Prophecies Of The Prophets

The author offers an exploration of the 'Old Testament', illuminating its importance as history, literature, and sacred text. He provides an overview of one of the great pillars of Western religion and culture, a book which remains important today for Jews, Christians, and Muslims worldwide.

It is often said that prophecy came to an end in the early Second Temple period. This volume investigates how the Dead Sea Scrolls help to better understand Israelite Jewish prophecy and Israelite-Jewish prophetic texts. However, it not only contributes to the study of prophecy and the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible by analyzing the textual history and interpretative history of prophetic books - the former being concerned with the manuscripts of prophetic books found in Qumran and elsewhere, the latter being focused on para-prophetic texts and commentaries - it also investigates the phenomenon of active prophecy, i.e. ongoing prophetic activities, after the early Second Temple period, long after prophecy came to its so-called end. In the first part of this volume, Matthias Henze deals with the paraprophetical literature from Qumran. Martti Nissinen addresses the relation between Qumran Pesher hermeneutics and Ancient Near Eastern omen divination. Timothy H. Lim asks if, why, and in what sense the psalms were considered to be prophecies or prophetic. In the second part of the volume, George J. Brooke asks the question, "Was the Teacher of Righteousness Considered To Be a Prophet?" and Katell Berthelot shows in her study of 4QTestimonia (4Q175) that the Teacher of Righteousness was not the only active "prophet" in the 2nd cent. BCE. The third part of the volume looks at a wider definition of prophecy. Esther Eshel shows how the tree imagery of the Genesis Apocryphon's symbolic dreams participates in a Jewish tradition that is attested in both earlier and later texts. Leo G. Perdue demonstrates that apocalyptic developed out of both prophecy and mantic wisdom. Perdue also provides a survey of mythical mantic sages in the Ancient Near Eeast and mantic sages and mantic wisdom in biblical, and ancient Jewish literature. Finally, in the fourth part of the volume, Armin Lange offers an example of how the Dead Sea Scrolls help to solve cruces interpretum in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. For this purpose he studies "The Genre of the Book of Jonah" in light of the paratextual literature from Qumran.

Prophecy was a widespread phenomenon, not only in ancient Israel but in the ancient Near East as a whole. This is the first book to gather the available ancient Near Eastern, extra-biblical sources containing prophetic words or references to prophetic activities. Among the 140 texts included in this volume are oracles of prophets, personal letters, formal inscriptions, and administrative documents from ancient Mesopotamia and Levant from the second and first millennia B.C.E. Most of the texts come from Mari and Assyria. In addition, the volume provides new translations of the relevant section of the Egyptian Report of Wenamon, by Robert K. Ritner, and of various texts from Syria-Palestine containing allusions to prophets and prophetic activities, by C.L. Seow. By collecting and presenting evidence of the activities of prophets and the phenomenon of prophecy from all over the ancient Near East, the volume illumines the cultural background of biblical prophecy and its parallels. It provides scholars of the history, religions, and cultural traditions of the ancient Near East with important information about different types and forms of transmissions of divine words, and makes these valuable primary source materials accessible to students and general readers in contemporary English along with transcriptions of the original languages, indexes, and extensive bibliography.

This important work on Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel is the product of an impressive international team of twenty-three outstanding scholars, most of whom are well-known, established names, while a few are able, younger scholars beginning to make their mark on the field. The volume approaches its subject from a remarkable number of different angles, with essays ranging from Israel's ancient Near Eastern background right through to the New Testament, but the majority of essays concentrate on Prophecy and the Prophets in the Old Testament. Particular attention is paid to the following subjects: Prophecy amongst Israel's Ancient Near Eastern Neighbours; Female Prophets in both Israel and the Ancient Near East; Israelite Prophecy in the Light of modern Sociological, Anthropological and Psychological Insights; Deuteronomy 18.9-22, the Prophets and Scripture; Elijah, Elisha and Prophetic Succession; the Theology of Amos; Hosea and the Baal cu All the contributions, previously unpublished, arise from papers delivered at the Oxford Old Testament seminar.

As time goes by, words can evolve and take on new meanings. Examining words from the first century can help us understand how definitions have changed. This book tries to determine how the people of that era recognized what the prophets were saying. As you learn to interpret their language, you may find the Bible takes on a whole new flavor. The following are just a few issues we will address: Are signs of the end times revealed in Scripture? Is there a rapture and when does it happen? Does the Bible disclose when Jesus return is near? When does the tribulation occur? Is the key to decoding prophecy found in the Bible? Can secular history help us unlock some of the mysteries?

Protestant reformers found the prophet and biblical prophecy to be exceptionally effective for framing their reforming work under the authority of Scripture-for the true prophet speaks the Word of God alone and calls the people, their worship, and their beliefs and practices back to the Word of God. uses the prophet and biblical prophecy as a powerful lens through which to view many aspects of the reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. G. Sujin Pak argues that these prophetic concepts served the substantial purposes of articulating a theology of the priesthood of all believers, a biblical model of the pastoral office, a biblical vision of the reform of worship, and biblical processes for discerning right interpretation of Scripture. Pak demonstrates the ways in which understandings of the prophet and biblical prophecy contributed to the formation of distinct confessional identities. She goes on to demonstrate the waning of explicit prophetic terminology, particularly among the next generation of Protestant leadership. Eventually, she shows, the Protestant reformers concluded that the figure of the prophet carried with it as many problems as it did benefits, though they continued to give much time and attention to the exegesis of biblical prophetic writings.