The Sabbatean Prophets

Nathan of Gaza 83
public prophecy on Shavu’ot night 1665 and the wave of popular miracle
stories that exploded, unsolicited, the following winter. He must have had
real doubt about whether his prophetic status would be accepted in wider
circles, especially among nonwitnesses, without a sign or wonder. Much of
what happened in that period, the time of the four prophetic episodes, is
made clearer in the light of this problem.
For one, the dramatic style of Nathan’s Shavu’ot night spirit possession incident
is better understood in this context. Through the public performance
of this vision among a group of important rabbis, Nathan could bring others
under the spell of his intense prophetic experience. And if real miracles were
lacking in Nathan’s arsenal, he did undergo the physical manifestations of a
trance state, causing R. Meir ha-Rofe to pronounce him dead. The shock of
this development, closely followed by the foreign voice issuing from Nathan’s
throat, might in itself be accounted a sign or wonder. Indeed, in a
later narrative about a similar incident, the writer comments that one can lie
about anything, but nobody can falsify the stopping of their heartbeat. In the
same vein, it is possible that the physical evidence of the antiquity of the Vision
of Abraham, and the story of its location by means of a prophetic communication,
could constitute another “sign” of Nathan’s true prophecy.
What may have been Nathan’s most powerful tool of conviction, however,
was the systematic attempt to locate himself in the direct line of prophetic-messianic
tradition from R. Isaac Luria and the Safed kabbalistic circle.
For the particular scholars in Gaza whom Nathan had to win over first,
the association of Nathan with this great and partially unfulfilled legacy may
well have been more important than physical signs and wonders.
This brings up a second aspect of Nathan’s activity during this period and
in his later career: his deep commitment to the rehabilitation of “failed”
messiahs in Jewish history. Jews have never known what to do with their
past messianic hopefuls, especially those who genuinely stirred the hearts
of masses of Jews in their times. Figures such as Simon bar-Kosiba (bar-
Kokhba), David Alroy, R. Abraham Abulafia, Asher Laemmlein, Solomon
Molkho, R. Isaac Luria, and R. Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, have created
deep ambivalence among many Jews. Even Jesus seems to have left
certain mixed feelings. On the one hand, claims for the messiahship of these
figures were not realized. If they made or accepted such claims, they must
have been frauds, fools, or delusional madmen. At the same time, though,
many of them were important scholars, leaders, authors, and mystics, who
seemed to have dedicated their lives to foster the good of their people. The