The prophets, even more than the poets, lent themselves easily to this allegorical method of interpretation. The _nabi_ was in an especial sense the messenger of God and an interpreter of His will. But his message was often a parable. He saw visions and dreamed dreams. He wrote, not in plain words, but in pictures. The meaning of the pictures was often purposely obscure. The Greek word “prophet” sometimes properly belonged, not to the _nabi_ himself, but to those who, in his own time or in after time, explained the riddle of his message. When the message passed into literature, the interpretation of it became linked with the growing conception of the foreknowledge and providence of God: it was believed that He not only knew all things that should come to pass, but also communicated His knowledge to men. The _nabi_, through whom He revealed His will as to the present, was also the channel through whom He revealed His intention as to the future. The prophetic writings came to be read in the light of this conception. The interpreters wandered, as it were, along vast corridors whose walls were covered with hieroglyphs and paintings. They found in them symbols which might be interpreted of their own times. They went on to infer the divine ordering of the present from the coincidence of its features with features that could be traced in the hieroglyphs of the past. A similar conception prevailed in the heathen world. It lay beneath the many forms of divination. Hence Tertullian[119] speaks of Hebrew prophecy as a special form of divination, “divinatio prophetica.” So far from being strange to the Greek world, it was accepted. Those who read the Old Testament without accepting Christianity, found in its symbols prefigurings, not of Christianity, but of events recorded in the heathen mythologies. The Shiloh of Jacob’s song was a foretelling of Dionysus: the virgin’s son of Isaiah was a picture of Perseus: the Psalmist’s “strong as a giant to run his course” was a prophecy of Herakles.[120]