Prophecy as performance

These poetic visionary and symbolic references were not originally restricted to subjective states and verbal behavior, but made manifest in the physical acts of the prophets. There is widespread agreement that such passages do not represent merely linguistic activity, either spoken or written, but the actual performance by the prophets of deeds of powerful theatrical expression:

In the beginning of the reign of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord. Thus the Lord said to me: Make yourself a yoke of straps and bars, and put them on your neck. Send word to the king of Edom, the king of Moab, the king of the Ammonites, the king of Tyre, and the king of Sidon by the hand of the envoys who have come to Jerusalem to King Zedekiah of Judah. Give them this charge for their masters: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: This is what you shall say to your masters: It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the people and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomsoever I please. Now I have given all these lands into the hand of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him even the wild animals of the field to serve him. All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson, until the time of his own land comes; then many nations and great kings shall make him their slave.

(Jer 27: 1-7)

Later, the prophet Hananiah took the yoke from the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, and broke it, saying that this is how their God will break the yoke of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon from the neck of the nations. Ezekiel, under divine inspiration, of course, took a brick and used it to portray the city of Jerusalem, putting siege-works against it, and building a siege-wall around it, complete with battering-rams all around (Eze 4: 1—8). He shaved his hair and beard with a sword, dividing the hair into thirds, burning one third, striking another with the sword and scattering the remainder to the wind (Eze 5: 1—4). Isaiah was inspired to “loose the sackcloth from your loins and take your sandals oft your feet" and did so, walking naked and barefoot for three years

as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians as captives and the Ethiopians as exiles, both the young and the old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

(Isa 20: 1-4)

Current understanding is that at least some of these acts were performed in a sacred theater of the inspired, their performance expressing the understanding of the shaman/prophets and communicating it to the people in such a way as to enchant the attention of the audience, communicate the understanding of the performers, and influence the behavior of the audience. This would be entirely consistent with the sort of religious ritual that is suggested by the Covenant enactments indicated in the Book of Genesis (15: 7—16). Such ritual enactments conform precisely to Ellen Dissanayake’s idea of art as ritual drama functioning to “facilitate or sugarcoat socially important behavior" (Dissanayake 1988, 167). Although “sugarcoating” here seems more than a little euphemistic, such behavior nonetheless made “socially important activities" special, it directed attention to them, and ensured their performance and persistence.

Bernard Lang and Joseph Blenkinsopp emphasize “that Ezekiel was a poet and literary artist in a more self-conscious way than any of the other prophets" (Blenkinsopp 1983, 200, quoted by Lang 1986, 297). Lang takes the verse Ezekiel 33: 32—“To them you are like a singer of love songs, one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument"—

to imply that the prophet is not only compared to a public performer but actually did sing songs and did play on an instrument in order to attract and present his message to a crowd. As a performer the prophet was no different from other ancient bards, storytellers, and street musicians.

(Lang 1986, 297. n.3)

Not only that, but Lang seeks to "demonstrate that the prophet was creatively receptive to foreign ideas” (Lang 1986, 298), specifically in this case, to “the Zoroastrian background to the resurrection passage of chapter 37" (Lang 1986, 298). Although

[i]n the nineteenth century biblical scholars tended to consider most of the symbolic acts not as actual performances, but as parables ... Twentieth century authors ... are convinced of the actual performance of these acts, emphasizing the realistic, dramatic nature of the accounts.

(Lang 1986, 298, 299)

Twenty-first century authors continue to do so. The Book of Ezekiel tells us that Ezekiel performed at least another ten acts in the same category, and Lang argues “that the so-called symbolic acts, especially those of Ezekiel, should be understood as public, street-theatre like performances” (Lang 1986, 299, 300). Lang and Blenkinsopp were not the first to read the prophets this way. In the late 19th century Ernest Renan (1823—1892) saw the prophet as “a journalist who works in the open air, who reads out his article in person and accompanies it with mime, indeed often converting it into a sign language" (Renan 1953, 574, quoted by Lang 1986, 300 n.14). Wolfram von Soden, in 1955, likewise suggested that “mimical productions played a far greater role in worship as well as in politics and popular entertainment than ancient literature allows us

The art of Biblical prophecy 237 to discern" (von Soden 1955, 156, quoted by Lang 301). Although such symbolic acts were primarily geared to engaging the attention of the audience and thereby modifying their behavior, according to Lang, “the symbolic act does not exclusively serve as a medium of instruction. The act pre-imitates the future, that is, it influences and shapes future events simply by being performed" (Lang 1986, 303). This is precisely the complex that I suggest. The Hebrew Prophets were “inspired performance artists” who used all the arts, including initially martial arts, later restricted to poetry and the verbal arts as well as music and dramatic performance in order to accomplish their role as diviners, commending and influencing specific behavior by artfully expressing their own emotional reaction to the unseen agency in the environment. It would be equally true that the priests of the neo-Babylonian Empire were performance artists, but the emotional impact of their performances relied upon their massive sanctuaries and monumental statuary, whereas the street theater of the colonized population under the influence of the Prophets, initially in competition with that mode of Temple ritual, depended perforce upon more portable, spontaneous, and flexible media. Bereft of the first Temple (usually thought destroyed in the Babylonian assaults of 587 or 586 BCE) the Hebrew culture would be increasingly dependent upon and shaped by such performative prophecy.