Waldman/Prophecy and Power, 4. An Experiment in Comparison

This chapter is adapted from Marilyn R. Waldman and Robert M. Baum, “Innovation as Renovation: The ‘Prophet’ as an Agent of Change,” in Innovation in Religious Traditions: Essays in the Interpretation of Religious Change, ed. Michael A. Williams, Collett Cox and Martin S. Jaffee (The Hague, The Netherlands: Walter de Gruyter, 1992): 241–85. Reprinted by kind permission of the publisher and Robert M. Baum. In it, the authors chose two ostensibly unlikely “conversation partners,” Muhammad and Alinesitoué in order to test the “extra language” of privileging communication. The former is a well-known male whose impact is felt worldwide; the latter, an obscure female whose influence persists mainly among her own people. Although they were separated by thirteen (solar) centuries and five thousand miles, they both made use of privileging communication from an extra-human source to oppose the status quo. And they both emerged in environments in which privileging communication from extra-humam sources was a well-established and variegated phenomenon.