Cultic Prophecy in Assyria and in the Psalms‪.‬

INTRODUCTION Since the classic debate between Mowinckel and Gunkel in the early twentieth century, no consensus has been reached on key questions regarding cultic prophecy or its relationship to the Book of Psalms. Mowinckel attempted to explain many psalms as a result of prophetic activity in the cult. (1) Gunkel, on the other hand, doubted that prophets contributed directly to psalmody, arguing that free, spontaneous prophecy is incompatible with a fixed liturgical agenda. Poetic or homiletical adaptation of prophetic style might account for such elements as first-person divine speech. (2) Some have stressed the unified composition of psalms containing divine speech and argued for composition of the whole prior to performance in worship, without the involvement of actual prophets. (3) Recent research on Assyrian prophetic sources provides fresh evidence relevant to this debate, particularly in reference to the preservation of cultic prophecy in psalms. (4) Assyrian sources attest to the existence of cult prophets in a culture relatively close to that of the OT, thereby inviting functional, form-critical, and thematic comparisons. The Assyrian prophetic collections and their use also invite comparison to literary composition and subsequent performance of psalms. After a brief overview of Assyrian cultic prophecy, this essay examines the implications for understanding the origin of first-person divine speech in the Book of Psalms.