Are Old Testament Prophetesses Shamaness? An Anthropological Perspective

Abstract

The article is devoted to an important topic – the phenomenon of female prophecy in the Old Testament. This problem is considered within the framework of the anthropological model “Old Testament prophets are shamans”. The study discusses the possible connection between the ministry of Old Testament prophetesses and shamanic practices of different cultures. The purpose of this article is to refute the hypothesis according to which the practices of Old Testament prophetesses can be qualified as shamanic. The work uses such methods as historical-genetic, cultural-historical, historical-critical, hermeneutic, comparative analysis, canonical approach, as well as analysis, synthesis and generalization. The paper concludes that the comparison of the Old Testament prophetesses with shamans using the canonical approach does not give the desired result – the detection of “family resemblance” (according to L. Wittgenstein), since these two phenomena have nothing in common except the role of an intermediary. The focus of the the article are the aforementioned problems, which show that at this stage of development of religious studies the comparison itself is impossible: 1) the nature of sources (it is impossible to obtain objective historical data on prophetesses from biblical texts and compare them with anthropological data on shamans); 2) terminological problem (there is no agreed upon definition of “shamanism” among anthropologists, which leads to a methodological conflict – the justification of the choice of certain groups of religious specialists); 3) methodological reductionism (when comparing two phenomena, important elements of their ministry are omitted). However, the article notes that this approach has some perspective – it is the developments of cognitive religious studies.