Twelve Minor Prophets

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Minor prophets (Hebrew: תרי עשר‎, Trei Asar, "The Twelve") is one of the fifteen prophetic books of the Jewish bible; Catholic and Protestant bibles treat each prophet as an individual book, but they appear in the same order:[1]

The lengths of the individual books ranges from a single chapter to fourteen, and even the longest is short compared to the three major prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah. It is not known when these short works were collected and transferred to a single scroll, but the first extra-biblical evidence we have for the Twelve as a collection is c.190 BCE in the writings of Jesus ben Sirach,[1] and evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that the modern order dates from at least 150 BCE.[2] It is believed that the first six were the first to be collected, and the second six added later; the two groups seem to complement each other, with Hosea-Micah raising the question of iniquity, and Nahum-Malachi proposing resolutions.[3]

Contents

Composition

See also: Book of Hosea, Book of Joel, Book of Amos, Book of Obadiah, Book of Jonah, Book of Micah, Book of Nahum, Book of Habakkuk, Book of Zephaniah, Book of Haggai, Book of Zechariah, and Book of Malachi

Many, though not all, modern scholars agree that the editing process which produced the Book of the Twelve reached its final form in the Jerusalem during the Achaemenid period (538 BCE–332 BCE), although there is disagreement over whether this was early or late.[4] Scholars usually assume that there exists an original core of prophetic tradition behind each book which can be attributed to the figure after whom it is named.[5] The noteworthy exception is the Book of Jonah, an anonymous work containing no prophetic oracles, probably composed in the Hellenistic period (332 BCE–167 BCE).[6]

In general, each book includes three types of material:

The comparison of different ancient manuscripts indicates that the order of the individual books was originally fluid. The arrangement found in current Bibles is roughly chronological. First come those prophets dated to the early Assyrian period: Hosea, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah; Joel is undated, but it was possibly placed before Amos because parts of a verse near the end of Joel (3.16 [4.16 in Hebrew]) and one near the beginning of Amos (1.2) are identical. Also we can find in both Amos (4.9 and 7.1-3) and Joel a description of a plague of locusts. These are followed by prophets that are set in the later Assyrian period: Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Last come those set in the Persian period: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. However it is important to note that chronology was not the only consideration, as "It seems that an emphatic focus on Jerusalem and Judah was [also] a main concern.[1] For example, Obadiah is generally understood as reflecting the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.[8] and would therefore fit later in a purely chronological sequence.

Christian commemoration

In the Roman Catholic Church, the twelve minor prophets are read in the Breviary during the fourth and fifth weeks of November, which are the last two weeks of the liturgical year. They are collectively commemorated in the Calendar of saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church on July 31.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Zvi 2004, p. 1139-1142
  2. ^ Redditt 2003, p. 1
  3. ^ Coggin&Han 2011, p. 4
  4. ^ Redditt 2003, p. 1-3, 9
  5. ^ Floyd 2000, p. 9
  6. ^ Dell 1996, p. 86-89
  7. ^ Coogan 2009
  8. ^ Ben Zvi, Ehud (2004). "Obadiah". In Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds.. The Jewish Study Bible. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 1193–1194. ISBN 0-19-529751-2. 

Further reading

Preceded by
Ezekiel		 Hebrew Bible Followed by
Psalms
Preceded by
Daniel		 Christian Old Testament End of Old Testament
New Testament begins with
Matthew