There are two facts which must be kept steadily in view, because they suffice to explain all the phe- nomena in the Prophetical literature. (a) In the first place, it is, throughout, a religious literature ; it does not profess to give anything, and we must accordingly not look to it for anything, that goes beyond religious purposes. (0) Secondly, Israel, to which we owe the Prophetical writings in their present form, had as yet no idea of what we call ‘literary property.’* The question was not in what terms a prophet of Jahweh had spoken in former times, but whether those terms were still fitted to fulfil the religious purpose which he once meant to serve. If this did not appear to be the case, it was regarded as not only perfectly right, but as a sacred duty, to modify the original form of expression, to give a milder turn to what was too harsh and no longer applicable to a differently constituted age, to expand and state more clearly what was too concise or obscure, to introduce matter that was wanting in the original but indis- pensable for a later age. To this last category should be assigned a good part of the material on which at one time great stress—and that rightly— was laid, namely, so-called Messianic prophecy. When the threatenings of punishment uttered by the pre - exilic prophets had been fulfilled, when the people languished in exile, or after the Return dragged on a miserable existence under the oppres- sion of the hostile world-power, it could not but seem a piece of cruelty to let words of threaten- ing be the sole or even the predominating feature in the Prophetic oracles, at a time when the people were filled with burning zeal to secure by painful fulfilment of the Law that great change in their lot which had long been promised. We can under- stand how, under such circumstances, consolation and promise had an ever larger place given them within the framework of the traditional Prophetical writings —nay, how, for instance, the Book of Isaiah could come to assume the form of an an-
* Of. what was said above (p. 6252) on the custom of tracing back all the legislation to Moses.
aE
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672 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
thology of Prophetical oracles and be even under- stood and read by the people as such —oracles which in all probability embrace a period of well- nigh 500 years. In saying this we do not mean to give our assent to what an illegitimate hyper- criticism has exalted to a principle, that no word of comfort or of promise is to be allowed to the pre-exilic prophets. But we do mean to claim a perfect right to test fully the authenticity of the various Prophetical words. It is surely not the outcome of a frivolous and unbelieving spirit to seek an answer to the question whether Micah (41°) could have predicted in one and the same breath the carrying captive of Jerusalem to Baby- lon, and (v.") the miraculous deliverance of the city out of the power of its besiegers. Here sober criticism has a readily available resource, namely, to assign the prediction of the destruction of many peoples before the walls of Jerusalem to a much later date then the 8th cent. B.c. In cases where this resource is not available, such criticism will readily waive any decision. Fortunately, there remains enough that is certain and unassail- able to enable us to understand and to depict the ways of God in Hebrew prophetism.
ji. NAME AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WRITING PROPHETS.* — 1. In speaking of the
nebtim (p. 650 ff.) we avoided as far as possible
the name ‘prophets,’ so as not to obliterate the deep-seated distinction between them and the Jahweh prophets properly so called, the suc- cession of whom begins with Amos. We found it necessary, indeed, to recognize even those néb?im who clustered about Elijah and Elisha, and espe- cially the last named themselves, as organs of Jahweh, in whom ‘the spirit of Jahweh’ worked as a mysterious agency, and who could accord- ingly be rightly called ‘men of God.’ But on closer examination we discover such characteristic differences between the two kinds of prophets that we cannot, for instance, place even an Elijah upon the same footing as Amos.
The writing prophets} are essentially connected with the ancient seers (rom), as is expressly testified in 1S 9° ‘Those who are now called “prophets” (nzb?’¢m) were called in former times “‘seers.”’? The old names (70’tm and hozim) in an honourable sense appear elsewhere only in Is 30" ;
* Of the very extensive literature on the characteristics of prophetism and the theology of the writing prophets, we note, in addition to the works cited on p. 650Pn., the following: B. Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten, Bonn, 1875 [a work which already occupies the standpoint of the Reuss-Graf hypothesis, although on questions of literary criticism the author is still pretty conservative]; Ed. Konig, Der Offenbarungsbegrif’ des AT, Leipzig, 1882, 2 vols. [mainly an analysis of the self- consciousness of the prophets and of their leading statements based upon this, regarding (1) their miraculous powers, call, and endowment with the Spirit of God ; (2) the manifestation and speaking of God as the source of the revealed message, Konig maintaining that in this matter the prophets see and hear with the bodily senses; (8) the fact that it is not their own heart that is the source of the prophets’ predictions] ; A. Kuenen, De profeten en de profetie onder Israél: Histor.- dogmat. Studie, 2 vols., Leiden, 1875 [Eng. tr. under title ‘Prophets and Prophecy in Israel,’ London, 1877]; W. Robert- son Smith, Zhe Prophets of Israel and their place in History, to the close of the 8th cent. B.c., Edinburgh, 1882 [2nd ed., 1895, with Introduction and Additional Notes by T. K. Cheyne]; J. Darmesteter, Les prophetes d’Israél, Paris, 1892; A. F. Kirk- patrick, The Doctrine of the Prophets (Warburtonian Lectures for 1886-1890), London, 1892; P. Schwartzkopff, Die prophe- tische Ofenbarung nach Wesen, Inhalt und Grenzen, Giessen, 1896 ; F. Giesebrecht, Grundlimen fiir die Berufsbegabung der alttest. Propheten (in ‘Greifswalder Studien zu Ehren H., Cremers,’ Gutersloh, 1895, pp. 37-81); Leitner, Die prophe- tische Inspiration (in Bardenhewer’s ‘ Biblische Studien’ [Rom. Catholic]), Freiburg i. B., 1896; Ed. Konig, Das Berufungs- bewusstsein der alttest. Propheten, Barmen, 1900.