When drawing the canonical limits of the Bible, Jewish sages strictly declared that the prophetic age had ended in the fifth century BC, and that the last prophets were figures like Zechariah and Malachi, whom Christians know from their own Old Testament. Henceforward, said the rabbis, Jews should seek instruction only from their learned sages. Yet prophets and prophecy continued long after those debates, in both Christianity and Judaism, and many believe that the tradition has never ended. The idea is thoroughly familiar in the Pentecostal tradition, to say nothing of the Mormon experience.
Those Jewish scholars were working in the earliest centuries of the Common Era, and their firmness in these matters might well have been a reaction to contemporary Christian claims. In fact, it is quite easy to find Jews claiming prophetic status long after the time of Malachi, and right through Roman times. We see this for instance in a book like Rebecca Grayâ??s Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
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