RT Article
T1 The Phenomenon of Israelite Prophecy in Contemporary Scholarship
JF Currents in biblical research
VO 12
IS 3
SP 275
OP 320
A1 Kelle, Brad E. 1973-
LA English
YR 2014
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1775177904
AB In the mid-twentieth century, the classic historical-critical approach to the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic books gave way to the study of Israelite prophecy as part of a social phenomenon known throughout the ancient Near East. Since the 1980s, research on the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy has been marked by two main paradigms. The first extends the basic phenomenological approach and identifies Israelite prophecy as a socio-historical phenomenon shared across various ancient cultures. Prophecy was a form of intermediation between the divine and human, and a sub-type of the larger religious practice of (non-technical) divination. The second paradigm questions the usefulness of the biblical texts for reconstructing the ancient realities of prophecy and suggests that Israelite prophecy was a literary phenomenon that emerged among scribes in postexilic Yehud. Within these paradigms, present research offers new insights on lines of inquiry, such as the relationship between prophecy and psychology, prophets in the Second Temple period, and female prophets and prophecy. Overall, scholarship reflects a sharpening distinction between ‘ancient Hebrew prophecy’ as a socio-historical phenomenon and ‘biblical prophecy’ as a literary/scribal phenomenon, and generally approaches Israelite prophecy not as a single phenomenon but as a set of related phenomena.
K1 Women Prophets
K1 Sociology
K1 Scribes
K1 Psychology
K1 prophetic book
K1 Prophecy
K1 postexilic prophecy
K1 orator
K1 Neo-Assyrian Prophecy
K1 models for prophetic figures
K1 Mari
K1 literati
K1 lay prophets
K1 Intermediaries
K1 Ecstasy
K1 Divination
K1 Charismatics
K1 Book of the Twelve
K1 Anthropology
K1 Analogies for prophetic figures
DO 10.1177/1476993X13480677