The Sabbatean Prophets

122 The Sabbatean Prophets
utter a false word for all the wealth in the world. I must hear things from
several people and find their words in agreement. [He goes on to tell the
story of R. Moses Saravel, or Suriel, discussed below.] 91
The wonder of Sabbatean prophecy was much more persuasive than the
theory of Luria’s kabbalistic influence in bringing Jews to believe. The inner
circle of rabbis who learned of Nathan’s prophecies (or personally witnessed
them) were persuaded of their authenticity by the medium of their delivery,
to the extent that they did not call for any further confirmatory wonders or
miracles. In other words, they did not dispense with the need for some
wonder or sign to assure them that this was real prophecy. Rather, the combination
of the seemingly unfalsifiable histrionics of the events, the deeply
traditional idiom in which the noetic content was delivered, Nathan’s unimpeachable
credentials, and the manifold parallels between Nathan and the
Safed kabbalists served as enough of a sign for these early believers. A similar
dynamic was at work on a mass scale with the outbreak of popular
prophecy. The enormous magnitude of the outbreak, not seen since biblical
times; the seemingly impossible physical and mental feats of the prophets;
the close resemblance between their ecstasies and that of Nathan—these
in themselves constituted a confirmatory miracle. At the same time, mass
prophecy was a portent, a sign from heaven that God was about to shift the
destiny of the world.
In the history of the movement, it was the prophecies that made the
masses of Jews into believers. Therefore they must move in our perception
from being a curious appendage, a funny bit of excitement on the sidelines
of the big story, to the center of the narrative. The restoration of prophecy
with Nathan, Sarah’s prediction that she would marry the messiah, the great
visions in the home of Cardoso, the outbreak of apparitions in Izmir, and
now, the culminating train of mass prophecy—who indeed could see all this
and remain aloof
Leib gives the most detailed and explicit analysis of the way mass prophecies
fostered belief in the messiahship of Shabbatai. Several other texts
confirm this viewpoint. Raphael Supino, for example, writing to R. Jacob
Sasportas, describes the dead faint of the Portoferraio prophet and comments
“A person may lie about all things, but with a pulse nobody can deceive.”
In other words, the same physical symptom seen in the case of
Nathan, the drop of pulse and breathing to a level undetectable by touch
(a phenomenon found among yogis and entranced persons) was a confirmatory
miracle. The prophet’s subsequent naming of Shabbatai Zvi as the