The Sabbatean Prophets

Nathan of Gaza 65
streets and houses to find out whence this fragrant odor came, but could
discover nothing. Meanwhile, he [Nathan] leaped and danced in the room,
shedding one piece of clothing after another until his underclothes alone
remained. He then took a great leap and fell flat on the ground. When the
rabbis saw this they wished to help him and to stand him up, but they found
that he was like a dead man. There was present the scholar Rabbi Meir ha-
Rofe, who felt his hand in the manner of the doctors and pronounced that
he had no life at all. They therefore placed a cloth over his face, as is done to
the deceased, far be it from us.
Presently a very low voice was heard, and they removed the cloth from
his face; and behold, a voice emitted from his mouth, but his lips did not
move. And he said, “Take care concerning my beloved son, my messiah
Shabbatai Zvi”; and it said further, “Take care concerning my beloved son,
Nathan the Prophet.” In this way it became known to those sages that the
source of that wonderful odor they had smelled was in the holy spiritual
spark which came into Rabbi Nathan and spoke all these things.
Afterwards he rested a great rest and began to move himself. His colleagues
helped him to stand up on his feet, and asked him how it had happened
and what he had spoken; he replied that he didn’t know anything.
The sages told him everything that had happened, at which he was very
amazed. 30
Unlike the essentially eyewitness accounts of Nathan’s first prophecy, this
account is embedded in an apologetic literary setting, though other reports
of the possession conform with it. Some interesting details of the event and
its telling deserve attention. The matter of the special odor is particularly
noteworthy. In Genesis, the patriarch Isaac precedes his blessing to Jacob,
who wears the clothes of Esau, by comparing his smell to that of a field
which the Lord has blessed (Genesis 27:27). But the Zohar further associates
a special odor, the fragrance of the Garden of Eden, with the prophet Elisha
(Zohar II, 44r), and most significantly, this same fragrance is attributed to
Rabbi Isaac Luria. 31 Such an odor is noted as well in the case of an ordinary
Jewish woman who was possessed at some time before these events, and
who went on to offer messianic prophecies. 32 Shabbatai emitted such an
odor as well, and it appears again sporadically in the Sabbatean literature.
The description of Nathan’s wild dancing is also worthy of attention because
it serves a polemical purpose. The wording is taken from II Samuel
6:16, a passage describing King David’s religious ecstasy as he danced before