The term prophecy refers to a wide range of religious phenomena that have been manifested from ancient to modern times. The Greek term prophētēs is the etymological ancestor of the English word prophet, and it has cognates in most European languages. The indigenous Greek prophētēs was a cultic functionary who "spoke for" a god; that is, the prophētēs delivered divine messages in association with a sanctuary where the god had made its presence known. However, the word prophētēs influenced European languages primarily because early Jewish and Christian writers used the term in translations of the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament to refer to religious specialists in Israelite, Jewish, and Christian traditions. Today comparativists use prophecy to describe religious phenomena in various contexts on analogy with the activity of ancient Hebrew prophets and other figures who had...