Most people have a rather warped view of the biblical prophets. We have tended to see them as rather like a man I saw outside Saint Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, dressed in what looked like bed sheets, wearing a beard, with a sign around his neck, and carrying a staff, and shouting things to anyone who happened to look his way. He reminded me of some of the cartoons I had seen in the New Yorker magazine, depicting long-bearded characters in similar dress, usually announcing the end of the world. Certainly some of the prophets had their own peculiarities and sometimes dramatic ways of getting their messages across. If one includes John the Baptist in that prophetic tradition, one must also note some strange tastes in food and dress.

To consider the prophets as mere eccentrics or troublemake…