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In memory of Rabin's assassination, Conservative Jews around the world have been learning Mishnah with Rabbi Simchah Roth.

TRACTATE SANHEDRIN, CHAPTER ONE, MISHNAH FIVE (recap):

Only the [Supreme] Court of Seventy-One may judge a tribe, a false

prophet, or a High Priest. Only the Court of Seventy-One may declare

a political war. Only the Court of Seventy-One may add to the City or

the Courtyards. Only the Court of Seventy-One may appoint the courts

[of Twenty-Three] for the tribes. Only the Court of Seventy-One may

declare a township liable to extinction. Such a township may not be

declared if [situated] on the border nor three such townships - but

one or two is possible.

EXPLANATIONS (continued):

The Torah [Deuteronomy 17:2-5] stipulates a most severe response to

any incidence of idolatry:

Should you ever find among you, in one of the townships that God

is giving you, a man or woman who does what is wrong in God's eyes

by transgressing His covenant and going and worshiping other gods

and making obeisance to them - the sun, the moon or the whole

heavenly host ... - Should you ever hear of such a thing you must

make a thorough investigation, and if it proves true that such an

abomination was actually practiced in Israel, you shall take the

man or woman that did this evil out to your gates and stone them

to death."

In this translation I have given one Hebrew word two meanings.

Usually, in the book of Deuteronomy the term "she'arekha" [literally

"your gates"] indicates the towns and villages that are not part of

the city of Jerusalem. In other places in the Bible the same term

often is a synonym for the courts - since justice in biblical times

was usually administered in the plaza just inside the city gates. The

sages have understood the term in our passage as bearing the latter

meaning: "and if it proves true ... you shall take the man or woman

that did this evil out to your gates".

When thus construed the passage in the Torah takes on the following

meaning: when an incidence of idolatry is discovered in Israel it is

to be severely judged. However, granted that the term "she'arekha"

can bear the connotation of "courts", there seems to be nothing in the

passage that would suggest that this matter of "Dinei Nefashot" should

be any different than any other: "a man or a woman" accused of the sin

of idolatry, which bears the death penalty, should be judged in the

usual way, by a court of twenty-three. The Gemara [Sanhedrin 15b]

learns from this that only when a whole tribe gives itself over to

idolatry must it be judged differently from individuals accused of the

same sin. And that is the specific issue that is referred to by our

mishnah: should an entire tribe give itself up to the practice of

idolatry the matter must be judged by the Sanhedrin - and not by a

Court of Twenty-Three - since the Torah here seems to be making a

distinction between desecration by individuals and general desecration

by the public at large.

Our mishnah also requires the false prophet to be judged by the

Sanhedrin. The origins of this case are to be found in the Torah

[Deuteronomy 13:2-6]:

Should a prophet ... arise among you, telling you to worship gods

previously unknown to you, and give you a sign [that he is sent by

God] and that sign comes about - you shall not listen to that

prophet... God is testing you to see whether you [still] love Him

with all your heart and soul... That prophet or dreamer must die

since he has uttered falsehood about your God...

For the purposes of understanding our mishnah we could ignore the

practical problem that this passage raises, but that would be

intellectually dishonest. The passage seems to be recognizing an

acute problem, but the solution offered ("God is testing you") seems

very weak to modern sophistication. Judaism recognizes the

possibility of prophecy but offers no real tools for discriminating

between the "true" prophet and the "false" prophet. In our day and

age we are far removed from the prophetic mindset, so we find it

difficult to appreciate the status and methodology of the biblical

prophet - which seems to have been a completely thankless task!

It has been said on countless occasions previously that the biblical

prophet was very different from the prophets among other peoples of

the ancient world. Where prophecy in general seemed to have very

little separating it from modern "fortune-telling", Israelite prophecy

seemed to be much more akin to the modern "preacher". His or her task

- and there were prophetesses in Israel - was to teach God's word in

God's name, and not to foretell the future.

A long parenthetical note.

On the very few occasions that biblical prophets do give an indication

of the future they are widely off the mark! In chapter seven of the

book that bears his name, the prophet Isaiah counsels Ahaz king of

Judah to take no action against the invasion of his country by two

foreign armies. Israel and Aram, alarmed at the threat posed by

Assyria, try to create a tripartite alliance between Aram, Israel and

Judah in order to be a counterweight to withstand the mighty Assyrian

military machine aimed at removing all obstacles that lay in its path

to its ultimate objective, Egypt. Isaiah, politically very astute,

knows that such an alliance would never be countenanced by Assyria,

and that the invasion of Judah by the combined armies of Aram and

Israel in order to depose Ahaz and set up a puppet-king on the Judean

throne would be speedily dealt with by Assyria. By calling out his

armies Ahaz had nothing to gain and everything to lose. He would not

be able to withstand the two invading armies; so it would be more sage

to appear weaker than he really was, so that Assyria after dealing

with Aram and Israel might consider Judah so insignificant that she

could be by-passed rather than annihilated; in the meantime Assyria

would have dealt with the threat to Judah with short shrift. Now this

is what actually did happen, which just goes to show how politically

astute Isaiah was - but you don't have to be a prophet to draw those

conclusions, you have to be a political and military analyst. Ahaz is

- as we can imagine - very dubious about not calling out the militia,

so Isaiah tries to persuade him by "foretelling the future". The

prophet is told to approach King Ahaz and to tell him

"Be careful and be quiet; do not quake or be in fear of these two

smoking fag-ends - Retzin of Aram and ben-Remaliah [of Israel].

It is true that Aram and Ephraim [i.e. Israel] are plotting to

attack Judah, annex her and set up ben-Tav'al as [a puppet] king.

But God says, 'It shall not happen, it shall not be ... and within

sixty-five years Ephraim will no longer even be a people.' ...

Imagine that a young girl now pregnant gives birth to a son and

even calls his name "God is on OUR side"... before such a child

could know how to tell good from evil the lands of whose kings you

are in such mortal fear shall be desolate..." [Isaiah 7:1-17]

The war that is the background to the above passage is to be dated

around 735 BCE. Ephraim-Israel was annihilated by Assyria in 722 BCE

- thirteen years later and certainly not sixty-five! (Should we

perhaps consider that "sixty-five" is a scribal error for "six or

five"?) The prophet's second allusion is much nearer the mark: he

says that before a child born today would be old enough to tell right

from wrong both Aram and Ephraim will be history. What a pity that

this passage has been so misunderstood and so distorted for the past

two thousand years and made into a christological indication that it

never was in any sane person's mind - certainly not the prophet's.

To return to our topic. There was no outward sign that a prophet

could offer the general public to "prove" that he had a commission

from God. This means that the true prophet is in a cleft stick: he

cannot prove that he has a commission from God, and by the same token

he cannot disprove a similar claim from a false prophet. In our next

shiur we shall see some dramatic examples of this difficulty.

To be continued.

Shabbat Shalom to everybody.

5th April 1998/9th Nisan 5758

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Today's shiur is dedicated by Eva and Harry Pick in memory of Eva's

beloved mother, Pessa bat Shmu'el, Paula Hirshfield, whose Yahrzeit

falls today.

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TRACTATE SANHEDRIN, CHAPTER ONE, MISHNAH FIVE (recap):

Only the [Supreme] Court of Seventy-One may judge a tribe, a false

prophet, or a High Priest. Only the Court of Seventy-One may declare

a political war. Only the Court of Seventy-One may add to the City or

the Courtyards. Only the Court of Seventy-One may appoint the courts

[of Twenty-Three] for the tribes. Only the Court of Seventy-One may

declare a township liable to extinction. Such a township may not be

declared if [situated] on the border nor three such townships - but

one or two is possible.

EXPLANATIONS (continued):

10:

Our mishnah stipulates that someone charged with being a false prophet

(which, as we have already seen, was a capital crime in Torah

legislation) could be tried only before the Sanhedrin, the Supreme

Court of Seventy-One members. There is a common misunderstanding as

to the identity of a false prophet. Such a prophet was not a person

who claimed to be preaching the word of a deity other than God, for

such was termed an idolatrous prophet. The false prophet [Nevi

Sheker] was a person who claimed to have been appointed by God and

preached in God's name when no such commission had been given. Since

there was no outward sign that he could offer the general public to

"prove" that he had a commission from God, the true prophet was in a

cleft stick: he could prove that he had a commission from God, and by

the same token he could not disprove a similar claim from a false

prophet. Jeremiah is a perfect example of a prophet in such a

predicament. I make no excuses for now embarking on a considerable

excursus in order make some contribution to the understanding of the

nature of biblical prophecy.

11:

One of the major differences between the genuine prophet and the false

prophet, from our point of view, is a psychological one that can only

be appreciated with benefit of hindsight. The false prophets seem to

have been self-motivated and they seem to pursue their task with

enthusiasm. This is not the case with those genuine prophets whose

attitude to their status is known to us - and Jeremiah was a person

who revealed his innermost feelings with great pathos. We know of the

reluctance of Moses and of Isaiah to accept their commission [Exodus 4

and Isaiah 6], but Jeremiah can serve as a paradigm for them all. His

"call" is described in the very first chapter of the book that bears

his name. The title of his book [1:1-3] describes him as being of

priestly descent, from a village just to the north of Jerusalem. His

career is said to have begun in the 13th year of King Josiah and to

have continued until after the collapse of Judean independence and the

mass deportation to Babylon. We know from later chapters in his book

that Jeremiah was not among the deportees, and that he ended up as a

refugee in Egypt (one of the greatest ironies in the history of

Israelite prophecy). The Deportation to Babylon took place in the

summer of 587 BCE and Jeremiah's unwilling flight to Egypt must have

taken place within a year or two after that. Since Josiah ascended

the throne of Judah in the year 640/39 BCE, we can date Jeremiah's

call with considerable exactitude to the year 627 BCE. If his career

extended until after 587 BCE, he was publicly active for at least

forty years! This means also that he must have been a teenager or in

his early twenties at the most when he received his call.

12:

In verse 5 of Chapter One Jeremiah hears God telling him that he was

chosen to be a prophet before he was even born! The young man is

aghast and (like Moses) makes excuses why he shouldn't be required to

perform this task: "Oh dear God, I don't know how to speak publicly,

I'm only a boy" [verse 6]. "Don't you tell me that you are only a

boy! Wherever I send you you will go, whatever I order you will say!"

[verse 7]. Not a very encouraging start! God's next words are even

more discouraging: "Do not be afraid of them: I will be with you to

save you" [verse 8]. From this, Jeremiah can learn that there is,

indeed, something to be afraid of! (Very many times during his career

as a prophet he was in mortal danger; he was publicly humiliated by

the authorities, he was imprisoned, he was threatened, he was

ridiculed, and assassins - both paid and unpaid - threatened his life.

And all this is faithfully documented in his book.) The rest of the

chapter explains why Jeremiah will be in danger: his message will be a

socio-political one, and it will involve direct confrontation with the

government and the priestly hierarchy. (It is noteworthy that this

chapter is the Haftarah for the first of the three Sabbaths preceding

Tish'a b'Av.)

13:

We thus see that Jeremiah did not choose to become a prophet, and

would rather have declined the invitation. Being a prophet in

biblical Israel was not a pleasant occupation. There must have been

many times during his career that Jeremiah wanted to give up and just

become an "ordinary" citizen. We know of one such occasion, described

in chapter 20. Jeremiah had been preaching his usual message in the

Temple precincts, but his "usual" message was not one that the priests

could agree with. Socially, Jeremiah taught that if Judean society in

general did not start acting with greater moral and ethical identity

with God's law it could not survive and the very Temple itself would

be destroyed. The priestly caste held that God would never destroy

His own house, therefore Judah was inviolate regardless of the

behaviour of her citizens. Jeremiah's preaching on the occasion in

question must have been similar to his preaching elsewhere.

"Do you think you can rob, murder, fornicate, perjure

yourselves... and just come and stand before Me in this House

which bears My Name, and think that you are saved thereby in order

to [continue doing] all these atrocities?! Has this House become

then a den for reprobate wretches?..." [7:9-10]

This is a society that we can recognize.

On another occasion [29:26] one of Jeremiah's enemies had reminded the

priests in Jerusalem that they had the authority to incarcerate "every

madman and prophet" or to put them in the "Mahapechet". This was

exactly what happened on this occasion: one of the senior priests

arrested Jeremiah and put him into this contraption called a

"mahapechet". We may guess that this was some kind of stocks, but

that the victim was rotated in some way. When he is finally released

from this public indignity Jeremiah is outwardly unrepentant, but in

the privacy of his own room he pours out his anguished soul before his

God, whom he views as a tyrant, or as a rapist:

You seduced me, God, and I let myself be seduced! You were

stronger than me and it was You who prevailed. I am an object of

public derision all day long, everyone laughs at me. Whenever I

preach I have to cry "violence! pillage!" [instead of the nice

things I would like to say] So God's word has nothing but

reproach and shame for me all day long. So I tell myself that I

will no longer speak in God's name. But then there is a kind of

fire in my heart, a burning within my very bones; I become weak

from trying to hold it in and can no longer do so. I hear the

many slanders, terror on all sides. "You denounce him and then

we'll denounce him." All my so-called friends watching my every

step... [20:7-10]

This does not sound like a person who has taken this task of his own

volition. He is motivated, as he himself admits, by some inner

compulsion over which his rationality has no control. Thus far the

etiology of the genuine prophet.

To be continued.

9th April 1998/13th Nisan 5758

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Today's shiur is dedicated by Meredith Warsaw to celebrate her first

ever Reading from the Torah. Tizki le-Mitzvot [May you merit

performing more and more mitzvot].

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TRACTATE SANHEDRIN, CHAPTER ONE, MISHNAH FIVE (recap):

Only the [Supreme] Court of Seventy-One may judge a tribe, a false

prophet, or a High Priest. Only the Court of Seventy-One may declare

a political war. Only the Court of Seventy-One may add to the City or

the Courtyards. Only the Court of Seventy-One may appoint the courts

[of Twenty-Three] for the tribes. Only the Court of Seventy-One may

declare a township liable to extinction. Such a township may not be

declared if [situated] on the border nor three such townships - but

one or two is possible.

EXPLANATIONS (continued):

14:

Jeremiah's constant clashes with the authorities were because of two

issues, one religious and the other political - though the

classification of the points of division in these modern terms would

have been incomprehensible to his contemporaries: for them everything

was religious. The religious clash was because of Jeremiah's

insistence that the Bet ha-Mikdash in Jerusalem did not grant an

automatic immunity. The political division was no less full of

rancour. In Jeremiah's childhood world politics had been dominated by

Assyria, a country in the northern part of modern Iraq which boasted

(justifiably) the greatest empire the world had known. This empire

included, of course, the tiny and politically insignificant kingdom of

Judah. Suddenly, when Jeremiah was around 30 years old Assyria was

toppled by one of her under-princes, by the king of Babylon - a

country in the southern part of modern Iraq. (It was analogous to the

United States being unexpectedly conquered 'overnight' by Canada.) To

Judah's south was that other great power, Egypt; and it was obvious

that Egypt would challenge Babylon for world hegemony. Since Judah

lay between these two colossi, she would have to 'take sides'.

Jeremiah had been told already in his call (Chapter 1) that Babylon

would win this contest and that it was to Babylon that Judah must

submit if she wanted to survive. The governing circles in Judah chose

a policy of alliance with Egypt in the expectation that their 'big

brother' would deal with the Babylonian bully.

15:

The initial clash between Babylon and Egypt had resulted in a stand-

off. This was not because the two powers were really evenly balanced

- as the Judean government thought - but because in the midst of the

battle the crown-prince of Babylon one Neduchadrezzar, had to hurry

home because his father had just died. Within three or four years the

battle was resumed and Egypt was sent hurtling back within her

borders, never to sally forth from them again. In the winter of 598/7

BCE Nebuchadrezzar lay siege to Jerusalem. During the siege the king

of Judah died and was succeeded by his eighteen year-old son,

Jehoiachin (or "Coniah" as Jeremiah affectionately calls him).

Jehoiachin made a deal with Nebuchadrezzar: in exchange for the

independence of Judah the young king himself and the members of his

government and all the cream of Judean society would go into voluntary

exile in Babylon. Nebuchadrezzar clinched the deal and Jehoiachin's

uncle was appointed puppet-king in Judah while the young king and a

few thousand others went off to Babylon in March 597 BCE. This was a

terrible blow to the pro-Egyptian policy. (Jehoiachin was eighteen

years old when he went into voluntary incarceration for the sake of

his country, but he was not released until he was fifty-four years

old!) The new king of Judah lost no time in recreating the old policy

of reliance on Egypt, and when Zedekiah withheld tribute

Nebuchadrezzar descended upon Judah and crushed her (in the summer of

587 BCE). However, the incident that has prompted this long excursus

took place about seven years before this.

16:

Since nothing succeeds like visible publicity Jeremiah made himself a

yoke which he wore around his neck when appearing in public. (The

yoke was a kind of wooden collar that was slipped over the neck of the

farm animals and through this yoke were passed the reins which gave

the driver control over the animal.) This subtile message was not

lost on the public in general.

Thus says God, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel... I have

given all these lands into the hands of my servant Nebuchadnezzar

king of Babylon... All nations shall serve him and his son and

his grandson until the time of his land too arrives... Any

nation or kingdom that will not ... place its neck in the yoke of

the king of Babylon will die by sword, starvation and epidemic...

Do not listen to your prophets, magicians, dreamers, cloud-gazers

and conjurors who tell you not to serve the king of Babylon. They

prophesy falsely... [Jeremiah 27:4-10]

17:

The opposition was not to be outdone. In July of 594 BCE a certain

Chananiah challenged Jeremiah with his own weapons:

Thus says God, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: I break the

yoke of the king of Babylon! In two years' time I shall restore

to this place ... Jechoniah ben-Jehoiakim king of Judah with all

the Judean exiles that went to Babylon. I shall bring them back

here, says God, for I shall break the yoke of the king of Babylon

[28:2-4].

This was a magnificent piece of demagoguery. It neatly circumvented

Jeremiah's strongest card - that his teachings had already begun to be

fulfilled with the first deportation - and promised a reversal some

time in the future. This incident took place in the concourse of the

Bet Mikdash, Chananiah's home turf, and Jeremiah knew that if he

openly opposed Chananiah at that place and at that time he was liable

to be lynched! His riposte was brilliant:

And Jeremiah the prophet said, "Amen! May God do what you have

just prophesied and restore ... the exiles from Babylon to this

place [28:6].

Jeremiah then went on to warn Chananiah and his enthusiastic audience

that the proof of the pudding was in the eating: while God may well

reverse a prophecy of doom (for repentance is always a possibility),

He never has reversed a prophecy of good promise. Time would tell

which of these two prophets was lying. Note that Jeremiah has no way

of disproving Chananiah's claim to be a divinely-inspired prophet.

Chananiah, seeing a possible reversal of his success so far, makes a

brilliant move. He snatches the yoke from off Jeremiah's neck and

breaks it dramatically, exclaiming, "Thus says God: 'Thus shall I

break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon!'" The text at this

point relates rather laconically that "Jeremiah the prophet went on

his way". He had lost to a consummate artiste [28:10-11].

18:

All this had taken place in public. Jeremiah now seeks out Chananiah

privately and reproves him:

Jeremiah the prophet said to Chananiah the prophet, "Listen here,

Chananiah: God did not send you, and you have promised this people

a lie! Therefore, thus says God: 'I hereby send you from off the

face of this earth. This very year shall you die, because you

have spoken falsely in God's name'." Chananiah the prophet died

that year in the seventh month [September] [28:15-17].

In the good cliffhanger tradition we here note that this topic is to

be continued after Pessach. RMSG is taking its now traditional break

for the holiday and the next shiur will be on 20th April. A very

happy and Kasher Passover to everybody.

20th April 1998/24th Nisan 5758

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TRACTATE SANHEDRIN, CHAPTER ONE, MISHNAH FIVE (recap):

Only the [Supreme] Court of Seventy-One may judge a tribe, a false

prophet, or a High Priest. Only the Court of Seventy-One may declare

a political war. Only the Court of Seventy-One may add to the City or

the Courtyards. Only the Court of Seventy-One may appoint the courts

[of Twenty-Three] for the tribes. Only the Court of Seventy-One may

declare a township liable to extinction. Such a township may not be

declared if [situated] on the border nor three such townships - but

one or two is possible.

EXPLANATIONS (continued):

19:

Our mishnah stipulates that only the Great Sanhedrin was authorized to

try the case of a person accused of being a false prophet. We have

also followed many of the tribulations of the prophet Jeremiah in

order to discover the enormous difficulty that existed - for lay

people and prophet alike - when trying to "prove" that one was a true

prophet, or that someone else was a false prophet.

20:

Jeremiah himself stood trial as a false prophet! We have already had

occasion to mention his famous (or infamous - it would have depended

on your politics!) polemic in the concourse of the Bet Mikdash in

which he condemned the misplaced trust of a significant section of the

population in the Bet Mikdash. On 5th April last we learned that -

Jeremiah had been preaching his usual message in the Temple precincts,

but his "usual" message was not one that the priests could agree with.

Socially, Jeremiah taught that if Judean society in general did not

start acting with greater moral and ethical identity with God's law it

could not survive and the very Temple itself would be destroyed. The

priestly caste held that God would never destroy His own house,

therefore Judah was inviolate regardless of the behaviour of her

citizens. Jeremiah's preaching on the occasion in question must have

been similar to his preaching elsewhere.

"Do you think you can rob, murder, fornicate, perjure

yourselves... and just come and stand before Me in this House

which bears My Name, and think that you are saved thereby in order

to [continue doing] all these atrocities?! Has this House become

then a den for reprobate wretches?..." [7:9-10]

21:

But on that occasion Jeremiah's message had been further fortified by

"proof". Basically he claimed that his message, that Jerusalem was

doomed and that the Bet Mikdash would be destroyed, was not new, and

that the people's trust in the Bet Mikdash as some kind of fetish,

totem or magic charm was not justified by history.

"For go now to My place that used to be in Shilo, where I first

caused My Name to reside, and see what I did to it because of the

wickedness of my people Israel. Now then, because you have done

all these things - says God - and because even though I have

spoken to you repeatedly and often but you have not listened,

because I have called but you have not responded - therefore I

shall do to this House upon which My Name is called and in which

you place your trust, this place that I gave you and your

ancestors, just as I did to Shilo. And I shall cast you out just

as I have already cast out all your brethren, the whole progeny of

Ephraim [Jeremiah 7:12-15].

22:

This was strong stuff! Jeremiah was in fact saying that God had

already done what he (Jeremiah) threatened: the Tabernacle in Shilo

had been razed to the ground by the Philistines in the time of Samuel;

but that was some 400 years previously. But less than a century ago

God had wiped out the whole sister-kingdom of Israel (Ephraim) and had

exiled the "lost ten tribes" from the Land of Israel, never to return.

23:

In chapter 26 we learn of the aftermath of this inflammatory sermon.

The priests and prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah saying

all these things in God's House. When Jeremiah had finished

saying all that God had commanded him to tell the whole people,

the priests, prophets and all the people arrested him saying, 'You

must die! How can you prophesy in God's Name that this House

shall become like Shilo ...?' Thus the whole people ganged up

against Jeremiah in God's House [26:7-9].

But, miracle of miracles, salvation was at hand. Some other members

of the government (the opposition?) hurried from the royal palace to

the bet Mikdash to defend Jeremiah and save him from a lynching. They

managed to prevent the prophet's death by announcing that they - the

ministers of the government - constituted a court of law and that

Jeremiah must benefit from a just trial. The priests and prophets

then formally accused Jeremiah before the court of the capital crime

of being a false prophet. There was, they reasoned, no need to bring

further evidence, because 'you have heard with your own ears' what he

had to say - and what he had to say was palpably false nonsense!

Jeremiah responded that he could not be a false prophet since it was

God who had sent him 'to prophesy against this House and against this

city everything that you have heard' and 'if you kill me you will be

bringing [the shedding of] innocent blood upon your consciences'.

24:

Both arguments were, from our point of view, almost meaningless. The

prosecution were saying that since Jeremiah had said something that

"everyone" knows is axiomatically false, he must be lying, he must be

a false prophet. Jeremiah's defence was equally weak: I cannot be a

false prophet because it is God who has commissioned me! The

situation was saved for Jeremiah by precedent being brought to the

attention of the court: about one hundred years ago there was another

prophet, Micah [the biblical Micah] who said things similar to what

Jeremiah was accused of saying [Micah 3:12]. Had good king Hezekiah

and the then people of Judah accused Micah and executed him? Of

course they did not, because they had been God-fearing... [Jeremiah

26:7-19]

25:

I think that at this point we can leave our discussion of the false

prophet. I can recall no such trial during the period of the second

Bet Mikdash, and note that even if Jesus of Nazareth was tried before

the Sanhedrin on such a charge - which does not seem to me to fit the

facts as described in the Gospels - nevertheless, that could delegated

its functions to the secular arm.

DISCUSSION:

At the beginning of our discussion on the problematica of prophecy is

wrote that there was no outward sign that a prophet could offer the

general public to "prove" that he had a commission from God.

David Bockman writes:

I don't wholly agree with this. We know from Tanach itself that there

were guilds of prophets, sometimes even roaming bands of prophets. We

see that Saul is mistaken for a prophet, and Bilaam goes into

prophetic 'fits', that Moses' face somehow radiated or looked scary

enough he had to cover it with a veil so as not to frighten the

Israelites, and that a 'man' who appeared in fire to Samson's mother,

was mistaken for a prophet. Add that to the stories of Elijah and

Elisha in their dealings with people around them, and it seems clear

that prophecy, per se, was not at all uncommon, and certainly not

unknown.

How many of these people were 'true' prophets, and how many 'false'? I

think it unfair to project back from Rabbinic times, after prophecy

had officially ended, to the Biblical period when 'prophecy' abounded.

It involved poetry, counseling, politics, musar, and not a small dose

of theater. It also involved, sometimes, speaking aloud the

tetragrammaton, which the run-of-the-mill Joe Blow simply did not do.

Just his desire to speak/invoke God BY NAME (considered a life-

threateningly dangerous act if not done with purity of heart and

motive) was the surest sign of authenticity (ne'um YHWH).

But the tannaim didn't know from all this. They had no parallel

ancient near Eastern texts. They no longer worried about prophecy,

except as an intellectual issue. And certainly regarding the make-up

of the Sanhedrin for judging such people, they had authority to rule,

should anyone have been foolish enough to proclaim himself or herself

a prophet at this late time.

TRACTATE SANHEDRIN, CHAPTER TEN (ELEVEN), MISHNAH FIVE:

The false prophet is one who prophesies about something which he has

not heard and which has not been spoken to him: his death in is the

hands of man. But he who suppresses his prophesy, he who dismisses

the words of a prophet, or the prophet who transgresses his own words

- their death is in the hands of heaven, as it is said, "I shall

demand of him".

EXPLANATIONS:

At the start of this present chapter we were given a list of those

offences whose punishment is death by strangulation. The list

included "a false prophet" and it is the false prophet who is the

subject of our present mishnah. Since the next mishnah will have as

its subject the idolatrous prophet it is perhaps worth while to

distinguish between the two. The false prophet is a Jew who claims to

have had a revelation from God when he has not had such a revelation.

The idolatrous prophet is a Jew who claims to have had a revelation

from a deity other than God (which is a self-evident falsehood by a

biblical standard). Both of these situations are fraught with

problems for the objective person.

The source of the case of the false prophet is in the Torah:

A prophet who shall dare to utter in my name that which I have not

commanded him to say ... that prophet shall die" [Deuteronomy

18:20].

Since the Torah does not specify which of the four modes of execution

applies to the false prophet we can apply the general rule that we

learned in RMSG of January 12th last: "a rule of exegetical thumb

states that wherever the Torah does not stipulate the specific mode of

execution to be used, strangulation applies". Our mishnah also adds

three other offences and they form the Seifa [last section] of our

mishnah. At this stage we shall concentrate on the Reisha [first

section] of our mishnah.

The verse which comes immediately after the verse that we have quoted

above introduces the problematica of the situation: "And should you

ask yourself how can we know what which God did not say..."

[Deuteronomy 18:21]: how can anyone know who is a true and who is a

false prophet? Both claim to speak in the name of God and both seem

to use similar language and oratorical techniques. We cannot say that

this is not "our" problem and that we can "safely leave it to God",

since, as our mishnah states quite clearly, the doom of the false

prophet is left to the human court to execute.

Before we continue, I am going to make a short excursus into the

problematica of the prophetic phenomenon. To start off with, let us

examine the case of one true prophet - Jeremiah. Much of the material

here was originally posted by me on RMSG in January 1998, but I am

going to repeat it 'in toto' for two reasons: firstly, as long as the

search apparatus of our web archive is out of commission it would be

foolish of me to refer people to it; secondly, many people are

constantly joining our group and they would have no access to the

material - not even from memory.

Since there was no outward sign that he could offer the general public

to "prove" that he had a commission from God, the true prophet was in

a cleft stick: he could prove that he had a commission from God, and

by the same token he could not disprove a similar claim from a false

prophet. Jeremiah is a perfect example of a prophet in such a

predicament. One of the major differences between the genuine prophet

and the false prophet, from our point of view, is a psychological one

that can only be appreciated with benefit of hindsight. The false

prophets seem to have been self-motivated and they seem to pursue

their task with enthusiasm. This is not the case with those genuine

prophets whose attitude to their status is known to us - and Jeremiah

was a person who revealed his innermost feelings with great pathos.

We know of the reluctance of Moses and of Isaiah to accept their

commission [Exodus 4 and Isaiah 6], but Jeremiah can serve as a

paradigm for them all. His "call" is described in the very first

chapter of the book that bears his name. The title of his book [1:1-3]

describes him as being of priestly descent, from a village just to the

north of Jerusalem. His career is said to have begun in the 13th year

of King Josiah and to have continued until after the collapse of

Judean independence and the mass deportation to Babylon. We know from

later chapters in his book that Jeremiah was not among the deportees,

and that he ended up as a refugee in Egypt (one of the greatest

ironies in the history of Israelite prophecy). The Deportation to

Babylon took place in the summer of 587 BCE and Jeremiah's unwilling

flight to Egypt must have taken place within a couple of months after

that. Since Josiah ascended the throne of Judah in the year 640/39

BCE, we can date Jeremiah's call with considerable exactitude to the

year 627 BCE. If his career extended until after 587 BCE, he was

publicly active for at least forty years! This means also that he

must have been a teenager or in his early twenties at the most when he

received his call.

In verse 5 of Chapter 1 Jeremiah hears God telling him that he was

chosen to be a prophet even before he was born! The young man is