The Encyclopedia of World Religions

prophecy S 357

People in the 19th and 20th centuries con tinued to claim to receive messages from gods. Prophets arose among the indigenous peoples of North America and Africa. Contact with European settlers and colonizers had produced hardships for these peoples; indeed, it had often destroyed their traditional ways of life, when it did not destroy the people themselves. Prophets spoke to these situations. They also addressed crises unrelated to European incursions. Prophets arose among European Americans, too. The best known may be Joseph Smith, who founded the L ATTER - DAY S AINTS , commonly known as the Mormons. Pentecostal Christians claim that people today may receive the gift of prophecy ( see P ENTECOSTALISM ). In 19th-cen tury Iran a resurgence of prophecy gave rise to the B AHA ’ I faith. Prophets generally deliver a message to a group or society rather than to a private individual. Some prophecies address the immediate concerns of a specific community, while others are more univer sal in scope. The prophets of ancient Israel relayed prophecies of the first kind. Earlier prophets—Mir iam, Deborah, Samuel, E LIJAH , Elisha—only spoke their words. The words of important prophets from the eighth century on—A MOS , H OSEA , I SAIAH , J ER EMIAH , E ZEKIEL —came to be written down. Jewish tradition holds that prophecy ended in 400 B . C . E . Other prophets have relayed messages that are universal. The most prominent examples are prophets who founded major religions: Z ARATHUS TRA , Mani, and M UHAMMAD . Both Mani and Muham mad saw themselves as conveying God’s final and complete revelation and therefore bringing the line of prophets to a close. Mani and Muhammad also saw Jesus as one of the prior prophets. Some may consider Jesus’ activities to be closer to those of a charismatic healer or a moral teacher. In the last half of the 20th century, psychol ogists carefully studied what happens “when prophecy fails.” Many people choose not to aban don the prophecy. They deal with the “cognitive dissonance” that results in a number of ways. For example, William Miller had predicted that Jesus was going to return in 1844. He did not, but rather than surrender the prophecy, leaders of the

rituals and festivals connected with them became prominent landmarks of the year. These still con tinue in such popular spring celebrations as P ASS OVER and E ASTER , and Thanksgiving in the fall. Out of archaic agricultural religion emerged the ancient religions and religious founders ( see FOUNDERS , RELI GIOUS ) of literate societies. Further reading: Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History (New York; Harper Torchbooks, 1959); Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Sam D. Gill, Beyond “The Primitive”: The Religions of Nonliterate Peoples (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1982); Stephan D. Glazier, Anthropology of Religion (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1997); Johannes Maringer, The Gods of Prehistoric Man (New York: Knopf, 1960). prophecy Words spoken by a human being on behalf of G OD . In common English a prophecy tells something that will happen in the future, often in the distant future. Christians have often, but not always, looked upon prophecy in this way. They have taken the prophecies recorded in the Hebrew B IBLE as referring to J ESUS . Some have also applied biblical prophecies to current events. In religion in general, however, prophecy also has a different meaning. It refers to messages that human beings transmit for a god or gods. Such messages may say something about the future, but they may not. Even when they talk about the future, they most often refer to events that are about to occur. Prophecy was particularly important in the religions of the ancient Near East. It was one way by which people learned the wills of the gods who had power over events. Religions that derive from the ancient Near East—Z OROASTRIANISM , J UDA ISM , C HRISTIANITY , M ANICHAEISM , and I SLAM —have important traditions of prophecy. People some times speak of prophets in H INDUISM , B UDDHISM , and east Asian religions, too. An example is the Japanese “prophet” N ICHIREN , although he was not a prophet in the sense that he communicated a message from a god.