Ecstasy

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 7 considers prophetic ecstasy as a transformative religious experience. Debates about the existence and nature of prophetic ecstasy in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament owe partly to prior assumptions about the characteristics of biblical prophecy and Israelite religion and partly to the phenomenological complexity and diverse forms of religious ecstasy. Modern debates are matched by polemics, conflicting assessments, and questions within the biblical texts. But ecstasy is not a marginal feature of biblical prophecy. It enabled a prophet to bridge human and divine realities through the temporary alteration of mind and body. Biblical evidence for induction techniques such as fasting, meditation, music, or rhythmic movement is slender. Prophetic ecstasy was frequently interpreted as a form of spirit possession that could produce visions or supernatural transport. Prophetic ecstasy had the power to make the deity present, reveal hidden realities, and reshape structures of power.