IT is significant for the entire conception of God in the Old Testament that, from the beginning, the Israelites derived their knowledge of Him from personal revelations, appearances, and monitions. Genesis teaches that the patriarchs were honored with such revelations. Friends of God like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, received prophetic direction at critical periods of their life. . . . The authority of Moses rested on his reputation as the servant of Yahweh, as the seer and spokesman of his God. . . . From this time prophecy never wholly died out; in the time of the judges, Deborah and others appeared. Samuel marks an epoch; he is called the seer, not in the lower sense of soothsayer, but as a tried and trusted organ of Yahweh. He may be regarded as the first of the prophets, both because of his superior endowments and because the prophetic communities seem to have owed their origin to him; at least, they first appear in his time. As their name ("sons of the prophets") indicates, they were disciples who gathered about a master; as communities they seem to have remained in their respective settlements, while such masters as Samuel, Elijah, or Elisha, wandered from place to place.
—From the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.
