There is a longstanding scholarly debate on the nature of prophecy in ancient Israel. Until now, no study has based itself on the semantics of the Hebrew lexeme nābîʾ (‘prophet’). In this investigation, I discuss the nature and function of prophecy in the corpus of the Hebrew book of Jeremiah. I analyse all occurrences of nābîʾ in Jeremiah and perform a close reading of three primary texts, Jeremiah 1.4–19, 23.9–40 and 27.1–28.17. The result is a detailed explanation of how prophecy works, and what it meant to call someone a nābîʾ in ancient Israel. Chapter one introduces the work and surveys the main trends in the research literature on prophecy. First I describe scholarly constructs and definitions of the phenomenon of prophecy. I then survey contemporary debates over the meaning of nābîʾ and the problem of ‘false’ prophecy. I also describe the methods, structure, corpus and aims of the investigation. In part one, I take all the occurrences of the lexeme nābîʾ in Jeremiah and analyse its relations to other words (syntagmatics and paradigmatics). For nābîʾ, the conceptual fields of communication and worship are significant. There is also a close semantic relation between nābîʾ and kōhēn (‘priest’). Part two analyses prophecy in the literary context of three key texts. Chapter three is a close reading of Jeremiah 1.4–19. Chapter four is a close reading of Jeremiah 23.9–40. Chapter five is a close reading of Jeremiah 27.1–28.17. In my analysis I situate these passages in the wider context of an ancient cultural worldview on divine communication. This brings to light the importance of legitimacy and authority as themes in prophecy. Chapter six concludes the work. I combine the results of the semantic analysis and close readings with conclusions for six main areas of study: (1) the function and nature of prophecy; (2) dreams and visions; (3) being sent; (4) prophets, priests and cult; (5) salvation and doom; and (6) legitimacy and authority. These conclusions explain the conceptual categories related to nābîʾ in the corpus. I then situate these findings in two current debates, one on the definition of nābîʾ and one on cultic prophecy. This thesis contributes to critical scholarship on prophecy in the ancient world, on the book of Jeremiah, and on prophets in ancient Israel. It is the first major study to analyse nābîʾ based on its semantic associations. It adds to a growing consensus which understands prophecy as a form of divination. Contrary to some trends in Jeremiah scholarship, this work demonstrates the importance of a close reading of the Masoretic (Hebrew) text. This study uses a method of a general nature which can be applied to other texts. Thus there are significant implications for further research on prophecy and prophetic literature.

It is widely acknowledged that the phenomenon of prophecy was not restricted only to ancient Israel, but is well attested throughout the ancient Near East, not least but in the textual material retrieved from the Mesopotamian capitals of Mari and Nineveh. A number of recent studies have utilized these sources to discuss the literary history and rhetorical content of Hebrew prophecy. The following thesis differs from these by undertaking to examine and compare the institution of prophecy as it occurs in the Mari, Neo-Assyrian, and Hebrew sources. -Prophecy‖ is considered to be a mode of non-inductive divination, separate from dreams, that, ideally, is denoted by the active intermediation of allegedly divine messages to a human audience. Thus, texts that record the direct speech of a deity and are communicated to an audience by a human intermediary-without recourse to dreams or technical divination-may potentially reflect prophecy in the Mari and Neo-Assyrian sources. Along with a selection of preexilic Hebrew oracular sources, the image of prophecy in all three corpora is independently examined along seven lines: Prompting Prophecy, Prophets, Prophetic Deities, Venues, Means of Delivery, Content of Oracles, and the Responses to Prophecy. Observations gleaned from this analysis are then compared and contrasted with one another to derive a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of prophecy in each source. Among other conclusions, it is observed that it is insufficient to simply silhouette Hebrew prophecy against its Mesopotamian counterparts, as if the images of prophecy in Mari and Neo-Assyrian sources themselves represent indistinguishable phenomena. Indeed, despite considerable overlap, they are not completely consistent. This result, it is argued, places in context some of the more glaring discrepancies between these sources and the image of prophecy in the Hebrew sources.

This project relies on two main bodies of work: the text and reception history of Moby-Dick. I argue that the novel’s prophetic insights unfold in its failure and resurrection. The reception history consists of early reviewers, biographers, and critics both hailing and discounting Moby-Dick’s literary value. The first section, “Proto-Modernist Melville: Specific Difficulty in Moby-Dick,” explores the peculiar difficulty inherent in the text of Moby-Dick, namely its divergent, evasive, and hieroglyphic properties. Chapter 2, “Reception: Nineteenth-Century Failure and Modernist Success,” chronicles the novel’s reception history, focusing largely on the critics of twentieth-century modernism. In “Moby-Dick as Prophetic Anticipation and Fulfillment,” I examine the link between the inherent difficulty found within Moby-Dick and its reception history. I propose that Melville’s novel theorizes its prophetic anticipation of literary modernism as well as Melville’s own authorial failure and redemption narrative.

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The social atmosphere in England at the end of the eighteenth century abounded with visions of new heavens and new earths propagated by political and religious writers. To some, the French Revolution was incontrovertible evidence that the Day of Judgement was near, and that the end of the century would coincide with the end of time. To others, elaborate mathematical calculations produced the same conclusion. Many writers became self-proclaimed prophets who depicted new revelation of the future in detail, and their audience became a culture of anticipation who eagerly awaited the fruition of prophecy and the descent of the New Jerusalem. William Blake was at once related and opposed to this Literature of Anticipation. The collection of illuminated texts known as his "Bible of Hell" adopts the familiar form of prophecy, but acerbically criticizes the action---or inaction---of Blake's contemporaries, and seriously questions the foundation of Christian theology and the beneficence of the Christian God. What emerges from Blake's Bible is a concept of prophecy that stresses an immediacy of vision in sharp contrast with the fruitless waiting of millennialist prophets, and an internal locus of responsibility that dissolves all ties to tyrannical authority.

The Chronicle of the thirteenth-century Franciscan friar Salimbene de Adam is filled with an abundance of self-referential passages. At almost every step of his narrative we are made extremely aware of Salimbene’s presence, as an author, a compiler of texts and anecdotes, a commentator and as an eye-witness to his age. Due to his ubiquitous ‘I’, Salimbene’s Cronica is often thought to be a subjective, biased and an ahistorical manifestation of traditional medieval universal histories. His supposed inappropriate self-interest has caused modern historians to mark both writer and text as a curiosity which defies any sort of logical definition. This mind-set has served not only to disconnect Salimbene and his Cronica from the historiographical, religious and social influences which pervaded his age, but importantly from the integral context provided by his work as a Franciscan friar. This thesis departs from treating Salimbene’s Cronica as a document to be mined for information about his world, an approach that largely eschews traditional methodologies associated with the study of chronicles. This thesis establishes the terms and boundaries of Salimbene’s authorship and contextualises them thoroughly with the performances associated with his duties as a Franciscan in the spiritual and social world of thirteenth-century Italy. Salimbene was primarily priest and preacher as he so often tells us. Viewing Salimbene’s authorial presence through the lens of his performances as an historian, preacher, confessor and priest reveals that his Franciscan ‘Experience’ informed and shaped noticeable narrative strategies which are associated with his efforts to establish and exercise authority both in his text and the world in which he lived. Rather than being a curious exception, Salimbene’s strong authorial persona was connected intricately to the changes in the social and spiritual milieus that irrevocably impacted upon the writing of history during the thirteenth century.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 260-267).

The exploration of Christian myths as literary resources in the work of Spanish poets writing between 1920 and 1944 has to date been attempted by scholars focusing on the works of individual poets, notably Luis Cernuda and Lorca. In this doctoral thesis, I aim to cover one of the few gaps in the criticism of this period by pointing to the use of Christian myths by a range of poets working with a similar intention, and within a common heritage. The Christian myths that I shall examine here, are approached in two different ways: firstly structurally, analysing them as Biblical references and fragments of myths –using Strauss’ nomenclature ‘Gross Constituent Units’—which appear decontextualised in many of the works, with a non-religious intention, that is, as a metaphor for something else. Secondly, thematically, by suggesting that there are four mythic topics common to many of the poets writing at those times, which are: creation by means of the word; the loss of Paradise; suffering; and the announcement of a new world to come. Through these myths, the poets reflect an evolution in their lives and Poetics. A phenomenological perspective is adopted in order to explain the role of the myths in the poems and to trace common grounds through the myth among the poets and as continuators of a Western poetic tradition since Romanticism (Prieto de Paula, 2002:59).The story line that these four topics constitute is very similar to the Romantic plot that M. H. Abrams had defined for the British Romantics and that Philip Silver and Derek Harris had already applied to the poetry of Luis Cernuda. This mirroring of the myth in the British and German Romantics has led the thesis towards a contextualisation of the work of the poets of 1927 in the modern Western literary tradition. They are seen in this specific context of practice as inheritors of a line which goes from European Romanticism, through the Modernism, Symbolism, Pure Poetry, and Avant-garde to the group of 1927, and therefore they are expressing typically modern topics by means of religious images and myths. As well as those conventionally studied as belonging to the “Generación del veintisiete”, the thesis discusses Ernestina de Champourcin, Elisabeth Mulder, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Ana María Martínez Sagi and Rosa Chacel, and proposes a new way of seeing the group of poets writing between the 20s and the Civil war and after this in the exile as a new expression of the same Modernity.

During the 1630s, congregations began to separate from the established Anglican Church forming new autonomous groups. This study examines separatist and Baptist women s writings from this period, as they struggled under the persecution of the religious authorities and under the increasingly strict rules of their congregations. These women s writings could not have been imagined without the proliferation of these new congregations, but, as well as providing a platform for women to publish, these groups imposed their own rules on what women could express in public. Considering separatist and Baptist women as part of their congregations is integral to an understanding of their work, and it is on this that this study focuses. Although their writings relate and analyse their own relationship with God, this is always presented as a sign of the progress of God s people as a whole. Through an analysis organised along doctrinal and congregational lines, this study draws attention to women who have received little or no literary critical (or indeed historical) attention, by considering the genres they utilised as part of their membership. Women writers of conversion narratives, in particular, have not received as much critical attention as more remarkable women who prophesied or who were associated with male writers. The voices of little-studied women like An Collins, Sarah Davy, Deborah Huish, Sara Jones, Susanna Parr, Katherine Sutton, Jane Turner, Anne Venn, the anonymous speaker of Conversion Exemplified and the contributors to the collections of John Rogers and Henry Walker deserve to be heard alongside the reported words of Mary Allein, Anne Harriman, Dorothy Hazzard, and Elizabeth Milbourne, and better known writers such as Anna Trapnel and Agnes Beaumont. The study will also draw on works that are not currently widely available, which have therefore received very little critical attention. Often compared to Deborah, the biblical Mother in Israel (Judges 5:7), women in these gathered churches were instrumental in bringing forth joy to their metaphorical children of Israel, by prophesying ways in which enemies of their congregations would face retribution and by continually strengthening church practices in time for the second coming of Christ. This study explores the various ways in which these mid-seventeenth-century women worked to strengthen their congregations through their writings, believing that they had been divinely inspired to edify those whose practice was wanting, and vindicate rightful walking in his name. During the 1630s, congregations began to separate from the established Anglican Church forming new autonomous groups. This study examines separatist and Baptist women's writings from this period, as they struggled under the persecution of the religious authorities and under the increasingly strict rules of their congregations. These women's writings could not have been imagined without the proliferation of these new congregations, but, as well as providing a platform for women to publish, these groups imposed their own rules on what women could express in public. Considering separatist and Baptist women as part of their congregations is integral to an understanding of their work, and it is on this that this study focuses. Although their writings relate and analyse their own relationship with God, this is always presented as a sign of the progress of God's people as a whole. Through an analysis organised along doctrinal and congregational lines, this study draws attention to women who have received little or no literary critical (or indeed historical) attention, by considering the genres they utilised as part of their membership. Women writers of conversion narratives, in particular, have not received as much critical attention as more 'remarkable' women who prophesied or who were associated with male writers. The voices of little-studied women like An Collins, Sarah Davy, Deborah Huish, Sara Jones, Susanna Parr, Katherine Sutton, Jane Turner, Anne Venn, the anonymous speaker of Conversion Exemplified and the contributors to the collections of John Rogers and Henry Walker deserve to be heard alongside the reported words of Mary Allein, Anne Harriman, Dorothy Hazzard, and Elizabeth Milbourne, and better known writers such as Anna Trapnel and Agnes Beaumont. The study will also draw on works that are not currently widely available, which have therefore received very little critical attention. Often compared to Deborah, the biblical 'Mother in Israel' (Judges 5:7), women in these gathered churches were instrumental in 'bringing forth' joy to their metaphorical children of Israel, by prophesying ways in which enemies of their congregations would face retribution and by continually strengthening church practices in time for the second coming of Christ. This study explores the various ways in which these mid-seventeenth-century women worked to strengthen their congregations through their writings, believing that they had been divinely inspired to edify those whose practice was wanting, and vindicate rightful walking in his name.

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