La 4e de couverture indique : "Can we consider prophetic conflicts as expressions of a socio-religious phenomenon or should we consider them as post-exilic creations that serve ideological purposes ? In his study, Francesco Arena investigates false prophecy and prophetic conflicts, taking Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Micah as the three books in the Bible most concerned with prophesying falsehood and false prophets"
If, therefore, someone is a prophet, he no doubt prophesies, but if someone prophesies he is not necessarily a prophet.—Origen Origen, writing sometime in the mid-third century on the Gospel of John, has charted a course for the subsequent history of interpretation of true and false prophecy. Although Tarrer’s study is concerned primarily with various readings of Jeremiah’s construal of the problem, the ambiguity inherent in Origen’s statement is glaring nonetheless. This monograph is a study of the history of interpretation. It therefore does not fit neatly into the category of Wirkungsgeschichte. Moving through successive periods of the Christian church’s history, Tarrer selects representative interpretations of Jeremiah and Ezekiel in later theological works dealing explicitly with the question of true and false prophecy in an effort to present a sampling of material from the span of the church’s existence. As evidenced by the list of “false prophets” uncovered at Qumran, along with the indelible interpretive debt owed by Christian interpreters such as Jerome and Calvin to Jewish exegetical methods, Jewish interpretation’s vast legacy quickly exceeds the scope of this project. From the sixteenth century onward, the focus on the Protestant church is, again, due to economy. In the end, Tarrer concludes that the early church and pre-modern tradition evidenced a recurring appeal to some form of association between Jeremiah 28 and the deuteronomic prophetic warnings in Deuteronomy 13 and 18.
The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world.
Epp-Tiessen sheds light on the compositional history, structure, and theology of the book of Jeremiah by demonstrating that a large concentric unit of material focusing on true and false prophecy stands at the center of the book. This unit, titled "Concerning the Prophets" (23:9), utilizes the heritage of Jeremiah to contrast the nature of true and false prophecy in order to warn the Second Temple community of the disastrous consequences of false prophecy and to highlight the saving potential of true prophecy. False prophecy leads to doom because it ignores the moral failings of the community, promises well-being in the face of catastrophe, and reinforces the misleading theological certainties of Judah's pre-587 way of life. In contrast, the true prophet Jeremiah challenges the faith community to embrace the physical and spiritual dislocation of the Babylonian destruction. Post-disaster life stands under the saving purposes of YHWH, but the only way forward is to learn the painful lessons of catastrophe and heed the prophetic summons to repent and embrace a Torah-based way of life.
In der Reihe Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) erscheinen Arbeiten zu sämtlichen Gebieten der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft. Im Zentrum steht die Hebräische Bibel, ihr Vor- und Nachleben im antiken Judentum sowie ihre vielfache Verzweigung in die benachbarten Kulturen der altorientalischen und hellenistisch-römischen Welt.
How will we fathom the three great books of prophecies, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel? These three books are the first section of the later prophets. Isaiah is filled with songs to be sung. Imagine the original melodies of the song for the vineyard, or the thrice repeated Holy of the Cherubim, and the musical shape of the Servant Songs. Imagine Jeremiah meditating on the first chapter of Genesis as he laments the destruction of the temple and the exile of the people. Imagine his sadness expressed in the music embedded in the text itself, and hear the music from Genesis 1 as a counterpoint. Hear the chanting of Ezekiel, from the likeness of the four living creatures, to the vision of the temple, to the name of the city. Imagine comparing the music of the first dwelling specified in Exodus to that of the last, revealed in Ezekiel. The Major Prophets is volume 3 of the series, The Hebrew Bible and Its Music.
This study makes a contribution to the understanding of Old Testament prophetic ministry by comparing selected texts from Jeremiah and Ezekiel relating to the call of each prophet, the images of assayer, potter and watchman, their relationships with the temple and their assessments of deviant prophets. The styles of communication of the two prophets are strikingly different. Interpretive clues regarding the reasons for these differences are found in the settings of each book. While Jeremiah and his people are still in the land with the temple present, Yahweh is perceived as close, and the communication between Yahweh, prophet and people is characterised by intimate dialogue. In Ezekiel's context, far from the temple and their land, Yahweh is presumed to be distant, and communication between Yahweh, Ezekiel and the people employs more visual content. Comparing two such significantly different prophets gives a range of fruitful insights into the relationship between prophetic ministry and local context.
