in early Judaism. This is, however, almost an argument from silence, given the relative scarcity of references to the Spirit in early Judaism and the fact that there is not an abundance of Palestinian Jewish literature, apart from the Scrolls, from this period. Although rabbinic texts do not stress eschatology to the extent that the documents of the Qumran covenanters do, some later texts do occasionally suggest an eschatological return of the Spirit that corresponds to the belief that it had departed for the present time.

Although some people allowed that prophecy had ceased, this was not the general view outside rabbinic circles. Perhaps prophets had ceased in some sense or the Spirit had departed, but prophetic activity continued. Josephus says that John Hyrcanus had the gift of prophecy; he also attributes this power several times to the Essenes. He also claimed to possess the gift himself, in the form of prediction of the future. And although Joshua ben Hananiah (Jesus son of Ananias, prophesying shortly before Jerusalem’s demise) may not have received the title “prophet,” his actions and message certainly characterize him as one. It is thus fair to conclude that although Josephus distinguished contemporary prophecy, in some sense, from its biblical form, he accepted its continuance. Similarly, even if Philo felt that prophecy had ceased with the biblical period, he felt that inspiration continued and that he availed himself of it. If this is not quite as explicit as Josephus’s use of προφητ- roots for the present period, it is nonetheless typical Greek language for inspiration as well as Philo’s own language for the inspiration of OT prophets.

Despite (again) the lack of the prophetic title (even for the Teacher of Righteousness), prophecy also may have continued in the Qumran sect, who believed that the Spirit guided their activities. Prophecy and even the presence of the Spirit continued in early Judaism, particularly in apocalyptically oriented sects. Still, even in Qumran texts, the present revelatory dimension of the Spirit is relegated especially to wisdom and insight into the Scriptures.

Some scholars have also argued that prophecy continued in rabbinic Judaism. Abrahams, for instance, notes that Maimonides believed that prophecy belonged to good men, and argues that the prophetic office was transferred to the sages. This much is true; but when Abrahams argues that although prophets had gone, the Holy Spirit continued to work in human experience, his argument rests more on a theological interpretation of rabbinic literature as a whole than on the normal usage of the language of “Holy Spirit” in that literature.

Likewise, Aune notes that among the rabbis there were exceptions to the view that prophecy had ceased, yet fails to emphasize the extent to which these examples represent a minority opinion. Further, in early Jewish texts, one can sometimes predict the future without necessarily being a prophet (especially on one’s deathbed, as in some rabbinic examples), and not all predictions are prophetic. Admittedly, Johanan ben Zakkai is said to predict the future, which does suggest prophetic insight; this probably reflects the sort of miraculous powers attributed to past rabbis, similar to R. Simeon ben Yohai’s ability to disintegrate disrespectful people with a harsh look. (Miraculous powers could safely be attributed to past guardians of the tradition without opening the field up to charismatic challengers of that tradition.) The downplaying of current prophecy may “reflect an apologetic attempt to undermine the prophetic claims of the early Christians” and, to a lesser extent, other prophetic movements that could challenge the epistemological hegemony and thus authority of the rabbinic movement.

We should keep in mind, however, what was noted above: even where prophecy continued, it was rarely seen in the same terms as OT prophecy. Josephus and Philo do not associate current inspiration with the Spirit; Qumran documents associate prophecy and the Spirit only with the past. The Qumran community might emphasize the Spirit’s presence because it believed that it lived at the threshold of the new age and thus could experience some of the power of that age in advance. Boring suggests that prophecy was likewise, by definition, eschatological; this was true both in groups “that affirmed the presence of the prophetic Spirit (e.g., Qumran) and those that denied it (many streams of rabbinic tradition).” The early Christians seem to be noteworthy in overcoming “this reluctance to apply the designation to contemporary figures”; see, for example, Acts 11:28; 21:9–11.

Jewish literature (especially the more abundant but post-NT rabbinic texts) often speaks of those who were worthy to receive various gifts from God, even if those gifts were sometimes withheld due to the unworthiness of their generation. For instance, in the essentially rabbinic mystical treatise called 3 Enoch, R. Ishmael, being descended from Aaron, is “worthy to behold the chariot”; likewise, some Amoraim felt that those who did good deeds were worthy to receive the Shekinah.

Although Qumran texts speak of the Spirit as a current blessing for the community (e.g., 4Q509 V, 15–16), some other groups would not have agreed. Rabbi Nehemiah argued that as a reward for their faith, the people of Israel had been worthy of having the Holy Spirit rest on them. Rabbi Eliezer used to say that the Holy Spirit would rest on one who cleaved to God’s presence; an Amora claimed that whoever taught Torah was worthy to receive the Spirit.

But usually the Holy Spirit or Spirit of prophecy was not easily acquired. There are a number of rabbinic stories about pious rabbis who were worthy to receive the Holy Spirit but who could not because their generations were unworthy of its effects. This story is told, for instance, of Hillel and Samuel Hakaton: “Elders went into the upper room in the house of Gedaya in Jericho. An echo went forth and said to them, ‘There are among you two who are worthy of receiving the Holy Spirit, and Hillel the Elder is one of them.’ They gazed upon Samuel the Small.” Similarly, Israel acquired her prophets on account of merit.

Related to this is the idea that the Holy Spirit was quenched in Israel because of Israel’s sins. This accords with the more common image of the removal of the Shekinah, God’s presence, because of sin. In any case, current generations were less worthy than the generations of great prophetic figures of the past, and the rabbis thus found fewer examples of the possession of the Holy Spirit in their own time.

The Tannaim could amplify Moses’s prayer that all Israel be prophets, and the Amoraim could connect this with Joel and, echoing Joel, argue that all Israel would be prophets. But this adds little to the picture of an eschatological prophetic community already found in Joel and perhaps implied by the reception of the Spirit in some of the other prophets, and it does not indicate an emphasis on even the eschatological availability of the Spirit in rabbinic Judaism.

Other circles in early Judaism may have been more open to the current availability of the Spirit. In Wis 7:27, for instance, we read that Wisdom “enters into holy souls, making them God’s friends and prophets” (NEB). Philo, in Heir 259, argues that prophecy is available to every ἀστείῳ, “worthy man.”

Among the Qumran covenanters, as Flusser points out, “the Holy Spirit was bestowed upon all the Elect, but not to the same degree.” But only the elect had the Holy Spirit, and this distinguished them from anyone else. The presence of the Spirit was also felt to mark off the early Christians as a unique community, as Aune points out: “In early Christianity, the presence of the Spirit within the community was the central phenomenon which convinced Christians that the eschaton had in some decisive way arrived in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.”

It is helpful to look at the way pagan circles and a variety of Jewish circles, including rabbinic sources, understood prophecy as occurring. This examination may offer at least some insight into how early Christians and their contemporaries interpreted some of the early Christian charismatic experience.

Pagan sources could regard prophecy as highly accurate, whether by outstanding individuals or by stationary oracle cults. Jewish sources allowed a few pagan prophets (especially Balaam) some knowledge, but none had revelation at all close to the genuine revelation given to Israel’s prophets. Pagans sometimes complained about false prophets and spurious oracles among them; in the ancient Near East, some required confirming signs, and sometimes a king took a lock of hair or fringe of the prophet’s garment, perhaps to hold him legally accountable for his message.

As in the ancient Near East in the OT period, so in the Mediterranean world of more recent times, divination was an extremely common practice. Sacrificial divination in Babylonia involved the correspondence between the deity and his possessions in a mystic sense. Through divination, Greeks and Romans sought to discern the “will and mood of the gods” so they could seek to change or accommodate them safely. Divination had the approval of Pythagoras, Platonists, and Stoics despite some opposition. Literature of the early Roman Empire is replete with the Roman use of omens. Sailors depended on omens for good sailing; the pious used divination before battles, and others neglected it to their peril. Besides the examination of entrails, omens could be inferred from birds, from trees, and so forth. Some ancients even used sieves (though most doubted their authenticity). For the use of lots in divination, see comment on .

Oracular prophetism, however, maintained an important place as well. Despite a reputed decline of some of the great oracular centers and the fact that the Romans tended to be much less interested in prophetism than the Greeks, prophecy also flourished in the eastern Mediterranean, for example, in Egypt; sometimes it was defended by intellectuals. Perhaps connected with antecedents such as Mari through neo-Assyrian and other models, ecstatic prophecy was found in some Greek oracles apparently from the Archaic period on.

Oracles could take questions. In older Egyptian processions, images of deities on the priests’ shoulders “answered” oracular questions by movement, since the priests who carried them (as many as eighty) moved however the god moved them. At some oracles, inquirers experienced the deity’s revelation in different forms. In Israelite prophetism, “inquiring of a deity” need not always mean that a question was put to the deity as in Hittite divination.

Prophetic activity in pagan sources is often ecstatic; we observe this even in our earlier sources. We find prophetic ecstasy in late second-millennium B.C.E. Palestine in the Egyptian “Journey of Wen-Amon to Phoenicia,” where an ecstatic, seized with some violent motion, prophesies to the king of Byblos. At Mari, prophecy given in trances was institutionalized, and as sometimes in Israel, prophets could be designated by a term that otherwise denoted madmen. Dependence on ecstatic inspiration continued into a late period. Religious ecstasy was induced by various means, including intoxication, dancing, ascetic fasts, and even self-inflicted pain. Although music was sometimes employed in Israelite prophetism, some other forms of religious arousal employed by its neighbors were prohibited to Israel; nevertheless, ecstatic Israelite prophecy also existed in this period.

Mantic prophecy was normally through one “possessed” by the deity. Although a rationalistic Plutarch could detect the natural faculties of the Pythia in her prophesyings, prophetic possession was often thought to virtually eliminate any human elements and could be associated with μανία or μαίνομαι and sometimes involve self-mutilation. Possession could occur in the context of various cults, but Aune questions whether all such possession was prophetic in nature; theories of inspiration extended to music and poetry, law, and other disciplines, and they do not by any means all involve possession in the form in which it is found in some varieties of prophetism. But that ecstasy was seen as an acceptable phenomenon in Greek religion, at least for certain kinds of people in certain contexts, is commonly agreed upon.

Lucan claims that inspiration opened the Pythia’s lips, erupting like a volcano (C.W. 5.97–101); only the divine frenzy proved that she was not fabricating her words (5.148–57). Then Apollo forces himself on her, invading her body and replacing her thoughts; her head tosses, her hair bristles, things are overturned, the fire of Apollo’s wrath tortures her from within, yielding frenzy, foaming lips, inarticulate panting and groans, wailing, and finally articulate speech (5.165–93). Lucan composed this description as poetry, and we should not read too much into it. Archaeology shows that despite literary references, no “mephitic vapors” beneath the Delphic tripod inspired the Pythian priestess. Nevertheless, neither should we attribute her possession altogether to Lucan. Although lacking Lucan’s elaborate description, both earlier and later sources indicate that she is possessed by a spirit and goes into mad ecstasy at this site, and abundant anthropological parallels leave no necessary reason to dispute such a claim (see comment on Acts 16:16).

One woman is said to have predicted the future in song, possessed by a spirit. Likewise, the Galli of the Great Mother met the Romans, prophesying in frenzy that the Romans would win a battle; another priest ecstatically but correctly prophesied a victory while seized by prophetic inspiration. Unable to shake off the overpowering of Apollo, the Cumean Sibyl prophesied, words bursting forth in her frenzy. Another prophesied “madly,” overpowered by a divine fire within her. Some people may have used magical means to induce trances.

Prophecies, like other means of divine communication, were often obscure. For Greeks, inspiration did not always guarantee freedom from all error; there were levels of inspiration, later poets sometimes being less inspired than earlier poets. But one could also prophesy as the deity’s mouthpiece; daimones might speak through human bodies like a piper producing music through a pipe. Thus, for Philo, a prophet might speak not from himself but only from God, and the Jewish Sibylline Oracles declare that the oracles derive from compulsion.

Although Greeks believed in mantic inspiration, their terminology differed noticeably from examples in the NT corpus. Greeks rarely used προφήτης and its cognates before the NT period except for a position in the hierarchy of oracular centers; early Christianity was much more directly influenced by the use of the LXX, which originally borrowed this term and its cognates innovatively to translate Hebrew terms for the prophets and their inspiration. The familiar Greek oracular term μάντις appears nowhere in the NT (the cognate verb only in Acts 16:16, for pagan spirit possession), and in the LXX without exception refers to pagan divination (Josh 13:22; 1 Sam 6:2; Mic 3:7; Jer 29:8 = 36:8 LXX; Zech 10:2). Not only the terminology but the practice was usually, though not always, different:

1. Greeks and Romans believed that most inspired prophecy belonged to past eras, and hence they emphasized divination.

2. They practiced most contemporary prophecy in oracular shrines with priesthoods.

3. Most of this prophecy consisted of answers to questions posed at the shrines.

We often conceptualize the character of ancient Israelite prophecy too narrowly. Although we often think of prophecy as spontaneous at the time of delivery, the prophecies could be written (Jer 36:4–8) or otherwise received beforehand. Again contrary to our usual expectation, prophets sometimes even prophesied to themselves, perhaps revealing one of the forms in which the “word of the Lord” came to the prophet. Prophets often had to act before knowing the full intent of the Lord (e.g., 13:6–7; 35:2, 14).

The understanding of prophecy developed in early Judaism. Perhaps following the example of Saul and David, who were both anointed with the Spirit of prophecy before they could become kings, or translating the Platonic notion of a wise man/philosopher as the ideal ruler, one source suggests that prophets will rule in the eschatological time. The prophetic anointing could thus be envisioned in terms of divine wisdom to lead, even if the initial experience (as in 1 Sam 10:5–11) might be particularly ecstatic.

Although prophecy was not always conceived as ecstatic, most of our references in Diaspora-oriented Jewish texts do include an ecstatic element. This fits the ecstatic component often found in non-Jewish sources concerning mantic prophecy (Gentile divination was not ecstatic, but in its most blatant forms, it was forbidden in Israel). (The differences between Israelite and other ancient Near Eastern prophecy have frequently been pointed out.)

The acceptance of the place of the ecstatic in the Hellenistic world no doubt provided a context in which this aspect of Israelite prophetism would be developed. A Jewish Sibyl, perhaps in late first-century B.C.E. Egypt, writes that all will pronounce her a true seer (μάντιν), though someone might call her “a messenger with a frenzied spirit” (μεμανηότι θυμῷ ἄγγελον), and she complains that she must prophesy with frenzy.

In Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, a holy spirit (spiritus sanctus) came upon Kenaz and “put him in ecstasy” (extulit sensum eius), so that he prophesied (prophetare), and when he had finished speaking, “he was awakened, and his senses came back to him.” Likewise, in 4 Baruch, Abimelech (Ebedmelech) the Aethiopian fell into “a great trance” (μεγάλη ἔκστασις) and only awoke sixty-six years later. The charismatic sashes that enabled Job’s daughters to sing in angelic languages altered their minds to think in heavenly ways. Apocalyptic visionaries could also have rapturous experiences modeled on those of OT prophets such as Ezekiel, who saw the throne-chariot.

Hellenistic Jewish images of ecstatic inspiration are most pronounced in Philo. Following Plato as well as OT forms, “Philo interpreted corybantic frenzy as a sign of true inspiration”; thus he treats a prophet as “an ecstatic, totally possessed by God and His helpless instrument.” He speaks of prophets experiencing an ecstasy of heavenly love, the whole mind “snatched up in holy frenzy by a Divine possession”; this divine frenzy could provide prophetic dreams and be described as possession by some philosophic principle; the heir of God’s good things is the ecstatic soul that leaves even itself: “Higher than our reasoning, and in very deed divine, arising by no human will or purpose but by a God-inspired ecstasy [ἄλλ’ ἐνθέῳ μανιᾴ].” Philo observes that “a prophet possessed by God will suddenly appear and give prophetic oracles. Nothing of what he says will be his own, for he that is truly under the control of divine inspiration has no power of apprehension when he speaks but serves as the channel for the insistent words of Another’s prompting.”

The prophets are often seized with ecstasy (ἐνθουσιάζει), so that they are full of God and their understanding departs.

So while the radiance of the mind is still all around us, when it pours as it were a noonday beam into the whole soul, we are self-contained, not possessed. But when it comes to its setting, naturally ecstasy and divine possession and madness [ἐκστασις . . .  ἐνθεος . . .  μανία] fall upon us. For when the light of God shines . . .  this is what regularly befalls the fellowship of the prophets. The mind is evicted at the arrival of the divine Spirit, but when that departs the mind returns to its tenancy. Mortal and immortal may not share the same home. And therefore the setting of reason and the darkness which surrounds it produce ecstasy and inspired frenzy.

Abraham had this ecstatic, prophetic experience in Gen 15:12; Moses also began his prophetic career (προφητείας) by possession (ἐνθουσιασμόν); and Philo himself would sometimes become full (πλήρης), so influenced by corybantic frenzy (ἐνθέου κορυβαντιᾶν) that he would be unconscious of what he had written. As Hill points out, such language is “almost entirely derived from non-biblical Greek.”

Josephus, himself also not alien to ecstatic prophetic experience, tells of a man who for seven years did nothing but cry, “Woe to Jerusalem!” ignoring pain and opposition; Bamberger comments on the natural association of Joshua’s actions with madness. Further, Josephus “not only describes the prophetic experience in terms of possession, but translates the πνεῦμα θεοῦ of 1 Kgdms 10:6 as γενόμενος ἔνθεος.”

This general picture of inspiration carried over into at least some forms of early Christianity. One may compare the second-century C.E. Odes of Solomon:

As the [wind] moves through the harp

and the strings speak,

So the Spirit of the Lord speaks through my members,

And I speak through his love.

Yet early Christians argued that prophets could control their inspiration, in contrast to pagan prophets, who were moved against their will.

All of this may suggest that the common later rabbinic understanding of the nature of prophecy differed from the popular Jewish perspective that had prevailed outside Pharisaic ranks before a certain brand of Pharisaism rose to prominence over Palestinian and later, in a further developed form, over much of Mediterranean and Parthian Jewry. Although ecstatic phenomena and equivalents of prophecy occurred among rabbis, this experience is viewed with caution by most of the other rabbis. They might be cautious for the same reasons that rabbinic Judaism did not allow much room for the Spirit of prophecy in the present and barely addressed other functions of רוח הקודש, the Holy Spirit.

That prophecy was a heavier task than prayer could be simply assumed by a Tanna arguing his case in the second century C.E. Prophets had the authority to tell Israel which site God had chosen and to tell kings what they were to do. Perhaps like the rabbis who had to temporarily circumvent the letter of the law to fulfill its purpose (cf. Hillel’s prozbul), prophets might temporarily supersede the letter of the law: “‘Him you shall heed’: Even if he should instruct you to violate one of the religious duties that are listed in the Torah, as did Elijah on Mount Carmel, in a case of emergency obey him.” There are, of course, serious limitations on the extent to which this exception was allowed to be taken.

The sages essentially took over the role once granted to the prophets. A story is told of a Tanna who applies the words of Amos 7:14 to himself. When R. Eliezer accurately predicts that a disciple will die that week, other rabbis ask whether he is a prophet. He responds, “I am not a prophet nor the disciple of a prophet”; he simply predicted on the basis of the tradition of the sages. Although Eliezer’s authority is in the tradition, his denial of filling a prophet’s role is worded in the same terms as Amos’s denial of his role as a prophet, as if to suggest that the authority of the sages’ tradition is comparable to that of the prophets.

Although in some texts the prophets could be regarded as higher than the sages, in others sages are comparable to but higher than prophets, and in still others sages are considerably higher than prophets. Indeed, Bamberger writes, “The scholar had replaced the prophet; as R. Abdimi of Haifa put it, ‘prophecy has been taken from the prophets and given to the sages.’ A Babylonian comment on this remark declares that the scholar is more important (ʿadif) than the prophet.”

Cohen notes that prophets moved in the direction of “apocalyptic seers, mystics, healers, and holy men,” but prophetic authority shifted to the scribes. The rabbis could view themselves as, in some sense, successors of the prophets. (Similar institutional or academic domestication of prophetic roles appeared in some Gentile circles as well.)

This was perhaps only natural, given the fact that Torah was normative whereas there could be both true and false prophets. Torah was sometimes assumed to be a step above prophecy. Most often, however, no contrast was made between prophets and interpreters of Torah. Just as the heavenly court or academy could be portrayed in terms mirroring the earthly academy, so the prophets could be seen in anachronistic terms as sages. Moses was the father of all the prophets, and thirty prophets were among the eighty-five elders of Israel debating whether Esther’s “new” laws could already be found in the Torah. In this respect, they were not different from other prominent OT figures, such as Hezekiah, whom Akiba regarded as a teacher of Torah to all Israel. The rabbis tended to regard the OT prophets as creative transmitters of Torah and did not oppose the two, following a tendency in early Judaism that did not originate with them.

As in nonrabbinic sources, prophetic enablement could be described as having God’s words put in one’s mouth, although the same expression came to be used for Torah study. But while the general rabbinic conception of prophecy would be less ecstatic than that of Philo and Josephus (as noted), there are indications that prophecy was not limited to Torah study and exposition, as may be indicated by the contrast between the prophet par excellence of Israel and the prophet par excellence of the nations:

But there is quite a difference between the prophecy of Moses and the prophecy of Balaam. Moses did not know with whom he was talking, but Balaam knew. . . .  Moses did not know when [God] would speak with him, until he actually was spoken with, while Balaam knew full well. . . .  Moses would speak with [God] only standing up. . . .  But Balaam was spoken with when he had fallen. . . .  To what is the matter comparable? To the case of the king’s butcher, who knows precisely how much the king is spending on his table.

There are also indications of mystical, revelatory experiences by certain rabbis. The experiences attributed to R. Ishmael in 3 Enoch and the earlier and more likely authentically based accounts of R. Akiba’s ascent to paradise in Tannaitic tradition suggest that these experiences, similar to those described in apocalyptic literature, were not foreign to the rabbis. At the same time, the dangers of such mystical revelations were not to be underestimated; esoteric teachings on the laws of creation and on the throne-chariot, which could border on the mystical vision of God, were to be communicated only privately; some matters were, in the words of a first-century visionary, ἄρρητα (2 Cor 12:4).

Was this reticence to publicly communicate these teachings due to the dangers of misappropriation by nonrabbis or inauthentic legitimation of the mystical experiences of those outside rabbinic circles? Or could these mystical experiences have included some eschatological elements that would pose threats to rabbinic Judaism’s interpretive hegemony? Rabbi Akiba’s support of Bar Kokhba could lend credence to this last alternative, although his mysticism and his messianism could have been unrelated. Whatever the particular reason, certain forms of revelation no longer could function as adequate sources for communal knowledge, and the prevailing image of prophets sanctioned in rabbinic Judaism was as interpreters of the already-given Torah in accordance with the confines of developing rabbinic tradition.

Inspiration was desirable for both utterances and literature and was often invoked. Inspiration was important, especially for epic poets, who needed divine help to write as omniscient narrators. Sometimes this poetic inspiration could be compared with being a prophet. Most frequently, narrators and poets invoked a Muse or Muses to help them. Some invoked Apollo to enable them to tell their stories well. As the imperial cult progressed, some invoked the emperor instead of the Muses or other deities. An orator who wished to seem particularly dependent on divine aid might invoke Hermes as patron of oratory, Apollo as guide of the Muses, along with the Muses as his own guide, or might invoke the Muses and Apollo but add “Persuasion” rather than Hermes. (Apollo was often associated with poetic and musical inspiration.) Although invoking divine help was especially conventional for poetry, it was acceptable for history as well.

Those writing religious texts normally expected assistance from deities. A gardener about to praise a Greek hero invokes that hero’s aid in recalling and recounting the stories about him. Iamblichus opines that Pythagorean commentaries were “composed perfectly with heaven-sent knowledge.” Some also applied the language of inspiration to speech from a God-directed mind. Philosophers could also argue that one needed divine inspiration to understand divinely inspired philosophy.

Luke underlines the importance of prophecy in the Joel quotation by reiterating it explicitly at the end of Acts 2:18, so that in Greek it frames the list of the classes that would prophesy. Luke thus also explicitly emphasizes prophecy at both points in 2:17–18 where he mentions the outpouring of the Spirit.

Luke also connects the Spirit especially with prophecy and prophetic types of activity; Jesus appears as a Spirit-anointed (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38) prophet (Luke 4:24; 13:33; 24:19), and now the church is empowered prophetically as well (Acts 2:17–18). In view of the parallels with Elijah and Elisha in 1:8–11 (also emphasized in the programmatic text for the Gospel, Luke 4:25–27), this would include the sorts of signs associated with those prophets (see comment ; and on “power” in ). This fits the ministry of apostles (2:43; 5:12; 14:3; 15:12) and others in Acts (6:8; 8:6, 13). But by quoting the Joel text in full (Luke has the prerogative of omitting part of it, as he does with part of Joel 2:32), Luke also appears to assume that visions and dreams remained part of the church’s experience. But whereas Matthew emphasizes dreams (Matt 1:20; 2:12–13, 19, 22; 27:19), Luke’s narrative usually emphasizes the more spectacular visions (Acts 9:10, 12; 10:3, 17–19; 26:19 [= 9:3–6]; Luke 1:22; cf. Acts 7:55; 22:14), perhaps guarding against Aristotelian-type objections to dreams. Even those that occur at night are typically “visions” (Acts 16:9; 18:9), language with OT precedent (Gen 46:2; Job 4:13; Dan 7:7, 13). Luke reports them much more often in Acts than in the Gospel, presumably in part because God’s own Son—the primary protagonist of the Gospel—would not need any.

Prophecy is crucial for Luke’s apologetic and the church’s mission. As Hengel and Schwemer point out, “It is impossible to overestimate the importance of earliest Christian prophecy, as the most important phenomenon of the charismata given by the Spirit, for the extension of the new Jewish-eschatological movement.” For a Jewish audience, it constituted decisive evidence that God was fulfilling his eschatological promises. Prophecy was far more common among early Christians (who apparently experienced the gift regularly in congregational meetings, 1 Cor 14:26, 29–31; 1 Thess 5:20) than in other movements in the Greco-Roman world; people could seek information regularly from divination or oracles, but the idea of all members of a movement being potentially prophets is unusual.

Prophetic figures such as Agabus and Philip’s daughters function much like their ancient Israelite counterparts and demonstrate that the church continues the prophetic anointing of the OT. Acts also portrays the broader activity of christocentric testimony (Acts 1:8) as inspired speech, undoubtedly one reason that “the word of the Lord” in Acts, as in Paul, normally refers to the good news (e.g., 4:31; 8:25; 12:24; 19:10, 20). In the broadest sense of prophetic inspiration, the entire church carries forward this task by its experience with the Spirit and consequent empowerment for spreading the gospel. Because Luke himself retells the gospel narrative in particularly great detail, he undoubtedly views himself as an inspired historian as well, standing within a Jewish line of tradition on this theological matter. That Luke would accept prior claims of accurate prophetism in early Christianity (rather than composing them novelistically) is entirely plausible on the principle of historical uniformity, since such claims remain common today as well (albeit primarily in popular sources).

Sometimes writers conflated the language for visions and dreams; followers of Isis sometimes experienced visions in the night. Vision claims are not infrequent in antiquity. The Greek world knew magical means of seeking for revelations, and some intellectuals emphasized visionary ascents to the higher realm as well as sometimes soul travel out of the body. (Some shamanic circles in various cultures also claim disembodied soul travel.) Paul himself sidesteps the question of whether one of his more extraordinary revelatory experiences was bodily or out of the body, perhaps to accommodate Corinthian sentiments (2 Cor 12:2).

Visions were especially important in so-called apocalyptic literature, often characterized by visions (cf., e.g., Enoch recounting his visions to his son in 1 En. 83:1). Indeed, “apocalypses” in the narrowest sense, by definition, involve visions and revelations, often including cosmological speculation (e.g., 1 En. 72–82). They may form part of the background for early Jewish mysticism. In contrast to assumptions that the pseudepigraphic experiences must reflect only fabrication, the heavenly visions in ancient Jewish apocalyptic and mystic sources show some parallels with shamanic sky journeys in various cultures.

Jewish literature often reports visions, most of which (outside the broader selection in apocalyptic literature) concern the heavenly throne-chariot or throne (and by implication, the Lord). Although the rabbinic evidence is late, the roots of such speculation in some form are much earlier. (Such speculations were considered potentially quite dangerous and hence to be passed on only secretly.) Although most reported visions occur in altered states of consciousness that we might call trance states (so also, e.g., Acts 10:10; 11:5), some “visions” in Acts report no prior trance state, probably functioning more like “apparitions.”

Cross-cultural studies show that altered states of consciousness are a frequent phenomenon; indeed, brain research suggests that the human brain is open to such experiences. In fact, from dreams during REM sleep to sleepwalking, occurrences of psychomotor epilepsy, and possession trance, a continuum of altered states of consciousness overlaps at some points with “normal” life. Although such phenomena do not all involve identical external causes, they do suggest that the common wiring of human nervous systems allows for similar symptoms due to a variety of causes, typically experienced by the nervous system as something analogous to emotional stresses. In religious contexts, various cultures often construe such altered states positively.

This excursus focuses more on dreams here because they appear more frequently in the sources, probably because people dream far more regularly than see visions; but Note further the apparition examples discussed at Acts 1:3. Many ancients believed that dreams provided them divine direction. (For dreams at healing sanctuaries, see comment in the .) Whether in Greece and Macedonia, Rome, Egypt, Carthage, the East, Palestine, among Diaspora Jews, among later rabbis, or in magical papyri, people often believed that dreams conveyed divine messages. So compelling was trust in dreams’ warnings that they could be employed to bolster an army’s courage; a fabricated dream reportedly precipitated an innocent man’s execution, and some warned of false dream-tellers and interpreters.

God revealed things to biblical heroes in Jewish tradition as well, and later stories amplified the frequency of such revelations. Later rabbis believed revelatory dreams could be secured through fasting (y. Ketub. 12:3, §7) or their ill pronouncements revoked through fasting (Pesiq. Rab Kah. 28:2). Ancients also emphasized dreams experienced in a sacred place. The ancient Near Eastern practice of incubation—receiving a dream by sleeping in a temple—continued in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Sometimes dreams were prophetic but required an interpretation (Plut. Cim. 18.3; see comment on Acts 16:10); others might be interpreted easily (Plut. Demosth. 29.2). Some people were particularly skillful in dream interpretation; sometimes, as here, they might be “old men” (Hom. Il. 5.150). Some Jewish traditions implied that although God spoke to pagan rulers in dreams, they needed pious Jewish interpreters to help them understand. For more on dream interpretation, see comment on Acts 16:10.

Though the majority of people did not consult professional dream interpreters, dreams were embraced and acted on very widely in antiquity. Oft-repeated dreams could prove particularly persuasive. Pagan dreams are often cited as premonitions of the dreamers’ imminent deaths or of another’s death.

Still, people realized that not all dreams were divine revelations, and those who were more skeptical excluded most dreams from being revelations. What one had been thinking about during the day could cause dreams. Orators could invent “dreams” for effect, even noting that they could be caused by eating particular kinds of food. Some considered dreams less likely to be true during autumn but more common in spring and autumn and especially when lying on one’s back. Some dreams were even intended or regarded as divine deceptions.

Biblical dreams typically differed from many of their counterparts in who delivered the message. Pagan and Jewish dreams often included apparitions of deceased persons; like the biblical tradition, however, the NT writers generally limited apparitions to angels (though cf. discussion on Acts 16:9). Matthew stresses revelation through dreams more than do other extant first-century Christian writers (Matt 2:12, 13, 19, 22; 27:19), though Luke includes almost as many (Acts 16:9–10; 18:9–10; 23:11; 27:23–24). See some further discussion at Acts 16:9–10.

Although in the West consideration of dreams is often relegated to the realm of Jungian psychotherapists and (perhaps more helpfully) neurologists, the divinatory or prophetic use of dreams and visions continues to play a role in many societies and religions, including Asian and African Christianity. (Such claims also appear in the West and belong to foundational periods of even some fairly conservative Christian movements.) Some scholars report that in some regions, large numbers or even most of those converted to Christianity today testify to being converted through dreams or visions. My wife, a second-generation Christian from central Africa, collected in her journal many examples of Christians’ dreams and visions that were taken very seriously and often proved (albeit in retrospect) strikingly accurate. In such settings people may use the predictive element as a warning rather than assume an unalterable future; the retrospective component may be used to interpret dreams and presumably to distinguish “accurate” (more apt to be revelatory) from “inaccurate” dreams.

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