B5 T5 UC-NRLF ^B ^'=]3 675 xrbe mntversiti? of Cbtcaao THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF PROPHECY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (the graduate divinity school: department of old testament literature and interpretation) BY DAVID EDWARD THOMAS Reprinted, with additions, from The American Journal of Theology, Vol. XVIII, No. 2 Chicago, 1914 Ube "Clnipersits ot Cbicaao THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF PROPHECY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (the graduate divinity school: department of old testament uterature and interpretation) BY DAVID EDWARD THOMAS Reprinted, with additions, from The American Journal of Theology, Vol. XVIII, No. 2 Chicago, 1914 s 1< THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF PROPHECY The psychology of religion is no longer a new field of research. Within the last two decades, it has been pursued from various points of approach, and no one who has followed its development can question its contribution to the clearer understanding and deef)er appreciation of reUgion in its relation to the whole mental life. During these years both psychology and religion have been sub- jected to new scrutiny; a psychological method of dealing with religion has added zest in both fields of inquiry, and has produced interesting and stimulating results. These researches and their results have been of great practical value, especially in the province of child and adolescent religion. But comparatively little has been done in the way of a scientific analysis and an attempted explanation of the special and higher forms of religious experience, as exhibited by the prophet or the mystic. The hterature in this field is still scanty. Professor Ames' in his recent volume devotes a chapter to the psychology of religious genius. A. B. Davidson' has dealt specifically, though briefly, with some of the phases of this topic. George Adam Smith^ in his commentaries on the prophets drops interesting hints of the possibilities in this line of research. Two more recent small volumes by Kaplan"* and Joyce^ show the tendency of the times. These books are in the nature of essays oA the subject of prophetic psychology, rather than systematic and exhaustive treatments. Among the Germans even less has been done from the truly psychological point of approach. Giesebrecht* and Kurtz^ have » The Psychology of Religious Experience. 'Old Testament Prophecy, and articles on (i) "Prophecy and Prophets," (2) "Jeremiah" in ffl>5. J Expositor's Bible. s The Inspiration of Prophecy. * The Psychology of Prophecy. ' Berufsbegabung der Propheten. » Psychologic der vorexilischen Prophetic. I t%r\r^A riO 2 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY written monographs on prophetic psychology, and Duhm* and Comill' in their commentaries have shown something of what might be accomplished by a thorough working of this field.* But it remains for this interesting, not to say tantalizing, subject to receive the attention it deserves and it will not be strange if the next wave of interest in both the Old Testament and the New centers along this line, for in many ways it furnishes a more engross- ing and productive angle of approach to the literature than does the purely historical. Historical criticism has by no means completed its task, but it may be that it has now come to such a stage of maturity that it is willing to take to itself an ally that will help it to achieve more positive results. For such a position psychological analysis and explanation is a contender. This paper is an attempt to present a method of approach to the religion of the prophet. The method purports to be psychological and to distinguish between those materials which may be entered and considered in a scientific evaluation of so elevated a type of religious experience, and those which may not. At our basis lies the historical method and we must heed well all its findings; but on this basis we make a new evaluation — the psychological — which is even more exacting in its demands for accuracy and balance of judgment. It goes without saying that such a program as is here presented is not merely theoretical. It could not be put forth at all without considerable concrete study in the field of both psychology and prophecy. In testing out our method two ways of dealing with the prophetic materials are open. One way is to draw illustrations for any particular thesis in the process of development of the program from the whole range of prophetic literature. Naturally this is the easier, for it furnishes a much wider choice of concrete illustrations, and by their use the method can be rounded out much more satis- factorily in its practical application. The other and harder method of application is to take the whole life of a single prophet, so far as the sources furnish us the materials, and work it out in a more human and intelligible picture. In such a study lies the particular value of this program of prophetic experience, if it turns out to have » Commentaries on the Prophets. * Commentary on Jeremiah. » Halscher's Profeten (1914) appeared too late for use here. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY 3 a particular value. It is an ambitious program and is not content to give up the pursuit of so high a form of religion until scientific research has done its work and the laws of cause and efifect in the religious realm have been applied. It is not necessarily an attempt to prove that all forms and degrees of religious genius can be analyzed and defined in terms of modern psychology, but rather a willingness to go as far as facts carry us and then to make prop>er and valid inferences on the basis of such facts. If there remain an unexplained residuum, we have the assured belief that psy- chology will not be discredited, just as we are led to believe that religion will not suffer if psychological science is able to give a reasonable explanation of some of the phenomena that formerly were considered too sacred to be scrutinized. Two preliminary tasks arise for one who applies this or any similar program — tasks arising from the nature of the prophetic materials. The first pertains to the interpretation of the literary form in which the prophet gives expression to his experience. A casual perusal of the prophetic books will show that all the prophets were conscious of what they interpreted to be a divine compulsion; the most common form of the manifestation of this extra-human influence is visions and voices. The question raised here is not one as to the reality of the experience, but one as to whether the form in which it is found is Uteral or figurative. Manifestly, we cannot settle the question a priori, nor even by appeal to the facts in the case of one or two prophets. It is a question which must be raised afresh as we approach the record of each individual prophet. All that can be done here, then, is to indicate what would seem to be a scientific procedure in addressing ourselves to the problem. The problem, then, is: Are vision and voice a convenient literary form inherited from the past or developed for the exigency by means of which to give vivid, outward expression to the inner experience, or are they a genuine and real part of the experience ? Unless we recognize this problem, all sorts of complications may arise in attempting a reasonable exegesis. From this point of view, each seer presents his own problem. They cannot all be treated according to one criterion. Amos, Isaiah, and Ezekiel present each his own pecuUarity of vision form, and in each case a faithful effort 4 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY must be made to distinguish between that part which is mere figure or framework, consciously so used, and that which for the prophet was an integral and real part of his experience. This will require the most subtle literary and psychological criteria, but the attempt is worth making if we are to get at the core of the matter. The second preliminary consideration, viz., the question of the sources, may be passed with a word. We have fallen upon perilous times in matters of historical criticism, and in the m^lee none has suffered more than some of our most endeared Old Testament prophets. In the present status of criticism, it is impossible to be exact in the use of hterary materials. The only safe plan to pursue is to take the minimum of authenticated sources as our basis of pro- cedure, and even then we are not sure that some of these will not be discredited tomorrow. Yet there is some comfort in the fact that the psychological reconstruction suffers less in these uncertain days than the historical; for history has to do with exact facts and with- out them it cannot proceed far, while the psychological method gets its chief value in the study of the bold outlines of a life. This is not to say, however, that it is not closely conditioned by historical fact, at every step. We undertake now a plan for the genetic study of the prophet's experience and distinguish four principal topics, as follows: (i) antecedents and inheritances; (2) environment; (3) temperament; (4) the prophetic experience. I. THE prophet's ANTECEDENTS AND INHERITANCES In the light of biological and psychological science, it is becom- ing ever more certain that the roots of our lives, our beliefs and practices, are deeply imbedded in the past; that the average individual is what he is largely because of what he has hved through in racial history, however narrowly or widely those terms may be interpreted; and that even the most extraordinary person is not wholly free from this enslavement to the past. There are ever fewer and fewer geniuses, in the sense that they transcend and defy explanation in terms that can be accounted for. Therefore, it will not be strange if we find some of the prophet's peculiarities in these inheritances. He may have passively accepted them and been THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY 5 unconsciously guided by them, or he may have analyzed their influence upon his times and reacted against them. A study of these antecedents will have to do with both the form and the content of the prophet's message. What, then, has the previous age con- tributed to the form of prophecy in its golden age? This will require a complete study of the earlier forms of prophecy in Israel, as well as of the form of prophetic messages among other and earlier peoples; in other words, a genetic study of the form of prophecy, for rudiments of form are likely to persist even after the content has completely changed. It is well to note that here we are deahng with a different question from the one raised in the preliminary study. There we asked: Was the form in which the prophet couched his message a true facsimile of that message as it came to him or was he consciously using literary form as the vehicle of his thought? Here we ask the still more ultimate question: What influence had the form of earlier prophecy on the form in which the prophet felt bound to receive his message in order that it might be authentic ? Did his inheritance along this line dictate to him the psychological condition in which his mind must be placed, in order that he might be receptive to the divine message, or did he strike out rather boldly and independently, and largely disregard the form dictated by tradition; in short, was he able to distinguish between form and essence; e.g., did trance and ecstasy so f>ersist in the time of Amos and Isaiah that they were sought by these men as genuine prophetic experiences, as forms that were considered a necessary and integral part of the message; or, on the other hand, has the prophet here supervened his inheritance, and developed a new con- ception of prophecy in which the essential element is not, in any degree, linked to form, but consists entirely in its_ ethical and religioi LS conten t, regardless of the way in which it may have been intuited; or, in the third place, does he fall somewhere between these two extremes, showing considerable progress toward an ethical rehgion inwardly conditioned, but not being able entirely to free himself from inherited and conventional forms ? Then what have inherited ideas had to do with conditioning the prophet's mind for his work, either by hindering or by helping? Here we must take into survey the religious conceptions of the 6 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY pre-prophetic age and scrutinize them as carefully as possible. It is not difficult to see that there was great progress in the purification and clarification of religious ideas in the two centuries preceding the great prophets, and, although Amos comes upon us suddenly and seemingly without proper introduction, with his independent social and ethical ideas, yet we may find, on closer analysis, that in him and his successors many ideas that were already in process of crystallization have come out into the clear Ught, fostered by their vigor and insight, and have entered more or less fully into the currents of their common thoughts. This fact could no doubt be much more completely shown than is commonly thought, if our authentic sources for this period were not so few. It is reasonable to beheve that there were currents of ethical thought preceding Amos, of which we have scarcely any direct hint. It may be possible to trace these out more clearly than has yet been done, even with the meager sources at our disposal. Such a study would scarcely have warrant were it not for the fact that we have a growing appreciation of the debt each generation owes to its predecessors. Such a study, if in any degree successful, will not detract one whit from the greatness of these great men. They will still retain a sufficient meed of praise; they stand out on the basis of what they were and what they did, but it will help us to under- stand them better and thus to appreciate them the more. An examination of these inherited views would include such topics as the pre-prophetic or (in the case of later prophets) the earlier prophetic views of God; the cultus; the ethical element in religion in this period; the prophet and his work, his relation to politics and government, his attitude toward the innovations of advancing civilization, etc. n. THE prophet's ENVIRONMENT Here, at the outset, it is necessary to define terms, so as to make a clear distinction between the matter treated in the foregoing topic and that which is to be included here. In the above section, we attempt to deal with influences which persist from a former age. Here, we desire to classify those influences which arejj£yr, which take origin in the prophet's own time, owing to political and social THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY ^ changes and exigencies. Here again it is not incumbent upon us to find the prophet entirely a child of his own times, else he would not be worthy of special study; but when we do study the conditions with which he was surrounded and find him in part influenced by them, in part withstanding them, we understand him the better for so doing. And this juxtaposition of his own views to those current among his people may be one of the secrets of the development of his character. If great men are the product of great times, then the inference is clear, if we would learn the secret of the men them- selves. Was the prophet a nationalist, and, if so, was he one for the same reason that his fellow-Israelites were, or did his insight into conditions drive him to a new interpretation of the political signifi- cance of his nation ? Was it the political influence or was it the social that bulked largest in the making of Amos and the content of his scathing sermons? What were the peculiar circumstances, within and without, that gave Hosea his hot, tender message of divine love ? What do the messages of Isaiah and Jeremiah owe to the political and religious background of their day? Do their differing environments throw any light upon the fact that Micah prophesied with no uncertain tone the fall of Jerusalem, while Isaiah repeatedly held to the inviolability of the Holy City, even though he was convinced that the surrounding country districts would be devastated ? In a word, to what extent do the confines of time and place and circumstance limit the horizon of the seer and prescribe the materials which shall furnish content and coloring for his message ? In a study of this character, not only do we learn what contribution an age makes to a man's thinking and doing, but, what is more important, we get here, in the clash between ideals and actual conditions which must be faced, the breeding-ground of per- sistence, vigor, character, and message, by means of which the man makes his contribution to his age and all subsequent ages. The environment of home, church, school, society, and country are not a negligible factor in any life, however extraordinary or pecuHar. ni. THE prophet's temperament T emperame nt is rather an elusive term when its analysis is attempted, but unless we can deal with it in more or less satisfactory 8 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY fashion, some secret of prophetic greatness may escape us; imder- standing it, we may see clearly some of the factors that have hitherto been indistinct. First of all there is a temperament of youth and of rising manhood, becoming conscious of itself, as distinguished from that of the mature man who has settled down to face the hard facts of life. Did the prophets receive their calls in young manhood just as they were emerging from the enchanted land of adolescence ? If so, much light is thrown upon their experi- ence by modern studies in the later adolescent period. Does it make any difference whether Isaiah was twenty or forty years of age when he saw the Holy One, high and lifted up, his train filling the temple ? Can age have anything to do with the peculiar sternness and severity of Amos' messages ? While temperament is admitted to be largely hereditary — pos- sibly because we know so little about it — yet it may be much more a product of training, and especially of very early impressions, than we are wont to believe. While evidence on this point i^ almost entirely lacking in the case of the prophets, yet we mtist not neglect any of it that lies at hand, if it will help to exjjfain peculiarities of individuals. City-breeding gives a certain bent to one's concep- tions; pastoral life, another, and agricultural pursuits, yet another. Acquaintance with the best science of an age gives a type of thinking very different from that found among those who think naively. But more important than these is that peculiar, inborn, mental comp)Osition which distinguishes individuals and which seems so deep rooted as to defy all attempts to classify- it under a norm or type. Though all external stimuli may seem to be similar if not identical, mental reactions are found to be very different from each other in different individuals. You cannot run the thinking of mentally active people into the same mold, but, under the most favorable conditions, it is by no means a rarity to get the most diverse types of mental process and product. What is the explana- tion? One man is a rationalist; another is highly emotional. Either may become a mystic and have inexplicable experiences, but they arrive at them by very different routes. One man is active and aggressive in temperament; another is passive and retiring. Infilled with a divine passion, one of these men experiences the over- THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY 9 powering influence of a great Spirit or Personality, in whose hands he is passive and helpless; the other is conscious of his own heightened power of activity, under the inspiration of the same Spirit. They may be equally vigorous and fiery in carrying out the mission intrusted to them. Will these and other observations by modem psychology, when applied to the prophet, help us the better to imderstand the man and his message ? IV. THE prophet's EXPERIENCE We come now to the crux of the whole matter, an attempt to explain, or at least to interpret, that peculiar experience which makes a prophetj^^rophgt, which distinguishes him from any other class of religionist and lifts him to a table-land of insight and outlook which intensifies his religious energy many fold and charges his whole life and being with a new purpose and opens up larger capacities. If we cannot, to some extent, enter into this holy of holies, all our preliminary drawings-nigh will be largely of no avail, for the only excuse one may give for undertaking this overweening task of psychological analysis is that he may get near to the heart of the experience of men who had a peculiar consciousness of the immediate presence of God in their lives, and a special sensitiveness to his revelation, both of himself and of his message to them. We are not here concerned with mere description; we must go deeper; an effort must be made to interpret the experience and its meaning for our time, as well as for the prophet and his day. The most rigid and critical tests of modern research in the psychological field must be applied. If the prophet was self -deceived and a satisfactory expla- nation in subjective terms can be made of his exp>erience, this does not in the least detract from what he was and what he accom- plished, but it makes it practically impossible for his experience and his type of character to be dupUcated in our more scientific age, at least among those who understand the viewpoint of psychology. But if we must conclude that there is more than the subjective, that his experience is the result of a divine personal energy working upon, and co-operating with, an intense human spirit, we get a religious state devoutly to be wished and sought by men of every time. lO THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY Professor Ames, in his chapter on ''Psychology and Religious Genius," says: [It has often been assumed that genius, including religious genius] desig- nated an assumed irreducible and unanalyzable factor in human nature, a kind of given endowment which the science of psychology cannot legitimately adopt. It is a part of the scientific attitude to insist upon the application of analysis and interpretation to all factors and functions of the mental life. It is too much to expect that psychological explanations will not be undertaken simply because the phenomena involved are complex or obscure, or because some people insist that they are wholly inscrutable. The results of the investigation may be negative or meager or only partially sustained, but no phenomena of human experience can lay claim to immunity from at least the attempt to understand them. Therefore any statement of genius which assumes it to involve factors radically different from those of ordinary experience is vitiated at the outset by that assumption. Professor Leuba goes even farther and gives the distinct impres- sion that psychology has the legitimate right to pre-empt to itself the entire field of religion and to declare that there is no phenomenon in this field that psychology cannot grapple with and explain. Psychology, on its side, claims the right to submit every content of con- sciousness to scientific study, whether it be dubbed "inner," "spiritual," or otherwise; moreover, it has begun to make good that claim.^ .... Religious experience ("inner experience") belongs entirely to psychology — "entirely" being used in the same sense as when it is claimed that the non-religious por- tions of conscious life belong entirely to science.* .... I trust that it has become clear that the hope to lift a theology based on inner experience out of the sphere of science is preposterous; since whatever appears in consciousness is material for psychology. Religious knowledge may be said to be immediate and independent of science only in the sense in which this can be stated of any experience. Any bit of conscious life is in itself, as a fact of consciousness, unassailable. But a theology that should remain within a domain inaccessible to science would be limited to a mere description of man's religious conscious- ness and would be deprived of the right to any opinion on the objective reality of its objects and on the universal validity of its propositions If super- human factors are at work within human experience, there are no ways of dis- covering them except the ways of science.^ On the other hand. Professor Pratt is much less sanguine as to the ability of psychology to solve all problems in the province of rehgion: ' Leuba, A Psychological Study of Religion, p. 211. 'Ibid., ■p. 212. * Ibid., p. 242. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY II Equally misleading does it seem to me to suppose, as some leading "func- tional" psychologists seem to do, that the psychology of religion can ever so develop as to be in any sense a substitute for philosophy or theology. In the opinion of this school, ethics, aesthetics, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics are ultimately nothing but functional psychology.* .... The psychology of religion must .... content itself with a description of human experience, while recognizing that there may well be spheres of reality to which these experiences refer and with which they are possibly connected, yet which cannot be investigated by science.' These quotations from leading scholars in this field show that the psychology of religion is yet in process of finding itself and that there is no consensus of opinion even among these experts them- selves as to its proper province. The theory of Professor Leuba which allows no objective validity to the content of "value judg- ments" is not likely to be very generally accepted and will need further elucidation and buttressing. On the other hand, Professor Pratt seems rather too modest in his claims for the new science. However, for his side of the case it may reasonably be said that the psychology of religion is scarcely likely to be so successful in reveal- ing and explaining the content and meaning of our religious selves that men will cease to philosophize and theologize; i.e., to transcend the boundaries of pure scientific observation and induction and to move out into the realm of speculation and "faith." The criterion set forth in Professor Ames's statement of the case seems sotmd, and there is little danger that a thoroughgoing psychology will go too far. If we persist in creating for ourselves, or if there is already created for us, an extra-scientific world, a "faith " realm, then it is clear that psychology can have no dealings with it, either to prove or to dis- prove its existence. Philosophical assumptions are not material for psychological analysis; while psychology may satisfy itself in the explanation of religious genius, without the assumption of an extra- human, divine element, and while in some cases its analysis may be true to the facts, yet it can never prove that it has the truth in all cases, nor yet can it even prove in what specific cases it has the whole truth in the matter. So long as we admit a realm, the objec- tive reality of which is not subject to psychological scrutiny, religion 'Pratt, article "Psychology of Religion," in Journal of Religious Psychology, V, 391- 'Ibid., p. 393. 12 TBE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY wiU present phenomena which do not lie within the reahn of scientific proof, and whether we assume divine afflatus, or whether we rule it out, either assumption is a postulate of the mind and not a proved fact. Furthermore, the term "ordinary experience," used by Pro- fessor Ames in the last sentence of his quotation, does not claim that some degree of a personal knowledge of God is not a part of normal religious experience; thus we may not assume at the outset that the genius is a man of peculiar endowments, different in kind rather than in degree from those of his fellows. But if, in the course of our investigations and analyses of any specific character, we find ele- ments which cannot be separated out and classified according to the accepted norms, if there is found the unanalyzable residuum, it is the part of the scientific attitude to recognize it, even if we must hold judgment temporarily in suspense, or plead the cause of a yet undeveloped science. The theory that greatness is constituted not so much of entirely new and strange elements as of a proper and symmetrical blending of the common qualities and graces unmistakably has some startling illustrations in its favor. If it be true, then the Hebrew prophet may not be such a psychological enigma as a more super- ficial view would indicate. As has already been pointed out, it is safe to assume that in many ways the prophet was a child of his times. Mentally, his stock of ideas is very largely that in common circulation. The different currents of ideas may combine in varying proportions. In his case, the ideas of the prophetic party, which is essentially, though not nominally, the religious party, have the predominance, while the formalistic side of jeligion represented by the cultus does not appeal to him. Furthermore, the prophet is not an apathetic thinker; his mental life is enkindled and intense. He has a peculiar ability to rearrange ideas, so that new truths present themselves clearly. The prophet is not a traditionalist; he does not live in the past; on the other hand, he is willing to take from the past beliefs which are conserving elements in the present religious and social crisis. Again, he was no mere dreamer of dreams who looked sanguinely for the ** far-off divine event" which would usher in a glorious age. He lived in and for his own day; and he was the greatest man of his THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY 1 3 day, simply because his mental vision took in the whole range of facts, however disquieting some of them might be. He was not a false optimist nor was he a false pessimist, but he saw the truth as it was, not simply as a closed revelation, but also as based on facts interpreted in harmony with universal law. This mental alertness made the prophet a student of his times. The question whether or not he was an educated man in any technical or academic sense is not of so great importance. He was awake and new truth was constantly coming to him; his education was never declared "finished." Thus it was easy for new revela- tions to be received by him; he could neither resist nor reject them. Mental alertness and breadth, ethical depth, and religious exaltation which in its purest form expresses itself in a consciousness of fellow- ship with God form together an equilateral triangle, or better, a closed circle of experience. They are all of a piece; they produce the symmetrical person. It may be quite impossible to say in which of these three compartments of the individual's mental life the enkindling begins, or what may have been the specific cause which served to fan the smoldering spirit into flame, but if these three elements are combined in proper proportions, the one reacts upon the others until in turn all three are raised to a white heat, and then "who can but prophesy" ? It may be well to note that for the prophet there seemed to be no well-defined differentiation of national, social, and religious con- sciousness from each other, and we may even go farther and say that, at times at least, he was scarcely able to detect a personal consciousness as distinct from these three. The age of clear individualism was yet in the future and the prophet was not, consciously at least, a psychologist. So far as he analyzed his mental states at all, he was interested largely in their religious meaning. But, if the foregoing analysis contains any truth, it throws light upon the attitude of the prophet; it explains why he was so zealous in matters of politics and government; it opens up a reason for his proclivities toward social reform; it helps to explain his ardent love for his people, even in their sin and wickedness. They were an imdifferentiated part of himself and of his God. Furthermore, this analysis may go far in explaining his religious 14 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY nature, for, if he was so intimately associated with his people — the nation — on one hand, and his God on the other, so that his own consciousness was both a social- and a Grod-consciousness, he could have been but a mouthpiece of God to the nation, feeling himself a passive agent in God's hand, even when he had been most active, mentally and morally, in preparing himself for his mission. As his social message grew upon him, it assumed proportions which made it appeal to him as superhuman and hence as divinely originated. This idea as a principle of interpretation would, of course, require to be worked out in detail in accordance with ascertainable facts, in the case of each separate prophet. One set of interpreters of the psychology of the prophet makes the original element in his experience to be a "premonition"* that the nation is to be destroyed. His ideas follow this order: first, he has a premonition of this event; then he looks about for that which is to be the cause of destruction, and finds it in the sin of the nation; then, more gradually, he is led to predict the agent of the destruction. But whence the premonition ? It must be manufactured out of thin air. What data in the mind of the prophet serve to give this premonition ballast and content? Would it not be much more natural, as well as scientific, to suppose that the prophet received his impetus either from a study of the social and political conditions, or from so real and compelling a fact as a new and higher con- ception of the nature of God, based on study and observation — ^i.e., real mental activity — and that then, as a natural consequence of his observations, he concluded that the downfall of the nation, if the nation persisted in its present way, was but a matter of time ? Finally an attempt must be made to interpret not only the larger and more general experience of the prophet, but also that more specific experience which may be called religious, through which he became conscious of his call from God and his mission to the people. After a careful study of the narrative in order to dis- cover and set aside any literary device that may have been used to convey the fact of his experience to his hearers or readers, we have next to determine if possible whether he is relating a single out- standing experience which was epoch-making in his career, or ' Kaplan, The Psychology oj Prophecy, THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY 1 5 whether these experiences came to him periodically, due to excessive mental strain and possibly some temperamental abnormality, or whether his religious messages came to him intuitively, in the more or less even tenor of his way and without special excitation or ecstasy. Psychologically all these are possible modes or grades of inspiration. To critical thinking, they are of varying value; so are they also to naive thinking, but in inverse ratio. We are prone to think that in just the proportion in which ecstatic and trance states were absent or suppressed was the prophet's experience valid and his utterance valuable; hence we have a tendency in the case of the greater prophets to reduce this element to the minimum; but this somewhat dogmatic view may err in the wrong direction. It is too easy to assume that certain types of experience are authentic and therefore that opposite types must be weak, if not even vicious. By their fruits must they be known. If one man gets his vision of truth mystically, it is not for the scientifically minded to declare his experience invalid, in the nature of things, and vice versa. But it would not be surprising if we found that, as the ethical element in the prophet's message comes to the fore, the more or less irrational and subnormal forms of inspiration recede, for rational and ethical truth are discerned by the more sober and logical mental processes. Thus it is not difficult to see that in the pre-prophetic period, the ecstatic and trance states were considered quite a requisite prepara- tion for, and hence a necessary and essential part of, the prophet's experience. In the period of the greater prophets, however, this ecstatic possession, as a state, was at the minimum, and a conscious intuition of truth, with little or no excessive excitation, took its place. Of this even Davidson is quite certain, for he uses as the closest analogy to the prophetic experience "the condition of the religious mind in earnest devotion, or rapt spiritual communion with God."* If we could reduce the prophetic experiences thus to one type, it would greatly simplify our problem, but when one reads the prophets it is quite reasonable to believe that these abnormal states of ecstasy, trance, vision, and audition did, to some extent, persist and insinuate themselves into prophetic times. Whether they did or not, and, if so, to what extent they did is the real ' Davidson, HDB, IV, 115, article on "Prophecy and Prophets." 1 6 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY problem, for modern psychology undertakes to explain all these states as self-induced and not necessarily due to a supernatural cause. In fact, there is a growing certainty that the supernatural does not work in such capricious ways; but again, we must remem- ber that the prophet is not a modern, in spite of all his points of superiority, and that even we modems may not have the whole truth as yet. The point is that we must not discredit the prophet, if it can be reasonably shown that he did perceive truth while in these so-called abnormal states. But for those who take a religious view of the world, there is no question as to the essence, the kernel of the prophet's experience and message. We believe that, not only at the heart of things, but in the van as well, "our God is marching on"; he makes progressive revelation of himself and of eternal truth, but he speaks clearly only to the sincere and inquiring mind. The prophet was passionate to know truth and righteousness. He lived in a time when new truth and new inspiration for right living were sorely needed. He went to what he believed to be the fountain-head of wisdom and goodness and he received them. That is probably as much as we can say. A quotation from Davidson applies just here: It is vain to speculate how the Divine mind coalesces with the human, or to ask at what point the Divine begins to operate. Some have argued that the operation was dynamical; i.e., an intensification of the faculties of the mind, enabling it thus to reach higher truth. Others regard the Divine operation as of the nature of suggestion of truth to the mind. What is to be held, at all events, is that revelation was not the communication of general or abstract ideas to the intellect of the prophet. His whole religious mind was engaged. He entered into the fellowship of God, his mind occupied with all his own religious interests and all those of the people of God; and his mind thus operating, he reached the practical truth relevant to all occasions.' » Davidson, HDB, IV, n6, article on "Prophecy and Prophets." THE PROPHET JEREMIAH In taking up some phases of the life of Jeremiah in order to make a specific and concrete illustration of the method set forth in the preceding pages, we cannot hope to bring out much, if any- thing, that is startlingly new, for most of the points here brought into systematic and related form have been noted here and there by the various commentators whom we have mentioned. But not one of them has set out with the deliberate purpose of evaluating and arranging all the material in accordance with the accepted tenets of modem psychology. Needless to say, that is our specific attempt here. In the first place, we are not interested in doing again the work of critics in the historical field. Though they differ widely in results, their criteria are very much alike. It is evident that some experts in the field of historical criticism lack psychological appre- ciation, so it is natural that here we should follow with more zeal those who seem to manifest the greater measure of this most necessary quality. Secondly, one who has ever attempted to find a unity in the Book of Jeremiah by even a cursory reading knows something of the difficulty with which we proceed to our material. Manifestly, it would be difiicult to attempt a running historical sketch of the prophet's life as a whole, for the material is so unevenly distributed, and furthermore any such exposition would far transcend our space limits. We must be content then to suggest what may be done on a much larger scale, by selecting the early life and the call experience of Jeremiah and dealing with a few of the problems pre- sented by this phase of a great life. Naturally, those topics are chosen which give the best opportunity for testing our criteria of prophetic religious experience. Needless to say, numerous hindrances due to the scantiness and uncertainty of our sources constantly obstruct our procedure, and in many ways the results are disappointing because of their negative character. 17 l8 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY Attitude toward the sources. — Though concerned here directly with only one chapter of the Book of Jeremiah we must draw indirect evidence from the entire book; hence an attitude must be taken toward the sources as a whole. Our problem is twofold: I. What materials in the book must be ruled out of use as unauthentic; i.e., as from hands later than those of Jeremiah and his amanuensis, Baruch? This involves still another question, viz., what were the sources for this later material and were they authentic ? This question, in most cases at least, will not receive an answer, but it should be kept in mind. It is evident that at least some passages might be used in a psychological appreciation, which would not pass muster with historical criticism, but it seems best to admit only those materials which aonsibility. So powerful and vivid is the impression that the prophet can best represent it, naively or figuratively, as the divine hand touching his lips and placing thereon the message he is to utter. The form of this figure may be borrowed from Isaiah, but the essence of it is far different. Jeremiah seems not to have been conscious of the need of any ceremonial cleansing, as was Isaiah, before the great and holy God. He needed only to be endowed with a message, the unfolding and propagation of which would occupy his time and energies for life. His mission is to the nations, if we may follow the text. At first thought, this seems a much larger conception of his field of activity than Isaiah and Amos had of theirs. They nowhere state or even imply that they felt called to deal with people outside their own ; but as a matter of fact they lived in a time when people were restless and changing, and they could not deal with their own people, their history, and their destiny, without putting them in their international setting. Both these great prophets were states- men in the better sense of the word. Amos understood the history 34 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY of many peoples and seemed to have a judgment of historical events quite unbiased for a man of his day. Isaiah had rather a complex political situation to fathom, but he seemed to comprehend the broader movements of nations and he did not lose sight of these in Judah's imminent political dangers. But Judah was now much more cosmopolitan than either Judah or Israel could have been in Isaiah's day. Assyria had manifested her power in Syria and Palestine for nearly a century. During all this time Egypt had stood ready, when not entirely at the mercy of the power on the Euphrates, to incite the small Syrian kingdoms to rebellion and to proffer them doubtful assistance. Now there were signs that Assyria was weakening and Babylonia was taking a new hold on life. New nations were arising in the north, the northeast, and the northwest, and pushing south with considerable show of success against the more effete peoples. The history of Israel had its lessons for those in Judah who were sober enough to heed them. Verily, Jeremiah was to be a prophet to the nations, for his nation was more intimately a part of great world-movements than ever before. In the light of Zephaniah's world-judgment, may Jeremiah not have had some similar idea of the coming day of Jahwe, even though he became at once so absorbed in his duty to his own people that this overtowered his broader and less pressing mission? Many of his descriptions of the wholesale destruction that is to come from the north are capable of a very broad application. Jeremiah, then, did just what any broad-minded and far-seeing statesman would do: he bade his people cease their temporizing policy and study the signs of the times, and choose wisely the course they would follow. But what is to be the prophet's message to the nations, including his own ? Zephaniah gives us at least one clue. The condition of the times was such that a Hebrew prophet must have in his message the strongly destructive note. The preaching of the earlier great prophets would lead us to the same result. Hence, we may feel certain that from the very first Jeremiah felt called "to pluck up and to break down and to destroy and to overthrow." He had brooded long enough over the deplorable state of affairs, socially THE PROPHET JEREMIAH 35 and politically as well as morally, to feel this message clear. But was he "to build and to plant" as well, and if so, in what sense could a mission of this sort extend its effects to the nations beyond his own? The manuscript evidence for the retention of these words in the text is almost unanimous. This does not preclude the possibility that one of the several redactors of Jeremiah added them, in order to soften the effect of the extremely harsh combination of words immediately preceding. If, as some scholars hold, there was a time, exilic or post-exilic, when the writings of the great prophets were subjected to this sort of treatment to make them more toler- able and constructive, Jeremiah must have suffered change, along with the others. When we examine the Book of Jeremiah as a whole, with this point in mind, it is difl&cult to find anything hopeful or constructive until after the first captivity has taken place. In the earlier por- tions of the book covering the report of only four or five years at the beginning of his ministry, taking the text as it now stands, there are two or three brief hints at the hope of a remnant, but it is by no means certain that these are original. The great central portion of his prophetic career is somber with the clouds of despair of any redemption for the nation. Thus it is reasonable to suppose that this constructive phase of his message was a later induction, arrived at some time before 605 when the roll was prepared. Psychologically, it is much more probable that this was, to his mind, a part of his original commis- sion, for no young man starts out upon some great moral task prepossessed with the assurance of total defeat; rather does he san- guinely expect some considerable measure of success. Thus it is quite possible that when he received his call and commission, Jeremiah saw clearly that there must be the preaching of severe judgment as the earliest and dominant note of his message, but he must have hoped that, after this most arduous and disagreeable task had been faithfully completed, there would be constructive results, and that at least a renmant of his own nation would return unto Jahwe. It is doubtful whether Jeremiah's vision of the future 36 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY included other nations in the scope of this more hopeful result of his ministry, as it must have included them more or less vitally in the expectation of a general judgment for evil. Immediately following the record of the call-experience there are set forth two visions which came to Jeremiah, no doubt soon after, and probably in close connection with, the call. At any rate there is no psychological difl&culty in placing them here. After such an awakening the prophet's mind is virgin soil, fitted to receive any further light on his new and as yet somewhat obscure path of duty. His naturally contemplative mood is now even more impressionable. He sees an almond tree, the first of the trees to awake in response to springtime's touch. Here and there an early blossom is already visible. The name of the tree (shdked= "almond tree") suggests a line of thought which in these days is uppermost in his mind. There is One (shoked) "watching" over his word to perform it, even as he is in control of the seasons, and is the revivifying force in each new springtime. This plainly indicates the prophet's sympathy with nature and his keen response to its impact up>on his senses. Just as the barren heated season makes one's soul feel like a parched field, so the freshness of spring revives and stirs to new activity the higher emotions of poet and genius. But just as the first so-called vision presents in homely sym- bolic form the more positive and pleasing side of the prophetic experience, viz., that Jahwe will guide and guard his servant at every step, so the second vision gives in a no less simple picture the more somber side of the prophet's duty, viz., the proclamation of judgment, speedy and terrible, upon his own people. Jeremiah sees a boiling caldron, tipping from the north and pouring its seething contents upon the people of the south. Out of the mys- terious north are to come all its kingdoms to encamp before Jeru- salem and the cities of Judah. This is to be the penalty for apostasy and idolatry. Jeremiah is no longer cast down by such a task. A new trust seems to seize him. The least that he can do is to be true to his deeper and more vigorous self. He now prefers the enmity of his fellow-men to the disapproval of the One who watches over him and provides strength. It is the story, so often repeated, of a great conception lending vigor and courage to the most difficult THE PROPHET JEREMIAH 37 undertaking. He can now conceive of himself as a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a wall of brass/ The most searching test comes when the young prophet fully realizes how thoroughly his duty will divorce him from his people and make him their outspoken, bitter enemy. He is to stand ''against the whole land of Judah, king — princes — priests — and people," "and they shall fight against thee."' Not a friend or follower is to be his, among all the better classes of Judah. To a man of sensitive, even passionate, fellow-feeling, one who cherishes a warm place in the affections of his people, such a test, coming at the very opening of his career, is not an easy one. In another sense, Jeremiah must be a fortified city, a citadel, impregnable to the compromises dictated by his natural and fallible love for his people, a wall of brass, withstanding all the swayings of instinctive human feelings. He must now slink away to his watch-tower and, so long as life shall last, preserve a voluntary confinement, counting those who by any natural standards would be his bosom friends, to be his sworn enemies. As a compensation for all this sacrifice, there comes to him the assurance, the only one that can soothe and satisfy, "but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with ' These two visions are to be interpreted alike. Whether they are genuine vision or not it may be impossible to decide. Psychologically, they are quite explicable on purely natural grounds, and our general interpretation of Jeremiah favors this view. There is a great temptation for psychology to attempt this natural interpretation of all vision, but such a procedure is not necessary, and it is in great danger of not being scientific. However, in the case of these visions of Jeremiah, their basis is so simple and natural that the simplest explanation seems the best. The prophet's mind is alert to receive materials for the message which the call has imp>osed upon him. These are suggested to him even by the routine occurrences of the day. ' Our interpretation of Jeremiah's state of mind is here complicated by the con- dition of the sources. Since he did not reduce his materials to writing until after he had passed through many of these hardships, it is perfectly possible to hold that he read back his later experiences into these earlier times. However, there is certainly another alternative here. Jeremiah must have known well the persecutions through which the earlier prophets had to pass, so that this knowledge was an important part of his mental furnishing at the time of his call. Further than this, he was able to see that the prophetic manner of viewing the conditions of the times — a point of view which he had inherited — was diametrically opposed to that of the ruling classes. By a little reflection he could easily arrive at the conclusion that, if he would live up to his ideal, he must sooner or later clash with these various classes. 38 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY thee to deliver thee." In the greater triumph and its resultant joy the lesser defeat with its accompanying bitterness is abrogated. So far as the thought content of Jeremiah's call is concerned, we find no great difference between him and Isaiah and Amos. While the historical setting for him is different, it is yet very similar and involves the same mental reaction. Possibly in the time of Jeremiah the issue is more distinctly drawn, but this seeming fact may be explained on the grounds that Jeremiah put his materials together much later and may have given them a tinge of definiteness bom of the facts as they actually came to pass. In two minor points Jeremiah differs from the other prophets: in the consciousness of prenatal ordination, in which he is fol- lowed by the great New Testament hero, Saul of Tarsus, and in that he at least twice in chap, i is said to have been vouchsafed divine encouragement and protection, when he was on the point of shrinking back from the hard task imposed upon him. Jeremiah's later experiences confirm this temperamental trajt of discourage- ment and flinching under fire. Amos seems never to have resisted his call when once the logic of events had led him to see his duty clearly, and Isaiah was so transformed by his majestic vision and so relieved by the consciousness of purification from sin, that when a call came in the most general terms, he at once volunteered for the thankless task of preaching destruction to a people hardened in heart and imable to believe. But Jeremiah was more matter- of-fact. In this he resembled Amos, but lacked his iron will. He had not in his make-up enough of the mystical, the idealistic, to keep him above the^moods of discouragement and despair arising from contact with the cruel facts of the work-a-day world. He was crushed by what he was helpless to correct and had no resource, no power, within himself, by virtue of which to rise above circum- stances. Hence in such seasons of despair his help must come from without and above himself. What he interpreted as fresh infusions of divine power was all that kept him to the end. But when we come to consider the form in which the call- experience clothes itself, we have in many ways a severe contrast between Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jeremiah resembles Amos in that his language is simple, unfigurative, almost prosaic. But through- THE PROPHET JEREMIAH '39 out the range of Isaiah's writings there is no passage more figurative and grandiloquent than chap. 6, in which he describes his call. We need not heighten this contrast by bringing in the fantastic machin- ery of Ezekiel's call. Amos was driven to his task by the logic of righteousness. Hosea, out of the well-nigh divine tenacity of his own human love, saw Jahwe's unadulterated love for a wayward people. Isaiah, with his glowing imagination, sees the Holy Grod entering his temple with all the accompaniments which contribute to his glory; in violent contrast to this is the uncleanness of him- self and his people. Here is the psychological element, constituting the basis for his call. Less spectacular and less literary than any of these, though by no means devoid of dramatic power, is the call of Jeremiah. Not "Jahwe appeared unto me," or "Jahwe took me," but ''The word of Jahwe came unto me saying, I have appointed thee a prophet." To this appointment there is no denial, though the prophet is allowed to interpose his valid objections. Then comes the vivid touch, "I have put my words in thy mouth," and the prophet feels the touch of the divine hand up)on his lips. Here we come nearest to Isaiah, but the similarity is more in form than in essence. The cleansing from sin in Isaiah's case was accompUshed by a coal from the altar, apphed to the lips by one of the fiery attendants of Jahwe. The activity was purely cere- monial. But Jeremiah is conscious of no sin and no need of cer- emonial or symboUcal cleansing. His conception of religion is too much an ethical one to be satisfied with ceremony, however grand and imposing. No sort of mediation is required to prepare Jeremiah for direct personal contact with his God. Inexorable law stands between Amos and his God; ineffable holiness between Isaiah and his God; but Jeremiah, much more in the spirit of Hosea, rends all veils and sees face to face and experiences heart to heart. There may be in such a conception, a touch of mysticism, but no mechanics of vision or audirion. Jeremiah, least of all the prophets, can be accused of harking back to the earlier, more super- ficial forms of prophetic experience. Nor do the two visions that accompany the call lay him open to the charge of imitation. Both of these lessons are suggested to him by simple phenomena in the 40 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PROPHECY everyday world. Later in his ministry his lessons come in the same way. The linen girdle, the potter's vessel, the yokes of wood and iron are striking instances. To explain such experiences we do not need vision or ecstasy, but keen powers of observation, a deep ethical insight, and a broad, well-balanced conception of moral causality in the affairs of the universe. We must conclude, then, much as we might desire not to do so, that in Jeremiah, the matter- of-fact, the rational predominate over the poetic and the mystical. "He was a nature characterized by simplicity, reality, pathos, tenderness, and a strange piety, but subject to his emotions, which were liable to rise into passions. His mind was set on a minor key and his temper was elegiac. And to all this his language was true.*" * Davidson, article on "Jeremiah" in HDB. UNIVERSITY OP O'TPORl 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. REC'D LD PIB14'66-9AM "OV 2 4,957 2 7 BECK»VBP H0\ll8'67'»'^M J ->fll"^S!T; (r7,63il0)476B Berkeley 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. MAR 7 1968 '^_£ dT3X rec- ^0V20W68O REcetvg e MM- ^ 6 'Kg -9 m ^•^^AN -^ gSL !^^ ^ 5A370 V^ ^s^ pte-» I,P 2tA-6nm-2,'fl7 General Library IJnivtTsirv of California