The Formation of the Jewish Canon by Timothy H. Lim

Author:Timothy H. Lim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2013-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Books of the Prophets

More difficult to ascertain are the works that are likely to have been included in “the books of the prophets.” Within the context of MMT, the phrase “the books of the prophets” most naturally refers to the books of Samuel and Kings. MMT CT C 17–19 states the following:

[It is written in the book] of Moses [and in the books of the Prophets] that there will come […] [the blessings have (already) befallen …] in the days of Solomon the son of David. And the curses [that] have (already) befallen from the days of Jeroboam the son of Nebat and up to when Jerusalem and Zedekiah King of Judah went into captivity.40

This paragraph is an apt summary of the narrative of the books of Samuel and Kings. The author of MMT mentioned the kings by name, and they are in this context used as temporal markers of the narrative. The phrase בימי (“in the days of”41; 2x) and the preposition עד (“until”) call attention to the deeds of all the kings between Solomon and Jeroboam, on the one end, and Zedekiah, on the other, that have engendered God’s blessings and curses (CT C 18–19). In this context, ספרי הנביאים, mentioned just a line before this phrase, would most naturally refer to the books of Samuel and Kings.

But the sectarian understanding of the “books of the prophets” is unlikely to have been restricted to the two books of the former prophets as found in MMT since other figures are also known as prophets and their writings considered prophecies.42 Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are explicitly called prophets. Joshua, Jeremiah, Amos, Habakkuk, Zechariah, Hosea, Nahum, Zephaniah, Micah, and possibly Obadiah and Malachi are associated with writings that are prophetic. Further corroborating evidence is to be found in the collection of the Minor Prophets in individual scrolls.

There are good reasons to be cautious about equating “the books of the prophets” with the second division of the Hebrew Bible. The book of Daniel is found in the third division of the traditional Jewish canon, in the section of “Writings,” but among the sectarians it was considered prophetic (see 4QFlor and 11QMelch).43

Likewise, the pesharim interpret the psalms in the same way that they do the prophetic texts. It is possible that the psalms would have come under the broad category of “the books of the prophets.” The collection of psalms, then, would be considered as a sub-collection in the same way that the Minor Prophets form an identifiable group of texts within the group of prophetic texts.

As will be discussed in chapter 9, Luke 24:44 raises the possibility that the psalms were considered prophetic and may have been included in the collection of the books of the Prophets. Unfortunately, no such evidence is available in the scrolls.44 What can be said is that the psalms were understood by the sectarians as an identifiable collection; they are called “the songs of David” and “the book or scroll of the psalms.”

What has been suggested

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.