“We Have the Prophets”: Inspiration and the Prophets in Athenagoras of Athens

1 Poets, Prophets, and Inspiration in Plato

Poets and prophets in Greece, though largely revered, did not receive universal approval. Poetry, as one of the arts (alongside dance and music) presided over by the Muses, was central to communal life.^[18] Education, aimed toward being a good citizen, included learning good poetry, especially Homer, by heart in school for it provided exemplary models for ethical instruction. Cultural values were also passed on as citizens participated in poetry through choral singing and rhapsodic recitation at festivals and as interpretation of poetry was taught in sophistic methods. Nevertheless, Plato finds some fault.^[19] Poetry, Socrates says, “feeds and waters” (τρέφει … ἄρδουσα)^[20] the passions instead of leaving them to whither, deceives by substituting appearance for reality, and cripples rational thought. This leads to the implantation of an “evil constitution” (κακὴν πολιτείαν)^[21] in the soul and the destruction of its civilized aspect. It is imitative or tragic poetry that he has in mind here in the tenth book of The Republic. Such poetry threatens not only those predisposed to corruption, but also the good. Unlike other poetry that might eulogize the virtues of exemplary figures or sing to the gods, imitative poetry incites the emotions and passions, the irrational, senseless aspect of the soul, rather than the best, thoughtful, rational part of the soul.^[22]

In another place, Plato extends his critique of the poet introducing the connection between inspiration and imitative poetry.^[23] In short, the problem is that poetry reproduces the Muse’s words in a flawed manner.^[24] The inspired poet is like a fountain that allows water to rush upwards and spray forth in an uncontrolled way. The problem is not with the inspiration, not with the words that come to him from the gods. Instead, the problem is with the poet’s art. Composing imitative poetry involves presenting characters opposed to each other with contradictory opinions. The poet receives truth from the gods, but in composition he presents their revelation without discretion, in a mindless manner, spraying it forth so that his material is full of inconsistencies and propositions that are incompatible with each other. He ends up contradicting himself. Although the revelation is trustworthy, for the gods are infallible and do not lie, the poetic discourse contains error.^[25] The poet is a flawed medium for the transmission of divine words. Inspiration, in later Greek thought, did not guarantee truth. The god’s participation was not such that it superintended the process so that the poet’s translation and transmission of the divine words would be without contradiction.

Inspiration was no guardian of a poet’s wisdom or technical skill for Plato either. In the Apology, Socrates disparages poets.^[26] They compose their poems by means of nature (φύσις) and inspiration (ἐνθουσιάζω), like the prophets, rather than by wisdom (σοφία), or, we might supply, craft, “expert knowledge” (τέχνη).^[27] The opposition of nature, or instinct, and inspiration to wisdom indicates that poets have no rational explanation or grounds for their poetry.^[28] It is not produced by cognitive or intellectual means. This lacuna results in the absence of hermeneutical skill and they are unable to provide a rational, coherent explanation of the meaning of their compositions. The poet cannot be both inspired and an interpreter.^[29] Although the divine touches them, they fall short of being wise, skilled in their art, or adept in craft. They should not be numbered among σοφοί.^[30]

Others also suffered from similar criticism at the hands of Plato. He characterized both politicians and prophets (θεόμαντις; μάντις) as inspired (ἐνθουσιάζω; ἐπίπνους), divine (θεῖος) and possessed by god.^[31] However, due to such inspiration their words did not originate from their own wisdom (σοφία), they did not speak well or true because they were wise (σοφός) and they had no knowledge of what they said. Divine possession results in prophetic passivity and mindlessness.^[32] Again, Socrates teaches the “ignorance of inspired people.”^[33] The passage discussed above from the Apology similarly places poet and prophet side by side. Both prophets (θεόμαντις) and poets were inspired (ἐνθουσιάζω). But although the prophets speak beautiful words, they have no knowledge of what they say.^[34] Like the poets of the Laws, prophets too are flawed though the revelation is trustworthy. The association of poet, prophet (μάντις) and the prophetess (προφῆτις) at Delphi along these lines is also found in Ion and Phaedrus.^[35] As inspired (ἔνθεος), as those who have a divine μανία, they are enabled to speak lovely, beneficial things, not by art (τέχνη), but only by divine providence and empowerment. Divine act renders them mindless and passive while god alone, through them, serves as composer and speaker of blessed, beneficial words. With the poet or prophet left without skill under inspiration, one finds it easy to understand, as Eric R. Dodds puts it, that the divine mania was viewed as “a real intrusion of the supernatural into human life.”^[36] Socrates minces no words. The poet or prophet who aspires to compose virtuous material by expert skill (τέχνη) fails. Poetry composed without divine mania, by those of sound mind, is transitory when compared to the compositions of the inspired ones. Unable to give account of their compositions or proclamations prophets and poets simply channel and manipulate the words of the deity.^[37] The final portrayal is not overly flattering, and in light of Plato’s vision for reason itself as divine, grows even less appealing. In one sense, he might even perceive the divinely inspired as godless. For while Plato

accepted (with whatever ironical reservations) the poet, the prophet, and the “Corybantic” as being in some sense channels of divine or daemonic grace, he nevertheless rated their activities far below those of the rational self, and held that they must be subject to the control and criticism of reason, since reason was for him no passive plaything of hidden forces, but an active manifestation of deity in man, a daemon in its own right.^[38]

In the texts reviewed, Plato does not provide us with his doctrines of poets, prophets or inspiration.^[39] We are, nevertheless, able to construct a perspective regarding the connections between these three that was known to the second-century contexts addressed by Athenagoras. Concerning the poet and the prophet, we are able to say that at best, under inspiration, they function as agents of virtuous, enduring, divine discourse.^[40] At worst, they are artless, mindless, ignorant, flawed, composers of contradictions. Such a perspective could generate skepticism regarding the trustworthiness of prophetic compositions, while at the same time foster confidence in the divine origin of a prophecy. Plato’s theory of inspiration, seen from the texts discussed here, does not provide for an infallible bridge between the prophet’s reception of the divine discourse and the prophet’s pronouncement or publication.

2 Poets and Inspiration in Early Greece

However, some in early Greece viewed the relationship of poets and prophets to inspiration a bit differently. For them, inspiration did not leave the poet unconscious, a passive instrument of the deity.^[41] Rather, the relationship involved both dependence and intellect. Poets received revelation and mindfully participated in composition; under inspiration they did not lose their standpoint, but made a rational contribution.^[42] They served as messengers of the deity, both interpreting and proclaiming the revealed message.^[43] The poet received a revelation, poetry was certainly “first born and bred in heaven,” but then with skill, technique, and craft, he created a poem.^[44] Poetry was both a divine and sober human enterprise.^[45] In early Greece, divine gift and human invention coincide.^[46] On this note we hear Alcinous speak of the poet, the “divine minstrel” (θεῖον ἀοιδόν),^[47] Demoducos, in this way: “for to him above all others has the god granted skill in song, to give delight in whatever way his spirit prompts him to sing.”^[48] Here, the poet’s spirit (θυμός) engenders his song. Elsewhere, it is the movement of his mind or heart (νόος).^[49] Pindar, likewise, bears witness to the relationship between deity and poet. “The Muse stood beside me,” he sings, “as I found (εὑρίσκω) a newly shining way to join to Dorian measure a voice of splendid celebration.”^[50] The Muse is an inspiring presence, but apparently only in an auxiliary capacity, one that promotes almost an autonomous poetic spirit. It is the poet himself who through his own skill produces a poem by an original coupling of lyric and Doric meter and/or melody. Simonides conveys the same weakened notion of the deity’s role in inspired poetic composition. In fragment 11,21 (W), he calls upon the Muse as simply his helper, ally or auxiliary (ἐπίκουρος).^[51] Contrary to what Plato would express, the implication is that the poet is self-sufficient in poetic composition.^[52]

Plato also wished to make clear that inspiration and composition provided multiple opportunities for error. Earlier Greeks, on the other hand, understood inspiration to guard a poem’s truth.^[53] Hesiod writes, for instance, of the sweetness of the poetry that he sings by virtue of the Muses’ blessing of inspiration: “that man is blessed, whomever the Muses love, for the speech flows sweet from his mouth.”^[54] The gift they give to the poet is transformative. It takes away his sorrow and anguish and leaves him with a lovely song that glorifies the gods.^[55] This resonates with Hesiod’s proem.^[56] There, the Muses have just announced that they know to speak true (ἀληθής) things. Then, Hesiod tells us, “they breathed (ἐμπνέω) a divine (θέσπις) voice into me, so that I might glorify what will be and what was before.”^[57] In this way, by linking the true revelation of the goddesses with his glorifying speech, he introduces the infallibility of his whole poem.^[58] Pindar, on the same theme, declared that he would not soil his poem with a lie.^[59] Instead, with the aid of the Muse, he would bear true witness.^[60]

Early Greek conceptions of inspiration differed, then, from those that Plato would later set forth. Inspiration was not understood, in the main, to place the poet into a state of unconscious passivity. Instead, by his own spirit and mind, he composed his song with the aid of the deity in such a way that the song conveyed truth. Plato shared with his predecessors the belief that the revelation given by the gods was true. The earlier poets expressed a confidence, however, in the capacity of their poems to relate the truth revealed. And, it is the gods, by their blessing and gift that help them compose their sweet, glorifying, infallible verse.

We have taken effort to review the question of inspiration in Greek poetry for three reasons: First, much Greek reflection on the question of the gods and inspiration takes place in contexts concerning the poet. Second, as has been seen above, the accounts, at times, treat the topic of inspiration in light of both poet and prophet together. Third, as Alice Sperduti shows, the “belief in the divine origin of poetry emerges for the historical period under the more refined concept of divine inspiration, whose annals properly begin in the sphere of prophecy.”^[61] To this point, when our texts have addressed the inspired prophet in conjunction with the poet, the Greek term has been μάντις. It is necessary that we also gain some insight into how the Greeks understood prophet as προφήτης. What differences and similarities did the two terms communicate? Such clarity will aid our interpretation of Athenagoras as we reassess his relationship to Hellenism. We will see that in the classical and Hellenistic periods, in the main, προφήτης carried a different meaning than it did for Athenagoras. Whatever the apologist does, he does not simply adopt the predominant meaning the term had for his Greek setting.

3 Προφήτης and Μάντις in Greek Thought

Christopher Forbes, against the theses of Eugene Boring and Terrance Callan, claims that προφήτης was not employed widely to refer to inspired persons in the Hellenistic period.^[62] He argues, instead, that classical Greece understood the term “prophet” (προφήτης) in three ways. It referred to: (1) a class of officials, not necessarily inspired, who mediated the oracles of others; (2) inspired persons, who received divine oracles and, who, the texts emphasize, proclaimed these oracles; and (3) official spokespersons. In the Hellenistic period, he shows, these three meanings endured, yet with two developments: (1) the application of the term to Egyptian priests of high rank; and (2) the usage of the term by the LXX to translate the Hebrew term nabi (נבי).

In his analysis of the classical period, Forbes argues that the emphasis of the texts is upon the prophet as one who announces the oracle. Although the texts do witness at times to the prophet as an inspired person, the emphasis is upon the prophet as proclaimer. Μάντις and προφήτης are not synonymous. He cites Erich Fascher to explain the difference. The two terms complement each other. “A ‘mantis’ is a seer. If he tells the people these secrets, he is prophet.”^[63] Forbes’s conclusion concerning the term προφήτης in the Hellenistic period echoes his summary regarding the classical period: “Nothing requires us to believe that inspiration was believed to be a defining quality of προφῆται.”^[64]

Forbes disagrees with Boring and Callan on another point related to our investigation.^[65] Since they saw in Hellenistic times little difference between the μάντις and προφήτης, they also argued that the manic state, the enthusiasm and frenzy that was sometimes linked with the former was also a characteristic of the latter. Forbes’s summary softens the sharpness of his argument a bit, but still insists on the validity of his basic claim. “Even if,” he writes, “some of the arguments brought forward here are not decisive, it must be clear that the overwhelming majority of usages of the term [προφήτης] have to do with persons who were not inspired or frenzied in any sense.”^[66] Forbes’s conclusion concerning the Greco-Roman world is similar. Divination in a variety of forms, from astrology to the analysis of entrails, was prophecy’s dominant form, he argues, not “inspiration manticism.”^[67]

One passage in Plato demonstrates that, at least in his mind, the μάντις and προφήτης were distinguished from each other on the basis of frenzy or mania.^[68] Prophecy did not necessitate frenzy. Timaeus says that prophets (προφήτης), those of sound mind, should judge inspired (ἔνθεος) divinations (μαντεία), for it is not the business of those who are in frenzy (μαίνομαι). However, it should be noted, that in the same passage Timaeus says that some name the prophets diviners (μάντις). Now, granted, he believes these people to be ignorant. Nevertheless, in one passage we have witness to two views held simultaneously by two different groups: (1) the prophets (προφήτης) are not associated with a state of frenzy, rather they are of sound mind (ἔμφρων); and (2) prophets (προφήτης) are diviners (μάντις). Forbes’s thesis, I think, is largely correct. The two terms, in both the classical and Hellenistic periods, were not synonymous; prophets proclaimed with soundness of mind, they were not inspired nor frenzied.^[69] However, some held to the understanding that the two were the same. The lines did cross. There existed fluidity in how the culture viewed prophets.

Forbes’s interest is in early Christian prophets and how the Hellenistic environment enlightens our understanding of that phenomenon. My interest is different. I am attempting to decipher how the classical and Hellenistic background may enlighten our understanding of an early Christian’s (Athenagoras) understanding of inspiration and the Jewish prophets. Our reading of Forbes has helped us in two key ways. First, by demonstrating the predominant meaning of προφήτης in the classical and Hellenistic periods he has provided a backdrop against which Athenagoras’s perspective more clearly shows its difference. In most Greek thought προφήτης refers primarily to spokespersons, not to inspired or frenzied persons. In Athenagoras, however, we will see that it refers to an inspired, even ecstatic, but non-frenzied spokesperson of sound mind. Second, although clearly not the main thrust of his argument, he has noted the diversity within Greek thought concerning the prophet. This emphasizes the need for nuance in analysis of the relationship between Greek, Jewish, and early Christian notions of prophets and inspiration.

4 Prophets and Inspiration in Athenagoras of Athens

Having set forth in brief the parameters on the Greek ideas of prophets and inspiration, we can now turn our attention to Athenagoras’s own idea. His term for “prophet” is προφήτης, not μάντις. He names three, Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, yet knows of the rest (λοιπός), and reports their writings as accessible in books (βιβλίον).^[70] In the Legatio pro Christianis he cites Isaiah four times.^[71] Three of those citations occur in Legatio pro Christianis 9,2 immediately following one of the passages analyzed here. They provide prophetic witness to the one God’s uniqueness and greatness. Also, probably attributing the words to Jeremiah, Athenagoras cites Baruch in the same catena of prophetic testimony.^[72] Finally, he seems to allude to Moses four times.^[73] Significant is the early apologist’s declaration that these prophets are the prophets of the Athenian Christian community.^[74] “We, however” he says, “have prophets.”^[75] He manifests no interest in the Jewishness of the prophets and this reflects some difference with Justin.^[76] To him they are Christian prophets.^[77] Such understanding is ultimately in line with the manner in which early Christians read the prophets. Their lives were understood to be in harmony with Jesus Christ as they foresaw him and waited for him by means of the Spirit.^[78] They were to be loved for they proclaimed the Gospel as they believed in Christ, hoped in him, waited for him, announced him and partook in the same Spirit as the Apostles.^[79] In their hermeneutic, these writings predicted Christ and his fulfillment of these promises validated the Christian faith. Demonstrating the coherence between prophet and Jesus was central to early evangelistic technique.^[80] The faith of Athenagoras’s community, like that of Justin, was grounded in an argument from prophecy. He writes that the prophets are witnesses (μάρτυς) to Christian thought and faith and that they confirm the Christian arguments (λογισμός).^[81] Such witness and argumentation had begun within a Judaeo-Christian mission.^[82] The Jewish component of the mission’s identity, however, is not reflected in our apologist’s characterization of the prophets.

Athenagoras’s strong appeal to the prophets is in continuity with earlier Christian tradition that emphasized a Christology rooted in the prophets and that was exhibited clearly, for instance, in Justin and Luke.^[83] But such appeal to the prophets resonates also with his pagan context. The emperor also found it useful to appeal to prophets in order to craft public policy. William Klingshirn and Mark Vessey, informed by David Potter, explain that Christian intellectuals shared with the Greco-Roman milieu a set of assumptions about universal histories. Nations, it was commonly held, had histories that were divinely ordered and orchestrated. Peoples and empires could understand their place in the world, their place in history, by means of divine revelation, in particular the information provided by prophets.^[84] Because of this commonplace belief that nations were part of a divine order in which prophets manifested the particulars of the arrangement, Potter claims that emperors manipulated their subjects by selective appeal to the prophets.^[85] They exploited the popular faith in prophets in order to concoct a national history that was useful to the emperor’s agenda and trusted by the general public. Therefore, when Athenagoras pivots from the partial reliability of the poets and philosophers in Legatio pro Christianis 7 with, “We, however, have prophets” (ἡμεῖς δὲ … ἔχομεν προφήτας), and characterizes their contribution for the emperor as “divine” (θεῖον), from the “Spirit of God” (παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ πνεύματι), and superior to “human opinions” (δόξαις ἀνθρωπιναις)^[86] he is employing a strategy all too familiar to both the imperial court and early Christian apologetics. The emperor would have been sympathetic to the tactic of appealing to prophetic authority and the second-century Christian would have recognized it as part of the received tradition.

Athenagoras, then, in his introduction of prophets into his apology, displays loyalty to his Christian tradition and shows himself an astute observer of the Roman Imperial context. What can we discover about his concept of the inspired prophet? Does it reveal a thoroughgoing debt to classical Greece and Hellenism, as indicated by Geffcken, Malherbe and Barnard? Or will we find again association with both his Christian and pagan worlds?

Athenagoras’s language for divine inspiration is diverse. He does use a term (ἔνθεος) commonly translated “inspired” or “possessed”^[87] by God. Above, we observed Plato’s use of the same word for both poetic and prophetic (μαντικός) inspiration.^[88] Philo also uses the term for prophetic inspiration, and like Athenagoras, he identifies the means of inspiration as the Spirit (πνεῦμα), the fruit as the speech of the prophets (προφήτης), and the prophet Moses, in particular.^[89]

He also understands inspiration as a deliberate action of the Spirit whereby he moves or impels (κινέω) the prophets, particularly their mouths, to speak divine opinions as inspired spokespersons. Using the verb twice, once in each of our passages, it apparently serves as his favorite image.^[90] This conception is not uncommon in early Christian treatments of prophetic inspiration. The same language is used elsewhere in the second century for the ministry of the Word who inspired both Christian and Jewish prophets.^[91] The New Testament has a parallel term. 2 Pet 1:21, while denying that prophecy arose out of the prophets themselves, affirms that they were carried or moved (φέρω) by the Holy Spirit.^[92]

In his lexical repertoire we find another verb commonly used to convey generic action, but which can more specifically describe divine, supernatural action. Athenagoras employs it in Legatio pro Christianis 9,1 and 10,4 to describe how the Spirit related to the prophets in order to effect their preaching. He influenced, acted upon, inspired (ἐνεργέω) them.^[93] Justin used the cognate, ἐνέργεια, along with a more common noun for inspiration, ἐπίπνοια, to the same effect. It helps him characterize Moses’s inspired prophetic activity in the tabernacle.^[94] The apostle Paul also finds use for a related term when discussing the Spirit’s involvement in equipping the community. In 1 Cor 12:4–6, he puts forth three terms for the manifestations of the Spirit: gifts, services, and workings (ἐνέργημα).^[95] Although he specifically mentions one such working, that of mighty deeds, he is not too interested in distinguishing between the three terms. Each can refer to all the Spirit’s manifestations. He is much more concerned with emphasizing the worker as the one God. For our purposes it is important to note that one of these divinely worked manifestations is prophecy. Early Christianity, from Paul to Justin to Athenagoras, seems to have wanted to highlight that divine inspiration of prophets, old and new, was the work, the result of the activity, of God. This may be why in contrast, we find Athenagoras speaking in apparent irony of the activities (ἐνέργεια) of the pagan idols.^[96] Only the one God is truly active.

The final pair of terms elaborate upon the earlier notion of the Spirit’s moving the prophets. As part of Athenagoras’s musical, instrumental metaphor, they add further insight to how the Spirit stirs the prophet. In Legatio pro Christianis 7,3, the Spirit, the apologist says, “moved the mouths of the prophets like (musical) instruments.”^[97] The movement of the Spirit, metaphorically, is his playing of the instrument. In Legatio pro Christianis 7,1, we do not know whether the instrument is a percussion instrument like a tympanon, a stringed instrument like a lyre or harp, or one played by wind.^[98] In any case, we are not to understand the instrument (ὄργανον), like Philo does in one place, as the prophet’s vocal organs.^[99] The metaphor is meant to figure the Spirit’s movement of the prophet’s mouth. It is only in Legatio pro Christianis 9,3 where the reader learns that he has had a pipe, αὐλός, in mind. The prophet’s mouth is a pipe and the Spirit makes use (συγχράομαι) of it by blowing (ἐμπνέω) into it. These last two terms for inspiration, “make use” and “blow,” lead us to appreciate distinctive features of his thought.

The first (συγχράομαι) helps to differentiate his view from the idea that under inspiration the prophet is a mindless, passive instrument. We saw this idea above in Plato and Geffcken cites him on this feature in order to validate his claim concerning Athenagoras’s thoroughgoing Hellenism.^[100] Polybius employs the term when he recounts Hannibal’s strategic use of river and elephants.^[101] The Carthaginian availed himself of their aid, employing them as coadjuters.^[102] The apologist seems to have more in common with the early Greek view of poets, prophets and inspiration rather than the later. The early view, described above, emphasized the poet’s participation in the composition of poetry.^[103] The prophet is not a mere passive instrument.

The early view also stressed another feature of inspired poetry. While for Plato, the poet under inspiration was mindless, without discretion, and composed flawed poems full of contradictions, early Greek literature allowed for the infallibility of a poem composed by an inspired poet.^[104] Plato, in effect, doomed the poet with his chosen metaphor. The poet resembled a fountain that did not govern the upward surging water. It sprayed freely without guidance. Athenagoras’s metaphor, whatever else it does, does not convey the idea of an unstructured tune and he does not entertain the possibility of contradiction between the prophets. When they compose under inspiration they do so in such a way that their own text coheres and there is harmony between them. We know this because immediately following his metaphor he cites three prophetic texts in witness of the same theological construct: the oneness and greatness of the true God.^[105] For Athenagoras, the prophet is not frenzied. He is coadjutator with the Spirit, superintended by the Spirit, but clearly a participant in composition. Furthermore, this movement of the Spirit, whereby he avails himself of the prophet, results in prophetic harmony and truth. His view accords much more with the early Greek view of inspired poetry than with Plato’s perspective.

Typically, Athenagoras’s metaphor is presented as that of a flautist blowing into a flute. However, the instrument he has in mind was an αὐλός, a pipe with a reed mouthpiece, finger-holes, related to the oboe, and normally played in pairs.^[106] Thus, in his metaphor, the Spirit is a piper, an αὐλητής, who blows (ἐμπνέω) into the prophet’s mouth (or the mouths of the prophets) as into a pipe or pipes. How might we understand his metaphor in such a way that the two features of the prophet’s participation and the Spirit’s truth-yielding administration are protected? What might serve as the precedents for his image? Here, his last term for inspiration, “blow,” draws our attention to the piper’s breath.^[107] Familiar with the pipe, the ancients wrote about the importance of the piper’s breath for melody and tone. Aristoxenus writes that successful melody depends upon agents external to the pipe, like a change in the piper’s breath that can alter pitch.^[108] Aristotle speaks in a similar way about the temperature of the piper’s breath. When the piper exhales as in a sigh, the breath is warmer and a deeper note sounds. Skilled pipers also practiced overblowing, producing a separate set of notes.^[109] For Athenagoras, breath inspired, and these texts help us to grasp how the Spirit’s blowing superintended the success of a prophet’s ministry. Without breath there is no melody, no tone.

More pointedly, Athenagoras may have in mind here the notion that without the Spirit’s breath there is no harmony, no continuity between the prophets, and no coherence with reason. He speaks continuously of the prophets as the group of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the rest. In the plural they and their mouths serve as objects of the Spirit’s influential movement, as witnesses to the church’s thought and faith concerning God, and as messengers of divine, rather than, human, opinions. Furthermore, by proclaiming the things they were inspired to say they corroborate the church’s reasoning (λογισμός). So, when he shares his metaphor, the pipe does not represent a single prophet but the prophets.^[110] His choice of the αὐλός might be driven by his desire to communicate that although the different prophets utter words that are not identical and witness to different aspects of the faith, their testimonies agree, in the end they are symphonic. They speak both about God and the things of God. In the cento of prophetic words cited, three testify to God’s oneness, but one testifies specifically to his greatness. Since the αὐλός was typically played in pairs the metaphor allows for a picture of the Spirit who pipes as the whole score requires. If played simultaneously, one pipe may have played melody while the other played sustained or varied notes or each could have sounded a different pitch. If played alternatively, different pitch seems the most likely explanation.^[111] The metaphor provides for diversity in particular prophecies, while protecting the unity of the collective witness. Aristoxenus makes this point in regard to both instruments and poets. Each pipe is a part of the whole, not an end in itself and the audience can always tell when the pipes or singers are in harmony (συμφωνέω).^[112]

Although the metaphor of the Spirit playing a musical instrument is a common one for the divine inspiration of prophets and the purification of sages, Athenagoras is alone in selecting the pipe for his picture. Philo prefers to imagine a stringed instrument, specified once as a lyre, as does Plutarch.^[113] Montanus does the same.^[114] So, although the image of a musical instrument is common, Athenagoras shows his own genius.^[115] His selection of a pipe is carefully thought through. Immediately, a polemically motivated distinction between pagan deities and the Christian God comes to mind. The lyre was the instrument of choice for Apollo.^[116] The apologist prefers to associate the Christian God with the αὐλός.^[117] Also, the αὐλητής cannot sing or speak, therefore some Greeks viewed this limitation as indicating that the instrument and its musician were inferior and lacked nobility.^[118] Athenagoras, however, recognizes the analogy’s usefulness for his theological idea. If the αὐλητής communicates by mouth only by means of the αὐλός, this highlights the role and active participation of the prophets. His analogy conveys the idea that the Spirit breathes into the prophets, but it is the prophets who speak the words. The music of the divine, Christian αὐλητής has lyrics, but it is the inspired, human αὐλός that sings the words. Furthermore, his analogy of this wind instrument resonates with the way breath was already associated with divine inspiration in pagan, Jewish and Christian contexts.^[119] This also may explain why his metaphor highlights the piper’s breath and not the musician’s skillful use of fingers as well as mouth and tongue in the playing of the pipe.^[120] Homer lets Penelope say that a god inspired her by breathing (ἐμπνέω) a thought into her heart while Longinus links inspiration by breath to possession by a god. We note that Plutarch describes inspired, prophetic speech as breathing out (ἐμπνέω) and elsewhere relates prophetic inspiration to breath, but uses πνεῦμα.^[121] Pseudo-Plutarch records Herophilus’s theory of god-breathed (θεόπνευστος) dreams, Pseudo-Phocylides extols the excellence of God-breathed (θεόπνευστος) wisdom, and Cicero writes of the poet as breathed into (inflo) by a divine spirit.^[122] The New Testament reflects this notion of inspiration as well. In 2 Tim 3:16 all Scripture is God-breathed (θεόπνευστος). One must wonder if the apologist is thinking of John 20:22 and Gen 2:7 in a fashion that connects original creation to prophetic utterance as life-giving. Although he alludes to John 1:3, gives evidence of a Johannine Christology, and alludes to Gen 1 and 6, there is, nevertheless, no explicit connection.^[123] It is in Justin where we are now able to appreciate a significant similarity, however. We have already mentioned 1 Apology 36,1 above in our discussion of early Christianity’s concept of divine inspiration as an act of the Son or Spirit whereby the prophet is moved or impelled (κινέω) to speak.^[124] In this same passage, Justin denies that the prophets inspired themselves by breathing (ἐμπνέω) into themselves. In his mind, as in Athenagoras’s, the inspiring movement of God (Son or Spirit) is one of breathing into the prophet.

In addition to indicating that the Spirit’s breath plays the prophet in such a way that harmony, continuity, and truth sound forth, Athenagoras’s metaphor also communicates the prophet’s own contribution. The uniqueness among pipes may be seen in the types of the pipes that differed mostly in the positions of the finger holes, mouthpiece, and length.^[125] Each type produced a different pitch to provide accompaniment in different performances.^[126] One might be low-pitched for male choruses; another might be cut for a higher octave more suitable for women or boys. Some were deemed appropriate for symposia; others for hymns; still others for frenzied ceremonies. Each had its own character, made its own contribution, and suited particular settings. Each served along with the piper as coadjutor contributing from its own nature.^[127]

The final question to be addressed is what Athenagoras means when he refers to the inspired prophets as being “in the ecstasy (ἔκστασις) of their reason (λογισμός)” (κατ’ ἔκστασιν τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς λογισμῶν) and what might have influenced his thinking.^[128] Malherbe points to parallel phrases in Philo and Plutarch.^[129] The Philonic parallel does not describe the Jewish prophets, but pagan banquets characterized by drunkenness. The occurrence in Plutarch describes Solon pretending to be out of his mind. Neither provides a context shared with Athenagoras. Two other Philonic parallels might be mentioned. Following his statement that prophetic ecstasy is the best of four types, he provides an interpretation of Gen 15:12 assisted by the metaphor of a stringed instrument. He reads it as Abraham’s prophetic, ecstatic experience.^[130] When in ecstasy (ἔκστασις), the Spirit arrives, the prophet’s mind is evicted, his reason (λογισμός) sets like the sun, his vocal organs remain quiet and the Spirit plays by making use of them in accordance with his will. In another passage, reason (λογισμός) withdraws and the Spirit puts forth the prophetic message by playing the vocal organs.^[131] We also know that Philo’s own experience of divine possession resulted in frenzy and unconsciousness.^[132]

The scholarly literature seems fixated upon the parallels with Philo and Plutarch. However, the Old Testament relates remarkable conversions of those who prophesy by means of the Spirit and the New Testament, too, uses ἔκστασις to refer to revelatory, visionary trances experienced by Peter and Paul where they see heavenly things and hear the divine voice.^[133] Furthermore, Justin clarifies that Zechariah’s prophecy (2:10–13) came about not when he was in a normal state, but “in ecstasy (ἔκστασις).”^[134] Zechariah in ecstasy saw things not visible to natural eyesight, but Justin provides no accompanying details of frenzy or unconsciousness. Common to all these texts is the idea that the prophetic experience of ecstasy is a state of consciousness or vision different from a normal one. Philo specifically introduces the factor of the divine Spirit and presents the state as one in which human reason is evicted. How we are to understand Athenagoras’s language is unclear. He does not say that reason is evicted or withdrawn and there is no indication of frenzy or unconsciousness. In the translations we find several options. Scholars render Athenagoras’s ἔκστασις in a variety of ways. Some read it in parallel with a notion of frenzied unconsciousness, confusion or loss of reason. Crehan and Pouderon are closest to Philo. For Crehan, the prophets’ reasoning fell “into abeyance” while Pouderon has, “dans le délire de leur raison.”^[135] Richardson’s translation suggests that prophetic ecstasy involves an act of the Spirit whereby the prophets are given thoughts loftier than those that are human, but he does not go so far as to suggest that they lose consciousness or become hysterical or delirious. He puts it as “raised above their own thoughts.”^[136] Malherbe’s and William R. Schoedel’s renderings do not venture to interpret the ecstatic state. Malherbe has “in accordance with the movements of their reasonings.”^[137] Schoedel simply reads, “in the ecstasy of their thoughts.”^[138]

Athenagoras does not elaborate on the state of ecstasy. If the prophets’ reason is being “displaced”^[139] he does not explicitly say so. This accounts for the variance in translations. He is much more interested in its result and in stating that his community’s prophets experienced it. For apologetic reasons, it is important that both his imperial and Christian readers know this. Two things are clear. First, he emphasizes that the prophetic proclamations, facilitated by the divine Spirit while in a state of ecstasy, have replaced human opinions and human doctrine with divine ones.^[140] They teach “about God from God” (παρὰ θεοῦ περὶ θεοῦ).^[141] Second, in two steps he clarifies that the ecstasy has not done away with reason: (1) the prophets confirm the Christian arguments (λογισμός); and (2) the writings of the prophets provide the emperor with “good reason” (λογισμός)^[142] to reject the false charges against the Christians.

Among the translations reviewed above, Richardson’s conveys Athenagoras’s meaning the best. His use of ἔκστασις in this context does not seem to carry the sense of distraction of mind, entrancement, astonishment or excitement. Instead the sense points to a displacement or outward, upward movement of the prophet’s mind and reason.^[143] In ecstasy the prophet’s thoughts are raised up from the realm of the human to the realm of the divine so that he thinks heavenly thoughts. In light of our analysis concerning Athenagoras’s concept of the prophet as coadjutor, his use of ἔκστασις most probably indicates that in ecstasy the Spirit complements human reason with divine thought and superintends the process so that the prophet speaks words in guarded partnership with the prophet’s milieu that accurately convey the revelation received. For a final parallel in antiquity, in addition to those discussed above in early Greek thought, we might offer the Pythia’s ecstasy. Recent scholarship, profiting greatly from Pierre Amandry’s study of the Delphic oracle, has provided some corrective to earlier characterizations of the Pythia’s ecstasy as hysterical, frenzied, delirious, irrational, and vocally passive.^[144] Some portrayals of the Pythia, Lucan’s, for instance, connect some of these stereotypical traits with her experiences of inspiration as the god possesses her.^[145] However, there are other portrayals suggesting some fluidity in how the state of inspired ecstasy was understood.^[146] Plutarch, for example, describing the Pythia’s state under inspiration, tells how she received visions and divine illumination and how the god employed her body and soul to convey to human ears divine thoughts. As the god inspires her she is serene and composed, not frantic.^[147] As she speaks her voice and words are her own, not the god’s.^[148] The god did not take possession of the Pythia’s body.^[149] Here, the deity, through visions and the inner illumination of the Pythia, conveys divine thoughts. But under inspiration the Pythia remains tranquil, rational, and articulate. She is a coadjutor; she, with her personality, forms the oracle.^[150] Although we do not have in Plutarch a systematic doctrine of inspiration, in these texts the god reveals; the Pythia receives, composes and proclaims.^[151] “Ecstasy and rationality,” David E. Aune points out, need not be understood “as two mutually exclusive states of consciousness.”^[152] Neither is it necessary to conclude that ecstasy or inspiration always indicate a prophet’s passivity. The apologist means for his metaphor of the pipe to communicate the divine source of the prophet’s words, but he does not mean for it to convey the utter passivity of the inspired spokesperson.

Perhaps, at least, we can say that in their ecstatic state the prophets, by the movement of the divine Spirit, had their minds lifted up so that they received divine thoughts that they expressed in words. These words provided reasonable warrant for the faith and were unattainable through human means. It is worthwhile to note that Athenagoras’s perspective of the inspiration of the prophets does not only stand in contrast to aspects of the later Greek view of inspiration, but also to that of the Montanists.^[153] Their prophets fell into ecstatic frenzy and were portrayed by Montanus as lyres, passive instruments played by the Lord, and as persons whose earthly faculties, under inspiration, were asleep.^[154]

5 Conclusion

This study is a response to one basic claim that has governed the reading of two passages in Athenagoras’s Legatio pro Christianis. These passages concern the early Christian understanding of the Old Testament prophets.^[155] The problematic claim is that the apologist’s treatment of the prophets as “Hellenistic,” takes place in “general Hellenistic terms,” and represents a “thoroughly Greek perception.”^[156] In detail, scholars claim that his view reflects the phenomenon seen in Plato, Meno 99c, originates from Plato, Phaedrus 249d, and is especially similar to Philo’s perspective in several passages.^[157] To support the claim, texts from Philo and Plutarch are commonly cited.^[158] Even when studies or editions only cite the Hellenistic parallels without commentary, they continue to give credence to the claim.^[159]

Our analysis demonstrates a broader background for Athenagoras’s treatment of the prophets and inspiration and it indicates the need for more nuanced characterizations. Certainly, there are significant parallels with Philo, both lexical and conceptual. His discussions concerning the divine inspiration of the prophets, the state of ecstasy, the role of the Spirit, the effect upon reason, and the musical metaphor find some degree of resonance in our apologist. It is almost unimaginable that Philo was not in his mind. Yet, we have noted significant differences in their metaphors, the contexts in which the lexical similarities occur, and their concepts of the participation or passivity of the inspired, ecstatic prophet. Clearly, both independence and dependence on other sources is suggested. Furthermore, this study shows that conclusions based on assumed parallels with Plato also require adjustment. Athenagoras does not share the notion of an unconscious, passive, mindless prophet or poet who under inspiration composes flawed, contradictory material. Rather, there are important similarities with early Greek thought on the activity and contribution of the inspired poet as well as the infallibility of the composition. Also, in addition to the texts of Plato and Plutarch commonly associated with the question of prophets, inspiration, and ecstasy, important alternative portrayals exist in these authors. The inspired prophets, in the mind of Athenagoras, are coadjutors with the Spirit who are not frantic, but of sound mind, and their own speech, as well as their books, contains harmonious, true teachings.

Finally, this investigation makes one additional claim. In addition to the common Philonic parallels as well as those from Plato and Plutarch, there are other sources to consider that are equally informative. Athenagoras’s discussion of the prophets and inspiration manifests alliance and dependence upon the Septuagint, other Jewish sources, the New Testament and second-century Christian sources, especially Ignatius and Justin. Athenagoras is a “Christian philosopher.”^[160] We would expect to see such a broad-based platform of resources for his theological construction. A simple classification of Greek, Hellenistic or Philonic for his notion of the inspired prophets is incomplete, unreflective of his own ingenuity, and fails to adequately account for his Judaeo-Christian heritage. It also minimizes the elegance of this early Christian attempt to theologize about the Jewish prophets in a gentile world. In Athenagoras we have an explanation of the prophets and inspiration that (1) clearly positions them preeminently as rational, doctrinal Christian authorities above the poets, philosophers, and human opinions; (2) constructs his community’s theology with an artistic flair that selectively and critically weaves together both pagan and Judaeo-Christian sources; so that (3) he might win a hearing from both his imperial and ecclesiastical audience.