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“Do Not Believe Every Spirit”: Discerning the Ethics of Prophetic Agency in Early Christian Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2021
Abstract
In early Christian culture, prophets went into ecstasies while having visions and speaking by means of a spirit (enthusiasm). With the waning of prophetic activity in the second century, enthusiasm was not seen in many communal gatherings. When enthusiasm reemerged in Montanism during the late second century, church leaders claimed that speaking in ecstasy never existed as true prophecy in early Christian culture. They argued that true prophets always prophesied with a sound mind. The ecstasy of Montanism exhibited an unsound mind and looked like demonic possession; thus, Montanist prophecy was rejected as false. This paper theorizes that enthusiasm's absence contributed to the critics of Montanist ecstasy who were not used to enthusiasm and therefore did not recognize it as an early Christian practice.
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References
1 So William Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy and Polluted Sacraments: Ecclesiastical and Imperial Reactions to Montanism (VCSup 84; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 93: “The early church had been quite used to hearing prophets speak ecstatically ‘in the Spirit.' Passivity on the part of a prophet resulting in oracular utterance was not unusual.”
2 See Ps.-Justin, ad Graecos 8; Athenagoras, Leg. 7, 9; Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 2.4; idem, Protr. 1; Hippolytus, Antichr. 2. See also Theophilus of Antioch, Autol. 2.9; Odes Sol. 6:1–2. Cf. Plutarch, Def. orac. 414E, 418D, 431B, 436F, 437D; and Philostratus, Imag. 1.7.20.
3 Georg Luck, Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) 51. Luck adopts the terms “automatism” and “automatic speech” from Eric R. Dodds's watershed classic, “Supernormal Phenomena in Classical Antiquity,” in The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973) 156–210, at 195.
4 See P. Lejay, “Un oracle montaniste. Le plectra, la langue et l'Esprit,” Bulletin d'ancienne littérature et d'archéologie chrétiennes 2 (1912) 43–45.
5 Luck notes: “Automatism … means someone else is taking over and that one loses, for awhile, control over a sense or a muscle” (Arcana Mundi 50); the “word ekstasis—‘stepping out of one's self'—is best understood today as ‘trance,' though in antiquity it could mean a form of ‘possession’” (229).
6 Because “enthusiastic prophecy within the Church has not yet come under attack” (Alistair Stewart-Sykes, “The Original Condemnation of Asian Montanism,” JEH 50 [1999] 1–22, at 7).
7 See Epiphanius, Pan. 48.3.11–4.3 (hereafter without “48.” I follow Frank Williams's numbering in his translation of Panarion; see n. 18 below).
8 See Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): “While Justin and Athenagoras had allowed that the prophets of old had spoken in ecstasy, anti-Prophecy writers seem not to have agreed. It was clear wits, said Epiphanius, and not derangement, which characterized the true prophet (Pan. xlviii. 7,8),” 88 [italics in original].
9 Cf. Philo, Her. 266, and Lucian of Samosata, Philops. 16.
10 Herm. Mand. 11.3 (The Ante-Nicene Fathers [ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson; 10 vols.; 1885–1887; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994] 2:27): “[B]ut he [the false prophet] also speaks some true words, for the Devil fills him with his spirit”; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.8 (ANF 2:495): “Scripture says that ‘the devil is transformed into an angel of light.' When about to do what? Plainly, when about to prophesy”; idem, Strom. 1.17 (ANF 2:319): “But among the lies, the false prophets also told some true things”; idem, Hom. 17.14 (ANF 8:573): “It is possible that he be an evil demon or a deceptive spirit pretending in his speeches to be what he is not”; Tertullian, Apol. 47 (ANF 3:52): “[T]he spirits of error … by them, certain fables have been introduced, that, by their resemblance to the truth might impair its credibility”; Cyprian, Tractatus 6.7 (ANF 5:467): “[T]hese spirits … are always mixing up falsehood with truth.”
11 “Those concerned with the discernment of the spirits recognized that evil, or Satan, did not come in a clearly recognizable fashion. On the contrary, demons came under the disguise of goodness” (Susan E. Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era [OSHT; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011] 262).
12 2 Cor 11:4 might be alluding to such a situation.
13 Jannes Reiling, Hermas and Christian Prophecy: A Study of the Eleventh Mandate (NovTsup 37; Leiden: Brill, 1973) 72 [italics added].
14 Herm. Mand. 11.7.
15 See Valeriy A. Alikin, The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries (VCSup 102; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 71–73.
16 See Antti Marjanen, “Montanism: Egalitarian Ecstatic ‘New Prophecy,’” in A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics” (ed. Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen; VCSup 76; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 185: “With the turn of the century ecclesiastical structures and offices began to gain more permanent forms, while prophetic enthusiasm slackened.”
17 Irenaeus (Haer. 3.11.9, 5.6.1) suggests the presence of prophets in the late 2nd cent., but the extent of their activity and importance is difficult to tell. Origen (Cels. 7.11) implicitly suggests that prophets are no longer necessary for the maturing church. Epiphanius (Pan. 1.5) says that prophecy ceased with the apostles.
18 See Christine Trevett, “Montanism,” in The Early Christian World (ed. Philip F. Esler; 2 vols.; London: Routledge, 2000) 2:929–51. For sources on Montanism, see Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History: Books 1–5 (trans. Kirsopp Lake; LCL 153; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926) 471–99; Epiphanius II: Panarion haer. 34–64 (ed. Karl Holl; GCS 31; Berlin: Akademie, 1980) 219–41; The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Books II and III; De Fide (trans. Frank Williams; Leiden: Brill, 2013) 6–21; and Les sources de l'histoire du Montanisme. Textes grecs, latins, syriaques (ed. Pierre Champagne de Labriolle; Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1913).
19 So Stewart-Sykes, “Original Condemnation,” who notes, “The roots of Asian Christian prophecy lie in the tradition of the Fourth Gospel” (4).
20 Ibid., 10, “Montanism arose from a context of Asian Christian prophecy.”
21 See Trevett, Montanism, 67; Tertullian, Mon. 3.8 and Virg. 1.2–4.
22 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.7, 5.17.2.
23 Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 123.
24 Ibid., 110. Progressive revelation (Trevett, Montanism, 135–41) and the cessation of prophecy with the apostolic era (Laura Nasrallah, An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity [HTS 52; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003] 174) were overlapping problems.
25 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.18–22, 5.17.3–4, 5.18.2–4, 5.18.11.
26 Tabbernee (Fake Prophecy, 122–23, 421–22) convincingly argues that Montanism is not a mixture of Phrygian paganism and Christianity. So, too, Trevett, “Montanism” (946): “[H]ad pagan influence been thoroughgoing it would surely have been condemned explicitly at an early stage.”
27 See Kendra Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire: Sophists, Philosophers, and Christians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 235.
28 So Trevett, Montanism, 33. The trouble with automatism suggests that it had been unknown to many Christian congregations as a valid form of prophecy.
29 Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987) 408. The term “ecstasy” is a psychologically loaded term. See Tertullian, An. 45.3 (ANF 3:223): “This power we call ecstasy, in which the sensuous soul stands out of itself, in a way which even resembles madness.”
30 Trevett, Montanism, 87: “Condemnation and defence of ecstasy loomed large in the propaganda.”
31 Fox, Pagans and Christians, 407.
32 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.18.2. Besides ecstasy, Montanus's lifestyle and doctrines—e.g., annulments of marriage and rigorous fasts, two “demonic doctrines” in 1 Tim 4:1–2—made him even more susceptible to charges of demonic possession.
33 See S. A. Mousalimas, “?‘Ecstasy' in Epiphanius of Constantia (Salamis) and Didymus of Alexandria,” StPatr 25 (1993) 434–37.
34 See ekstasis in Acts 10:10, 11:5, 22:17.
35 Epiphanius consistently contrasts conscious biblical seers (Pan. 3.3–6; 7.4, 5; 10.1, 2) with Montanus as an unconscious automatist (Pan. 4.1, 5.8).
36 See Tertullian, An. 9 (visions), and Epiphanius, Pan. 4.1 (automatisms).
37 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.27.1.
38 Marjanen, “Montanism,” 193.
39 Tertullian, Prax. 1.
40 See Trevett, Montanism, 58–60.
41 Ibid., 55–57, and Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.19.1–4.
42 See Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., Prophecy in Carthage: Perpetua, Tertullian and Cyprian (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1992). Curiously, Tertullian does not write about speaking in ecstasy, only vision ecstasy. So ibid., 104–6; Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 133–41; and Tertullian, An. 9.4, “ecstasy in the spirit” (per ecstasin in spiritu) is a visionary experience.
43 Epiphanius, Pan. 1.3, 4.
44 See Frederick E. Vokes, “The Opposition to Montanism from Church and State in the Christian Empire,” StPatr 4 (1961) 518–28; James L. Ash, “The Decline of Ecstatic Prophecy in the Early Church,” TS 37 (1976) 227–52; and William H. C. Frend, “Montanism: A Movement of Prophecy and Regional Identity in the Early Church,” BJRL 70 (1988) 25–34.
45 Trevett observes, “Not all Patristic writers damned ecstasy, [so] quite probably the ecstatic prophetic state was unfamiliar to those who wrote against [it]” (Montanism, 89). Stewart-Sykes notes, “It is quite possible that the anti-Montanists had no first-hand experience of the prophecy of Apollo and were dependent on second-hand reports for their information, being misled in the same way as modern scholars” (“Original Condemnation,” 13). And Tabbernee (Fake Prophecy, 61) distinguishes second-hand knowledge of literary opponents, e.g., Origen, Eusebius, and Epiphanius, and first-hand knowledge of Montanists themselves, e.g., Tertullian.
46 Trevett, Montanism, 89: “Christian prophecy of all kinds was in decline and probably not practiced in many congregations.”
47 See Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 16.8; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.14.1; and Epiphanius, Pan. 11.9, 10.
48 Origen, Princ. 3.3.4 and Cels. 7.3. For Origen's knowledge of Montanism, see Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 58–61.
49 See Trevett, Montanism, 88–89. David E. Aune (Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983]) notes similarly, “The ritual possession characteristic of some of the mystery cults [i.e., Bacchism and Maenadism] was not the same phenomenon as divine possession enabling individuals to utter divine oracles, though the two were frequently confused in antiquity” (21) [italics added].
50 So Aune, “All the major features of early Montanism, including the behavior associated with possession trance, are derived from early Christianity” (Prophecy in Early Christianity, 313); and Stewart-Sykes, “prophecy in a possession trance was a recognized phenomenon within Asian Christianity” (“Original Condemnation,” 15).
51 See Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 190–91.
52 See n. 45. Marjanen similarly observes, “In the third century the understanding of Montanism was thus transformed from a renewal movement of the Christian church to a heresy” (“Montanism,” 193); and Tabbernee: “Eusebius, in his Historia ecclesiastica, accepted and popularized the view that Montanism was a demon-inspired pseudo-prophecy” (Fake Prophecy, 91).
53 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.8, 9; and Epiphanius, Pan. 1.7; 11.6; 12.6, 11, 12.
54 So Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.17, 5.19.3; and Epiphanius, Pan. 3.8; 5.8; 7.10; 12.6, 7.
55 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.19.2 (LCL 153):494–495: “the blessed Sotas in Anchialus wished to drive the devil out of (ekbalein) Priscilla.”
56 Acts 19:13 (demon); 1 Cor 12:3 (holy spirit); Philo, Her., 266 (divine spirit); Josephus, J.W. 7.6.3 §11 (deceased man).
57 See John R. Levison, The Spirit in First-Century Judaism (AGJU 29; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 223: “The work of the spirit in prophetic inspiration … produces loss of consciousness … and the inability to recollect the prophetic experience.” See Philo, Spec. 4.49; Mos. 1.274, 277–279, 283; Her. 265, 266; Ps.-Philo, L.A.B. 28.6, 10a; Josephus, Ant. 4.6.5 §§118, 119, 121; Ps-Justin, ad Graecos, 37.2, 3; and n. 2 above.
58 Philo uses ekstasis for automatism (Her. 249, 266) in the way that Plato uses mania for automatism (Phaedrus 244A–B). The mental effects of prophetic automatism—Plato, Ion 534B (LCL 164):422–423: “the mind is no longer in him” (ho nous mēketi en autō enē)—appeared identical to negative psychology, mental illness, and pagan prophecy to which the term mania also applied. See Plato, Phaedrus 244D–E.
59 D. Jeffrey Bingham (“?‘We have the Prophets': Inspiration and the Prophets in Athenagoras of Athens,” ZAC [2016] 211–42, at 233–34) dubiously argues that Athenagoras's choice of instrument, a pipe, showed that true prophetic ekstasis logismōn included a conscious, active, “uplifted” mind as opposed to the lyre in Philo, Plutarch, and Epiphanius that depicted ekstasis logismōn as an unconscious, passive mind. Tabbernee (Fake Prophecy, 94) sees mental passivity in all uses of the trope, Christian, Jewish, or Greek.
60 Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 180. Epiphanius, Pan. 4.1, 5.8.
61 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.17.2 and Epiphanius, Pan. 5.8 (GCS 31:227).
62 Typically, automatisms occurred in the language of the percipients. Stewart-Sykes offers a corrective to the scholarly view that suspension of the mental faculties produces unintelligible speech only: “Paraenetic prophecy has been identified with prophets who speak in possession of their normal faculties, and mantic prophecy with those who do not. The equation is a false one … it is possible for a prophet not in possession of his or her faculties to deliver paraenetic guidance” (“Original Condemnation,” 4).
63 So Origen, Princ. 3.3.4–5.
64 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.14, where a spirit of deceit (apatēs pneumati) is present in the trance state (parekstēnai) of Theodotus, who allegedly dies because of it.
65 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.8, 9. Stewart-Sykes notes similarly: “It is their allegedly mantic delivery which leads to … charges” against Montanus and his two prophetesses (“Original Condemnation,” 8).
66 1 Cor 14, synerchēsthe (you gather together); Did. 11, synachthēsesthe (gather together). and Herm. Mand. 11, synagōgēs (assembly).
67 Whereas most English versions read “spiritual gifts” or “manifestations of the Spirit,” E. Earl Ellis (“?‘Spiritual Gifts' in the Pauline Community,” NTS 20 [1973–1974] 128–44) comes closest to the context and terminology—pneumatōn (spirits)—when he writes that in both 1 Cor 14:12 and 14:32 “a plurality of good spirits must be inferred” (134 [italics in original]).
68 R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) 103: Mark describes “the relation of the spirit to its human ‘host' by speaking of the latter as being en the spirit (here and 5:2)… . The exorcism passages all speak of the demon as an active personality, distinct from the ‘host,' and controlling the behavior of the latter.”
69 Maximillian Zerwick, Biblical Greek (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1994) §116; and Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13 (Word 33A; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), who renders Mark's en pneumati akathartō as “with an unclean spirit” (226), following Hebrew be + a noun.
70 Jean Héring (The First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians [London: Epworth, 1962; repr. 1973]) reflects this commonly held view: “According to the Apostle, it is better to speak ‘tō noi', knowing what one is saying, rather than in ecstasy” (150). Terrance Callan (“Prophecy and Ecstasy in Greco-Roman Religion and in 1 Corinthians,” NovT 27 [1985] 125–40) likewise wrote: “[P]?rophecy … involves speaking both with the spirit and with the mind (nous) (v. 15, 19). Thus for Paul prophecy … does involve active participation of the prophet's mind” (137).
71 So Maximillian Zerwick, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1996) 526, who renders tō noi here as “intelligently” to mean “I will pray intelligibly.”
72 See Herm. Sim. 9.13.5, 7: “these spirits … become one spirit, one body” (ta pneumata tauta … esontai eis hen pneuma, hen sōma), and “having received these spirits, . . they had one spirit and … the same mind” (labontes oun ta pneumata tauta, … en autōn hen pneuma kai … ta auta ephronoun). Text and translation from The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (ed. Michael W. Holmes; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999) 493.
73 See Const. ap. 8.1.2 (ANF 7:480): “The Devil and demons prophesy many things about Him; and yet for all that, there is not a spark of piety in them.”
74 Stevan Davies, Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity (Dublin: Bardic, 2014) 65.
75 See 1 Cor 12:10 in the New English Bible (1961): “the ability to distinguish true spirits from false.”
76 Cyril C. Richardson, Early Christian Fathers (New York: Collier, 1970) 176 n. 64.
77 See Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), who states that Did. 11.7 forbids testing someone “after the completion of the testing” has already occurred (178).
78 See Aaron Milavec, The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003) 72: “When they prayed or spoke in Spirit, the prophets' evident charisma would not be ‘put on trial or judged' (11:7, 11).”
79 So Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity, 229.
80 See Alikin, Earliest History, 193: “In a number of cases, then, Christian communities may have tested and discussed critically the messages delivered in their meetings to assess whether they came from God or not.”
81 Reiling, Hermas, 101–2. Here, “the Spirit of God” refers to “any spirit given from God” (11.5), akin to 1 John 4:2.
82 Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity, 226.
83 Reiling, Hermas, 43.
84 See Carolyn Osiek, A Commentary on the Shepherd of Hermas (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), who observes that the wordplay on being filled “is consonant with the spatial language used elsewhere about spirit possession” (142); and Reiling, Hermas, 86, “the prophetic spirit who fills the true prophet … unmistakably resembles the daimōn paredros through whom Marcus [the false prophet] was said to prophesy” in Irenaeus, Haer. 1.13.
85 Reiling, Hermas, 120.
86 Ibid., 14, 64.
87 Ibid., 70.
88 Such mundane questions were asked of the Delphic Oracle, many of which are catalogued in Joseph Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). “Confronted with a world full of oracles and diviners of all sorts, the Christians had to admit that even the devil and the demons have some knowledge of what is going to happen” (Reiling, Hermas, 69).
89 See Matt 11:18; Luke 4:33, 7:33, and 8:27: echein daimonion (to have a demon), which is often translated as “to be possessed by a demon.” See also Acts 16:16, where the possessed slave girl “has a spirit of python” (echousan pneuma pythōna).
90 So The Apostolic Fathers (ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman; 2 vols.; LCL 24–25; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003) 2:289.
91 So, too, Did. 11.12 and Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.18.4. Compare Herm. Mand. 11.12, “the spirit of such prophets” (tōn toioutōn prophētōn … to pneuma), with 1 Cor 14:32, “spirits of the prophets” (pneumata prophētōn).
92 So Jonathan E. Soyars, The Shepherd of Hermas and the Pauline Legacy (NovTSup 176; Leiden: Brill, 2019) 134–37.
93 Reiling, Hermas, 16.
94 So Reiling, Hermas, 51 n. 1.
95 Seen elsewhere for discerning true prophecy in Paul and the Didache. So Soyars, Hermas and the Pauline Legacy, 136 n. 150.
96 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.17.2.
97 Ibid., 5.16.7, 8; 5.17.2, 3; 5.18.3.
98 Ibid., 5.17.3, 4.
99 Eshleman, Social World, 239.
100 Ibid., 237.
101 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.17.4, and Eshleman, Social World, 238.
102 Eshleman, Social World, 239.
103 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.17.4, and Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 139–40. Contra Tertullian, An. 9 and Marc. 5, where Montanist prophetism continues well into the 3rd cent.
104 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.8, 9.
105 Ibid., 5.16.16, 17.
106 Ibid., 5.16.17. This is an obvious allusion to Matt 7:15, 21–23.
107 Ibid., 5.16.9.
108 See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (trans. Lake) 1:477 n. 2.
109 See nn. 10 and 11 above.
110 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.8
111 Epiphanius, Pan. 3.3, 6; 4.6, 7. Williams, Panarion, 8–10.
112 Epiphanius, Pan. 1.5; 3.1, 3. See Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 174, 188, 195.
113 Epiphanius, Pan. 2.1–9.
114 Ibid., 7.3 (GCS 31:228).
115 Epiphanius, Pan. 4.6, 7 (GCS 31:226). For ecstasy as “amazement,” “astonishment,” “awe,” see Mark 5:42, Luke 5:26, Acts 3:10. The verb form existēmi occurs seventeen times in the NT, fifteen of which mean “amazed” or “astonished.”
116 Epiphanius, Pan. 2.5, 3.3–10, 7.10, 10.1.
117 Ibid., 4.6 (GCS 31:226).
118 Epiphanius, Pan. 4.6, 6.4 (GCS 31:226, 227). Tabbernee notes: “The Anti-Phrygian denied that the ‘ecstasy of sleep' sent upon Adam was a valid argument supporting extraordinary ecstatic prophecy. Adam's was an anesthetic ecstasy, not an ecstasy of derangement” (Fake Prophecy, 99).
119 So Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 191.
120 Epiphanius, Pan. 3.11; 10.3; 11.2, 8.
121 Ibid., 4.1. Williams, Panarion, 10.
122 Epiphanius, Pan. 4.2–3 (GCS 31:225). The trope is an automatism that explains how automatic speech is produced.
123 See Origen, Cels. 7.3; Lactantius, Inst. 1.4.2–3; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.7, 8, 9.
124 So Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 179. The spirit “indwelling in him” (Pan. 11.6 [GCS 31:234 ]: en autō enoikēsai), “the spirit speaking in her” (Pan 12.9 [GCS 31:236]: to pneuma to laloun en autē), and Montanus's “ecstasy of mind” (Pan. 4.6 [GCS 31:226]: ekstasin phrenōn), which is an “ecstasy of folly” (Pan. 5.8 [GCS 31:227]: en ekstasei gegonen aphrosunēs), are marks of a false prophet.
125 “Aspersions are cast upon the vocabulary [of the oracle] itself” (Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 192); Montanist oracles do not “stack up to the catalog of prophets and apostles of a former time” (ibid., 195).
126 So Epiphanius, Pan. 2.2; 3.1–3; 4.2, 3; 10.3. By attacking the words of an automatist, he is indirectly attacking automatism itself.
127 Ibid., 12.3.
128 Ibid., 12.6. Recall Herm. Mand. 11.12 for a prophet who “seems” (ho dokōn) to have a divine spirit, and Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.9 for a spirit that “seems” (dokē) to behave like a good one.
129 Epiphanius, Pan. 12.7 (GCS 31:236).
130 Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 179.
131 Epiphanius, Pan. 12.11, 12.
132 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.17, 5.18.13.
133 Ibid., 5.16.7. Tabbernee identifies the bishops' testing as an “attempted exorcism” (Fake Prophecy, 8–9).
134 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.17.
135 Fox, Pagans and Christians, 408.
136 Some scholars like to argue (dubiously so) that only certain words guarantee the presence of ecstasy, and these words are never used of New Testament prophets, e.g., mantis, enthousiasmos, and katochē. So David T. Hill, New Testament Prophecy (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1979) 121.
137 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.16.9, and Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 110, 120, 123, 141, 345, 380, 408.
138 Tabbernee made a similar insight: “As the Anonymous complains about the manner of their prophesying (5.16.7), there may be an underlying, implicit (although not explicitly stated) connection between prophesying in a ‘trance state' and the ‘blasphemy' produced by the ‘spirit' under whose spell the ecstatic prophets had fallen” (personal email correspondence, 30 March 2009).
139 Epiphanius, Pan. 2.1–9. See Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 179.
140 Fox (Pagans and Christians, 405) warns against accepting the anti-Montanist standards on ecstasy as orthodox for the earliest Christian communities.
141 Maximilla's automatism as truth mixed with lies (Epiphanius, Pan. 12.6) harkens back to the earlier problem with discerning ambiguous automatism. See n. 10. Epiphanius misses this level of discernment; his only concern is discerning the mental state of the prophet.
142 Historically, a holy spirit or an evil spirit may speak through a person in an ecstasy. See Ps.-Philo, L.A.B. 28.6, and Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.17.
143 Epiphanius likewise avoids Pauline materials, despite their significance to the topic of prophecy. For an explanation, see Nasrallah, Ecstasy of Folly, 185–86.
144 For warnings against false visions, see Isa 28:7; Jer 14:14, 23:16; Lam 2:14; Ezek 13:6, 9, 16; 22:28; Zech 10:2, 13:4. On the possibility of demonic visions in Christian circles, see Tertullian, An. 46. See Cyprian, Epistularum, 11.3, 66.10, for discerning true visions.
145 See Martti Nissinen, Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Greek, and Biblical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), who says, “Attempts to make a distinction between the ‘sober' ecstasy of the biblical prophets and the more frantic ecstasy elsewhere are arbitrary” (184).
146 Davies observes: “There exist scholarly polemics against the ‘excesses of the Corinthian ecstatics' based on 1 Corinthians. But everything the Corinthian Christians do in the spirit Paul does too. Paul is not opposed to ‘ecstatics' per se; he is interested only in the regulation of spirit-inspired behavior during community gatherings” (Spirit Possession, 82 n. 11).
147 So Tabbernee, Fake Prophecy, 93.
148 Possession amnesia accompanies both demonic possession (John Cassian, Collationes, 7.12.1) and divine possession (see n. 57 above).