Prophecy and Divination
Prophecy and divination are historically related to each other more closely than is generally assumed.[13]Apart from ancient kinds of prophetic literature, the Mesopotamian theology of signs, in which everything in the world can be viewed as a part of divine revelation, is persistent in different Middle Eastern theological schools using in their writings a Semitic idiom.
The word for “sign” in Aramaic is atha, in Hebrew ’oth, and in Arabic aya, all of which are etymologically related to the Akkadian word ittu “sign, omen.” In Jewish writings of the Second Temple, there are plenty of references to signs and portents, which can be understood only by those skilled in interpreting them. For many theologians, the model interpreter of the divine signs is the apocalyptic authority Enoch, a figure modeled on Mesopotamian Enmeduranki. In Jewish apocalyptic literature, reading the signs of God mostly denotes the ability to predict the course of the world’s eschatology. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the divine or demonic beings reveal their warnings from time to time throughout the course of history. In his Bellum Judaicum (6.288-310) he enumerates the omens which preceded the destruction of the second Temple: a stationary comet, an abnormal light, a cow that gave birth to a lamb, a temple gate that opened automatically, chariots and armed men flying through the sky, a peasant who for some years prophesied disaster, etc. In Josephus’ thought, the demonic communicated with men through omens, signs, portents, dreams, and prophecy, which are all closely related to one another (Smith 1987: 246).The reputed theologians of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions gave much higher regard to prophecies because of their alleged origin in monotheistic belief, and disregarded divination as pertaining to polytheistic past. However, Jewish, Eastern Christian, and Muslim traditions still enjoin believers to “ponder” or “reflect” on the natural world and its movements in order to discover the signs of God’s omnipotence and appreciate his majesty.
In 3 Enoch the terms such as “beholding,” “seeing,” and “looking” signify the act of discerning inner nature of things, accessing divine secrets about God’s cosmic creation and plans (Arbel 2008: 310-11). In other texts, the ancient Mesopotamian divinatory traditions were modified by rejecting the practical side of omen divination, its apodoses, and every historical or natural portent became a sign of God’s greatness. For the Babylonian priests everything could be read as a sign, and possibly everything becomes a sign of God for a monotheist, to the extent that all verses of the Quran are called by the term aya, just like all entries were called ittu in the Mesopotamian omen compendia. In the Islamic traditions, the multiplicity of the signs from God is successfully fitted in to tell the stories of Oneness:All the outward manifestations, the different forms of revelations, are signs... the human being can only seize the hem of His favor and try to find the way to Him through His signs.. The plurality of signs is necessary to veil the eternal One who is transcendent and yet “closer than the neck vein” (Sura 50:16); the plurality of signs and the Unicity of the Divine belong together. The signs show the way into His presence, where the believer may finally leave the images behind (Schimmel 1994: xv).
The God in the Quran has some fiery manifestations of power, among his signs are thunderstorms and lightning (Sura 30:24), and thunder gives him praise (Sura 13:13). One finds the similar theology of thunder with Syriac authors, and it ultimately derives from Babylonian theology of Adad, the god of thunder and the giver of oracles and signs (see Annus 2006: 6-12). Often these signs were inscribed into the physical appearance of the world as cuneiform script, where Mesopotamian scholars could read them (see Frahm, this volume). A comparable concept is found in Jewish mysticism, where the creative power of the Hebrew alphabet establishes a connection of all worldly phenomena to certain letters.
In the book of 3 Enoch, the letters are even conceived as something inseparable from natural phenomena. The book devotes considerable attention to presenting systematic lists of natural phenomena filled with meanings — terrestrial and celestial or meteorological phenomena, including stars and constellations, lightning and wind, thunder and thunderclaps, snow and hail, hurricanes and tempests (Arbel 2008: 309). When Enoch-Metatron is endowed with divine secrets in heaven, he receives the letters, by which these phenomena were created, which also means knowledge and power over them. The observing of letters implied beholding of the natural phenomena, on which God’s secrets are inscribed and codified as signs (Arbel 2008: 309). These secret signs were also written on the heavenly Pargod, the curtain that separates God from the rest of heaven and which, like the Mesopotamian Tablet of Destinies, contains the hidden knowledge about divine decisions and plans regarding the course of human history (Arbel 2008: 312-13). Likewise, for Assyrian and Babylonian scholars, cuneiform signs were of divine origin and “capable of conveying, on various levels, completely incontestable eternal truths” (Frahm, this volume).