PROPHET Or pockrns) , a Greek word used in the Greek Old Testament to translate the Hebrew Nabi tl`3.1 and consequently adopted into other European languages. In classical Greek it de noted one who, uttering or interpreting an oracle, was believed to speak not his own thoughts but a revelation "from without"; cf. the description of Cassandra (Agam.) and the Prophet of Apollo (Eumen.), by Aeschylus ; of the blind seer, Teiresias, by Sophocles (Oed. Tyr.), and by Euripides (Bacchae); of the Cumaean Sibyl, by Virgil (Aen vi.) ; and note Plato, Timaeus 71 b., where he argues that persons who seek to give rational meaning to oracles "are not to be called prophets at all," but only those who speak in ecstasy. At the Delphic Oracle, however, not the frantic priestess, the Pythia, was designated "prophet," but the Guardians of the Shrine who ostensibly shaped her frenzied ejaculations into com prehensible replies. Etymologically rpochrris denoted "forth-tell
ing," not "f ore-telling"; but since irpo could mean "before" in time, and since prophecies constantly dealt with future events and foreknowledge is not deemed to occur in conditions of normal consciousness, the notion that prediction and ecstasy are the essential elements in prophecy was an easy growth. Thus in the Hellenic period Philo of Alexandria looked on divination and oracular interpretation as imposture, but had high regard for the ecstatic who "speaks nothing of his own." IIpockTrns was the best word available in Greek, for rendering the Hebrew Nabi (it was preferable to po.vrts), but the Hellenistic view of prophecy as ecstatic prediction obscured for centuries the wealth of religious interest in the Hebrew prophets. Why rpoOrris was used to translate hm-ntr, the title of certain Egyptian priests, is un ascertained.