In his book, Jae Han explores the concepts of prophethood, prophecy, and revelation as they were understood and utilized by different religious groups in the Late Antique Near East. By observing a vigorous discourse and theorization of these concepts, Han persuasively argues that distinct communities, by engaging in a shared discourse developed these concepts either converging each other or opposing. By prioritizing “synchronicity and geographical proximity” over the “religious boundaries” (7) of each tradition as the criteria for selecting material to investigate, Han compares and connects texts from different traditions usually studied separately. With this method that he calls “redescriptive” (4–6), instead of exploring the meaning and evolution of concepts within each tradition, through his comparative approach, makes them emerge as parts of a synchronic discourse.

The book, excluding the introduction and conclusion, consists of six chapters. In the first three, Han explores the prerequisites of prophethood, the criteria that define and distinguish the true prophet from the false one, as set by the individual communities. By emphasizing the importance of reading sources within their specific rhetorical contexts, he reveals the motivations behind their composition and the challenges they address.

In the first chapter, Han investigates the concept of prophethood in the Cologne Mani Codex (CMC). Based on the anthological genre of the source, he suggests that it should be seen as a text created “by and for a post-Mani Manichaean community” (30). In this context, Han interprets the Homily of Baraies the Teacher (a follower of Mani) as a later addition. Baraies responds to the criticism of Mani by the Baptists in the “first publication of the CMC” by creating a “typology of prophethood” (36, 62) to include Mani in a lineage of ancestral prophets. A key feature of this prophetological model, that fits Mani perfectly, is visions. As Han stresses, for Baraies, Mani’s revelation is not a new religion but the continuation of ancestral prophecy. Prophethood becomes a rhetorical tool for Baraies to support Mani – and by extension Baraies’ faction – in an internal confrontation over who “are the true inheritors” of the Baptist legacy. Yet, as Han rightly points out, “ironically, … Baraies’ attempt … ended up with precisely the opposite effect” (62–63), the formation and gradual growth of a separate Manichaean scholastic community.

A product of this scholastic community is the Kephalaia, the main source of the second chapter. Here, Han investigates how the later Manichaean teachers articulated their discourse on prophethood and how this relates to nearby communities. To answer this, he chooses as test cases three chapters from the two codices. For instance, he considers that in the introductory Kephalaion, the invocation of Mani’s books, the claim that the Kephalaia supplement them as his oral revelation, and the account of Mani’s travels through Persia are rhetorical devices used by redactors to transform a collection of individual texts into a single anthology. Each chapter thus emerges as a distinct part of the one revelation of the Prophet Mani, which continues in place and time through the different receptions and interpretations of the later Manichaean teachers. Similar ways of “anthologization” are also found among the rabbis (80, 84). In contrast to researchers who argue that “the so-called ‘chain of prophets’” in the first Kephalaion can be traced “back to Mani himself” (90), Han argues that it was actually a carefully crafted response to the fourth-century Christian construction of a golden “Apostolic Age,” and the claims of the Christian fathers that Mani was too late to be a true prophet since this “Apostolic Age” had passed. Han argues that the redactors of the first Kephalaion countered this claim by presenting themselves not as “a late church” but as “the last” historical church (104).

An answer to the above Manichaean claims about the prophethood of Mani and a rejection of the Manichaean “visionary forms of revelation” (123), as Han argues in his third chapter, is the Ps.-Clementine Homilies, a Greek work of Judeo-Christian origin. To support his case, since the Homilies nowhere refer to Mani or Manichaeism, Han emphasizes that the work should be understood in the context of the fourth century, alongside CMC and extracts of Mani’s authentic epistles. Thus, although the Homilies certainly turn against Paul, Han argues complementing previous researchers, that the text is directed against Mani, the new Paul of the era: first, by defining the prerequisites of the True Prophet in opposition to the apostolic model of Paul/Mani, and second, by supporting the superiority of “oral-aural revelation over and against” the visionary prophetological model (123).

In the next three chapters, Han delves into the concepts of prophecy and revelation across different religious traditions. Challenging the scholarly assumptions supporting the distinctiveness of the above concepts in each community, Han, while not denying their differences, highlights their points of convergence: Namely, the importance of orality and the shift in the content of prophecy and revelation.

In chapter four, Han, guided by the Oral Torah, continues his analysis of Kephalaia and Homilies interpreting them as expressions of what he calls “ideologies of oral revelation” (155–96). He argues that all three corpora emphasize orality “as the privileged medium of revelation” (25,155). According to Han, orality allowed them to assert that they were continuing the revelation of their prophets, thereby rooting their own “teachings in an originary moment of revelation, be it Sinai, Mani, or … Jesus” (25, 156). In this way, the narrators not only presented themselves as possessors but also as producers of “oral revelation” (156), working alongside prophets in the ongoing production of revelation.

In chapter five, Han uses the Neoplatonic category of prognosis as a heuristic tool to argue that in the early fourth century, there was an expansion of the concepts of prophecy and revelation in several communities of the Near East. Iamblichian prognosis was not simply understood as foreknowledge of future events, but as “panoptic divine knowledge,” providing full “knowledge of all things at all times,” and a power of everlasting discernment (198, 201, 230). According to Han both the Ps-Clementine Homilies and the Manichaeans theorized prognosis along similar lines. They both regarded “traditional” divination as an inferior form of prognosis and associated prophecy with divine ontology. In the Homilies, prognosis is rooted in the divine essence and is measured “according to one’s participation” in it (221). In the Manichaean Kephalaia, it is transmitted through “revelations” directly from the “Light Mind” (230).

In his sixth chapter, Han uses the concept of prognosis to interpret the later Jewish “mystical” understandings of the Torah in the Hekhalot corpus. Contrary to other researchers who do not associate Neoplatonism and Hekhalot, Han argues that the distinction between “mere prognosis” and “divine prognosis” echoes the distinction between a “human” and a “divine” Torah. This similarity concerns both the processes for acquiring knowledge and the content of the knowledge itself. Han’s thesis serves as a warrant that supports his larger methodological argument. Comparanda from different religious traditions can explain a discontinuity within a single tradition.

Overall, the real importance of Han’s book lies in its endeavour to read across different religious traditions. By navigating through the chronological and geographical contexts that a historical analysis requires, Han uses his “redescriptive lens” (5) to craft a compelling narrative by selecting appropriate texts. Challenging the prevailing scholarly assumptions that study the above discourses separately, he successfully proves his central argument that distinct discourses of separate groups intersect and interact with each other. Yet one may argue that Han’s choice of sources and exclusion of others, such as the Ps.-Clementine Recognitions (192) from his “prophecy” dataset (6) weakens to a certain extent the strength of his conclusions. Even so, I definitely agree with him that “informed speculation” (263) is the only choice if historical representation is the goal. Han’s book is undeniably very informative and especially valuable for scholars of Late Antiquity.