{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.022836925056288194, 'fraction_numerical': 0.007076230299131554, 'mean_word_length': 4.72744014732965, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Review: The Ebb and Flow of Prophecy in Israel

A History of Prophecy in Israel: From the Settlement in the Land to the Hellenistic Period, by JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1983. 287 pp. $16.95 (paper). Reviewed by JAMES LUTHER MAYS, professor of Old Testament, Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. " I T IS CLEAR that Old Testament research has not yet progressed to the point that a definitive history of prophecy can be produced." So Robert R. Wilson writes in the introductory paragraph to his own provisional sketch "Toward a History of Prophecy in Israel" (Prophecy and Society In Ancient Israel, pp. 297ff., published in 1980). Because of the nature of the sources, one has to wonder whether that point will ever be reached. It is well that Joseph Blenkinsopp has undertaken what he calls a "provisional stock-taking," an attempt to describe the phenomenon of prophecy in its historical course. Without question the book is a valuable addition to any basic bibliography on Old Testament prophecy. There are numerous works on Old Testatment prophecy, but this one is the only current book-length attempt at a critical history. Before its appearance we have had only the sketches like those in Wilson's book, in Paul Hanson's The Dawn of Apocalyptic (pp. 12ff.), and in Frank Cross's Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Chap. IV). A critical history is an attempt to understand and explain its subject in terms of its development from its origin until its end and in terms of the relations between the variety and changes that constitute the subject and its course through time. That is precisely what Blenkinsopp has attempted. The book is not primarily a study of the books of the prophets or of the theology of the prophets. Rather it draws on all the approaches to prophetic material to reconstruct an account of prophecy over the span of its existence. The volume should have the same usefulness for the study of prophetic books and texts that a critical history of Israel has for the study of all the Old Testatment literature. Blenkinsopp's history contains six chapters with three to five sections in each. Chapter 1 gives an orientation to the place of the prophetic books in canonical process and theory and surveys modern critical study, putting special emphasis on recent attention to the social location of the prophet. Chapter 2 discusses the question of the origin of Israelite prophecy and traces its course from its dim beginnings down through the ninth century. The next three chapters proceed from Amos to Second Isaiah, dealing with each book in turn; a special feature is the attention given to the relation between the prophets and the activity which produced Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history. The final chapter follows the course of prophecy in the postexilic period into the revaluation of the prophetic tradition in terms of a radical eschatology and concludes with a section on Jonah; again, a special feature is the explanation of the relation between the prophets and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, a relationship usually slighted in