Prophecy

Prophecy

by Marco M. Pardi

“The well adjusted make poor prophets.” Eric Hoffer. (1902-1983) The True Believer. 1951

“Many unhappy persons affected by ambitious mania, or theomania, are looked upon as prophets, and their delusions taken for revelations.” Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909). The Man of Genius. (The Hebrew, nabi, used in the Bible, connotes both prophet and madman.)

All comments are welcome and will receive a response.

From early childhood I’ve been interested in the phenomenon of prophecy. It carries within it so many implications which, if taken logically step by step provoke much thought on the nature of existence. And, it can come in a variety of forms, not all of which are equally obvious.

If, like me, you refuse to believe something simply because it has been said, you find yourself with certain questions which begin even before considering the substance of the prophecy. These questions go deeper than just, Who is this prophet? They go to the context in which the prophet appears.

Every culture has had, and still has people who appear to be remarkably insightful, and some who appear to be prescient – able to accurately predict future events. But some cultures are more accepting of these abilities than others. Some quickly accept them as “God given gifts” while others contort themselves with empirical testing, psycho-dynamic hypotheses, and even speculations on the quantum nature of existence. Of course, there are also those cultures which, placing high value on the study of history and the intricacies of critical thinking, recognize and consider the thoughts of people often referred to as “futurists”; nothing magical there, just a logical progression.

When looking at prophets in the vernacular, an interesting distinction, and one with consequences for us, lies in the contrast of the Etruscan culture with the Hebrew culture. The Etruscans, centered in the Etruria area north of Rome, were and are famous for their Eat, Drink and be Merry approach to life, and to death. Their view of the afterlife was a continuation of the joys of mortal existence but without the hassles. Their sense of place in the world was fully invested beyond the mere physical, acknowledging unseen forces at play in everyday currents. Their sense of self was holistic.

Thus, when a haruspex – someone sensitive to these unseen forces and able to “read the signs”, pronounced upon those signs and their implications he or she did not imagine a personified entity (a “god”) as the causative agent. Rather, it was the workings of the whole, albeit beyond what we would later call factual understanding. Of course, then as now we tend to remember the correct pronouncements and overlook or forget the incorrect ones, unless they resulted in true calamity.

As Rome developed and expanded its power it absorbed the Etruscan culture, as was later to become its habit with all it encountered. But Roman “gods” were personified and real only in the eyes of the ignorant and simple minded. In fact, the term pagan, so heavily used by Christians to disparage pre-Christian thought even today, derives from the Latin pagani, a term referring to the uneducated and simple minded “country bumpkins”. It pointedly does not single out or refer to any particular belief system. The educated Romans, the real powers of State, placed the highest values on principles such as Wisdom, Loyalty, Bravery, Virtue and others. To them the Statue of Liberty would be what it is, an icon to call to mind the values for which it stands, not some physical depiction of a real woman holding a torch and perhaps demanding worship. It should be said that contemporary Greeks could be divided along the same lines: Those who understood iconic values and powers versus those who personified those values and powers.

During Imperial times the Romans banned astrology and other forms of divination on pain of death, especially when these were aimed at the Emperor. They were more advanced than some modern societies in understanding how ideas and claims can “go viral” and foment civil unrest or even rebellion.

On the other hand, the Hebrew culture, long and greatly influenced by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians and later the Greeks, blended the personified forces of Nature (the Genesis narrative is written in the plural) and added layers of characters such as mal’akh, the classical Hebrew word for messenger, an intercessor modeled on the Greek Hermes and known to modern Christians as an angel. Christians would carry this stratification further with saints and demons.

Unlike the Romans, or modern Christians, the Hebrews lived in total and complete immersion in their belief system. They were not, like modern Christians – secular materialists six and one half days a week and “spiritual” a few hours on the seventh. Every aspect of daily life, from eating to sexual intercourse, was calculated and performed within the prescriptions of the belief system. An example of how this daily immersion was misunderstood by the Greek writers of what was to become the Bible is the Lazarus story. In fact, there were many stories of people being “brought back from the dead”. The reason was simple: A Hebrew who fell away from the faith was a person with whom absolutely no interaction of any kind was possible. This person was then, effectively, dead to the community. And, these people were referred to as “dead”. Restoring a person into the faith was thus “raising him from the dead”. The Greek writers of the Gospels, ignorant of the Hebrew/Jewish meaning behind these stories, rendered one of them as a matter of fact history in support of their new prophet-deity, Jesus. The many other such stories were simply ignored or destroyed.

So what exactly were these Hebrew prophets we hear so much of? Basically, they were the precursors of our current media pundits. Our modern culture overlooks something: The developing Christian church scrambled through existing literature to find, and carefully edit, long standing writings that would seem to validate the lineage of Jesus and “predict” his coming. Thus, the emphasis on the writings shifted away from social commentary and toward claimed predictive value. Prophecy became synonymous with prediction. But in fact the great bulk of prophecy was astute and biting social commentary especially as it related to the ruling powers. Simple logic would dictate that when one enumerates the harmful fallacies and evil deeds characterizing a given society one moves to propose an unpleasant outcome. This does not mean one “sees” that outcome, as in a vision of a future state of being. It simply means the house is built badly, and badly built houses fall down. What dire visions were expressed in prophetic writings come off more as wishful thinking crafted through the magical mechanisms acceptable in the times.

Which brings us to our current state of affairs. Not for the first time in history, but certainly as an example of the best employment of prophecy, a hostile foreign power, not just a solitary home grown malcontent, analyzed the recent trends in government and society and accurately identified what, to many, are the harmful fallacies and evil deeds responsible for the failed dreams of those many. And, far more potent than just another deranged looking figure wailing on the street corner or scribbling manifestos in a cave, this foreign power channeled its messages through the greatest proliferation of media outlets the world has ever seen. Already having a compromised businessman in pocket, the foreign power astutely identified the “base” for this man, the pagani of modern America, and crafted the prophecies directly to them. His demagogic speeches, peppered with “dog whistles” to racism, fear, and alienation, appeared to be talking points set out for him to answer with, “I know better than (fill in the blank)” and “Only I can fix it”.

For their part, the media was distinctly unable to predict the disastrous consequences of their decision to reap the financial rewards of continually covering the ravings of this “prophet”. After all, who doesn’t want comic relief once in a while?

Sadly, the country, and even the world, is paying the consequences of a minority pagani victory: a bipedal tumor in the White House actively metastasizing throughout the entire political party which thinks it owns him.

I recently read an article explaining how many American fundamentalist/evangelicals – the modern pagani – actually see the current president as sent by God. I doubt that opinion influences him much, since he seems to have thought that from somewhere near birth. But I am interested in how he was about to sign a bipartisan government funding Bill which would have averted a shut-down yet refused at the very last minute after hearing from media prophets like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. Limbaugh and Hannity each flunked out of college in their Freshman year. I don’t know about Coulter. Obviously these prophets have the ear of a large percentage of the public, but more specifically his “base”. This tells me he either thinks they would rise up in his defense during an impeachment or he is serious about running for office again. He may be thinking a sitting President cannot be indicted for crimes, so he will try to sit until he’s too old or dies in office.

But who knows, I’m no prophet. I do find myself in a quandary when it comes to voting rights. The stakes have gotten far too high to just sit back and say everything will even itself out. It won’t. That foreign power mentioned above accurately assessed our population’s greatest vulnerability: The willingness to rally behind the next prophet.