The characteristic features of the prophetic performance can be described from the point of view of the one who performs, indicating the specific state of her or his body and mind during the performance.

3 The Assyrian prophecies were partly published at the time Hölscher and Duhm wrote, but their prophetic nature was not acknowledged. 2 Only a few texts concerning ancient non-Yahwistic prophets could be referred to a century ago, such as the Egyptian narrative of Wenamun, who gives an account of a “great seer” who becomes ecstatic and delivers an oracle of the god Amon on his behalf to the prince of Byblos (*142) and the story of Elijah and the ecstatic prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kgs 18), which Hölscher compared with later evidence of the ecstatic worship of the Syrian goddess. That prophetic activity involved ecstatic behavior in ancient Israel was already suggested by, for example, Bernhard Duhm 1 and Gustav Hölscher, who began his comprehensive book of Old Testament prophets, Die Profeten, with a chapter on ecstasy and visions as the common feature of seers and prophets of all times and all peoples. It is the shared conviction of most of today’s historians of religion, anthropologists, and biblical and Near Eastern scholars, that the prophetic performance is typically associated with a specific state of mind variably called ecstasy, trance, or possession.

Commander in chief prophecy