Transformative Practice

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 6 analyzes textual portrayals of the transformative practices of askêsis and incubation. By transforming the body in culturally specified ways, the prophet also claims power to transform social realities. Bodily disciplines of askêsis shape the prophet’s person. They may prepare the prophet to encounter the deity or receive revelation or be an efficacious component of prophetic intercession. Prophetic ascetic practice can strengthen, challenge, or reshape social relationships and structures and even alter the cosmos. In Exodus and Deuteronomy, Moses’ askêsis pushes up to and beyond the limits of what is humanly possible, making his body a bridge between impossibility and possibility, human and divine, death and life. His resulting transformation presages and makes possible the people’s. Incubation is less clearly attested among Israel’s and Judah’s prophets. Instead, in 1 Sam 1–3 this liminal practice emerges at a moment of national transition to inaugurate new structures of leadership and open prophetic channels of mediation that had previously been closed.