BATH-KOL

or BATH-COL, signifies Daughter of the Voice . It is a name by which the Jewish writers distinguish what they call a revelation from God , after verbal prophecy had ceased in Israel, that is, after the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The generality of their traditions and customs are founded on this Bath-Kol. They pretend, that God revealed them to their elders, not by prophecy, but by secret inspiration, or tradition: and this they call the Daughter of the Voice. The Bath-Kol, as Dr. Prideaux shows, was a fantastical way of divination, invented by the Jews, like the Sortes Virgilianæ among the heathens. With the heathen, the words dipt at, in opening the works of Virgil, were the oracle by which they prognosticated those future events of which they desired to be informed. In like manner by the Jews, when they appealed to Bath-Kol, the next words which they heard were considered as the desired oracle. Some Christians, when Christianity began to be corrupted, used the Scriptures in the same manner as the heathens employed the works of Virgil.