(December 14, 2012 at 11:15 am)John V Wrote: Meh, there are passages like Deut 18: 15-22 that stress predictions and say nothing about music.
Also note that the psalms were songs, and contain a fair number of future predictions.
Personally my take is that prophet can refer to anyone who receives and gives the word of god. It can be with or without music. It can be with or without predictions of the future.
Fair enough. Can I ask though; what do you specifically mean by "the word of God"? I ask because I went to a Christian friend's house the other day and we had a healthy discussion about where I'm at and where he's at. Basically, he acknowledges every last inconsistency found in the Bible and therefore deems it irrelevant to his faith in Jesus because (drum roll) he says the Bible isn't the "Word of God", but Jesus instead, as per John 1 (which ironically is within the thing he decided to chuck out).
On a side note, I can't help but imagine these "prophets" as being nothing more than your average bard, like the ones who collectively came up with the Iliad and Odyssey. I can see why they have such an elevated status though, because in a nutshell, the ancient world saw poetry as being somewhat... "sacred". I can't remember if it was the Greeks or Romans, but one of them had poets that would be commisioned to write a poem about their client because that would ensure that their client would have a sort of "eternal life" thanks to the "sacredness" that they attached to poetry.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
