Note 384 — Chapter VI · THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MONARCHY

1 Sam. xix. 23. Nâbî is not of Arabic derivation as is often supposed, as, for example, by Professor Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 8-10, where it is erroneously stated that the Babylonian nabû does not mean ‘to pronounce’ or ‘proclaim.’ The name of Nebo shows to what antiquity the Babylonian nabium in its special sense of ‘prophet’ reaches back. The modern Arabic nebi is borrowed from the Hebrew nâbî. Nâbî corresponds with the Greek προφήτης ‘forth-speaker,’ as distinguished from μάντις or ‘diviner,’ the Babylonian asipu. In Babylonia the asipu performed the offices which the Hebrew roeh had once fulfilled; he determined whether an army should move or not, whether victory would be on its side, whether an undertaking would be prosperous or the reverse. While, therefore, the asipu and the nabiu continued to exist side by side, performing the functions which had been combined in the Hebrew roeh, and at the outset in the Hebrew nâbî, among the Israelites the roeh disappeared, and the nâbî alone remained with purely prophetical attributes.