The Sabbatean Prophets

40 The Sabbatean Prophets
of music and dance to the status of ritual practice” far beyond the Sufi level.
The detractors of these orders accused them of bizarre and reprehensible
sexual behavior, and there is evidence many eschewed marriage and
women in general. In doctrine as well as practice the dervishes adopted extreme
and heretical positions. The ecstatic dancing for which certain dervishes
are known was a manifestation of their frequent direct contact with
the divine. The sects had a distinct institutional framework, and their leaders
were often dissenters from the religious elite. 175 Indeed, dervishes and Sabbateans
share a very peculiar combination of tendencies—asceticism, religiously
charged music and dance, possible sexual eccentricities, prophecy,
and antinomian heresy. It is hardly credible that two groups living in close
proximity with such an odd conjunction of traits would not have affected
one another.
Despite the influences of both Christian and Muslim thought on Sabbateanism,
it was still a movement whose ideology and symbolism were
deeply rooted in the Jewish world. It is important to keep in mind that the
lines of influence went in all direction—Jewish messianism both influenced
Christianity and Islam and was influenced by them. This relationship of mutual
impact becomes especially clear upon examining the history of Jewish
messianic movements.
Sabbateanism, then, was born into a world saturated with messianic beliefs
and prophecy. Jews, Christians, and Muslims, scholars and commoners, scientists
and mystics, explorers and exegetes, physicians and philosophers, all
were receptive to prophecies of messianic advent. There is a deep organic
connection between the sudden influx of new facts and ideas in the sixteenth
century, and the way they were worked out (militarily, economically,
socially, intellectually, and religiously) in the seventeenth—it is all part of
one era. While the prophetic and messianic fervor under Islam appears to
have cooled somewhat in the seventeenth century, in the Christian and
Jewish worlds it remained just as intense as earlier or more so. Other factors
made the seventeenth century more propitious for successful messianic
movements, such as the spread of cheap printing and the vastly increased
sea traffic, both of which allowed news to spread quickly. The authority
structure of the Jewish world had also undergone changes which, while
quite subtle, made room for someone like Shabbatai to flourish and succeed.