The Prophets of Israel

Reinhard Gregor Kratz offers an up-to-date and readable introduction to the manifold literary and historical problems of biblical prophecy in The Prophets of Israel: Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible, providing readers with a clear analysis of the development of the institution of prophecy in ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism. Through a close reading of the prophetic corpus, Kratz demonstrates that there must be a distinction made between the historical and literary prophet within biblical tradition.

The Prophets of Israel takes the distinction between the historical and the literary phenomenon of prophecy seriously and, therefore, will focus primarily on the literary tradition. Kratz's critical study regarding biblical prophecy will offer scholars an overview of various models of interpretation of biblical prophecy, as well as the broader historical background and the phenomenology of prophecy in the ancient Near East and ancient Israel. He considers the literary evidence of prophecy in biblical tradition and its historical context, including the earliest commentaries on prophetic books, the Pesharim from Qumran. The study concludes with an appendix that will introduce the reader to the scholarship on the prophets and provide some suggestions for further reading.