I guess in my head I always figured the difference was that an oracle could do it at will or at least had some control over it and a prophet was beholden to whenever the god(s) chose to speak through them.
Plus the aesthetic difference. An oracle is respected, part of the establishment, has an attending set of priests. A prophet shows up at your coronation looking like a shepherd who spent the last 40 years in a cave to tell you you’re a little bitch.
An oracle is someone you get put on a waitlist to see and a prophet is someone you have to remove from your yard by pushing them into a wheelbarrow and carting them over the property line.
Maybe an oracle is someone you pay to talk to and a prophet is someone you bribe to shut up.
Intrigued by the semantic differences between the nouns “prophet” and “oracle”, as I am writing a short story about cats and struggling with my word choice.
Both can mean an individual person gifted with foresight. A person who is an oracle can prophesize and make a prophecy, but is an oracle a prophet? Why or why not?
Conventional definitions are pretty much the same: both are people gifted with foresight and looked to as the mediums through which divinity communicates with humanity. But would you call the Pythia a prophet? Would you call Moses an oracle?
It seems wrong, somehow, and I’m not sure where that bias is coming from. Perhaps it’s an association between oracles and polytheism vs prophets and monotheism. I imagine an oracle as someone you could go to to ask when you should plant your crops and a prophet as someone you should ask about the trolley problem.
[opens door to see a haggard-looking wanderer dressed in shabby clothes with the light of divine inspiration burning in their eyes and important words at the tip of their tongue]
[points to sign on door that says ‘NO PROPHESIZING’]
[closes door quickly]
(via lurkerviolin)