EDELMAN, Diana V ; ZVI, Ehud Ben - The Production of Prophecy Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud

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The Production 
of Prophecy
Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud
Edited by Diana V. Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi
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T h e P rod u ction o f P rop hecy
BihleWorld
Series Editor: Philip R. Davies and James G. Crossley, University of Sheffield
Bible World shares the fruits of modern (and postmodern) biblical scholarship not only among 
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A History o f a Christian Biblical Myth 
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Yours Faithfully: Virtual Letters from the Bible 
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Israel’s History and the History o f Israel 
Mario Liverani
The Apostle Paul and His Letters 
Edwin D. Freed
The Origins o f the 'Second' Temple: Persian 
Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding o f Jerusalem 
Diana Edelman
An Introduction to the Bible (Revised edition) 
John Rogerson
The Morality o f Paul's Converts 
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The Mythic Mind: Essays on Cosmology and 
Religion in Ugariticand Old Testament Literature 
Nick Wyatt
History, Literature and Theology in the Book o f
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Ehud Ben Zvi
Forthcom ing:
Sex Working and the Bible 
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The Archaeology o f Myth: Papers on Old Testament
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Vive Memor Mortis 
Thomas Bolin
The Bible Says So!: From Simple Answers to 
Insightful Understanding 
Edwin D. Freed
The Joy o f Kierkegaard : Essays on Kierkegaard as 
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Hugh Pyper
From Babylon to Eternity: The Exile Remembered 
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Bob Becking, Alex Cannegieter, Wilfred van der 
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Charismatic Killers :Reading the Hebrew Bible's 
Violent Rhetoric in Film 
Eric Christianson
Women H ealing/H ealing Women: The
Genderization o f Healing in Early Christianity 
Elaine M. Wainwright
Jonah's World: Social Science and the Reading o f 
Prophetic Story 
Lowell K. Handy
Symposia: Dialogues Concerning the History o f 
Biblical Interpretation 
Roland Boer
Sectarianism in Early Judaism 
Edited by David J. Chalcraft
The Ontology o f Space in B ib lica l Hebrew 
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M ark an d its Subalterns : A Hermeneutical 
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David Joy
Linguistic D ating o f B ib lica l Texts: An 
Introduction to Approaches and Problems 
Ian Young and Robert Rezetko
Redrawing the Boundaries
The Date of Early Christian Literature
J.V.M. Sturdy, edited by Jonathan Knight
On the Origins o f Judaism 
Philip R. Davies
Judaism, Jewish Identities and the Gospel Tradition 
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Jesus Beyond Nationalism: Constructing the 
H istorica l Jesus in a P eriod o f C u ltural 
Complexity
Edited by Ward Blanton, James G. Crossley and 
Halvor Moxnes
O Mother, Where Art Thou?
A n Irigarayan Reading o f the Book o f Chronicles 
Julie Kelso
A Compendium o f Musical Instruments and 
Instrumental Terminology in the Bible 
Yelena Kolyada
A Social History o f the Phoenician City-States in 
the Achaemenid Empire 
Vadim Jigoulov
THE PRODUCTION 
OF PROPHECY
Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud
Edited by 
Diana V. Edelman and 
Ehud Ben Zvi
equinox
L O N D O N O A K V I L L E
Published by Equinox Publishing Ltd.
UK: Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies St., London SW 11 2JW 
USA: DBBC, 28 Main Street, Oakville, C T 06779
www.equinoxpub.com
First published 2009
© Diana V. Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi and contributors, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form 
or by any means, electron ic or m echanical, including photocopying, recording or any 
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publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
IS B N -13 978 1 84553 499 8 (hardback)
978 1 84553 500 1 (paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The production of prophecy : constructing prophecy and prophets in Yehud / edited by 
Diana V. Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi. 
p. cm. — (BibleWorld)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 978 -1 -84 5 5 3 -4 9 9 -8 (hb) - ISBN 978 -1 -84553 -500 -1 (pbk.) 1. B ible-Prophecies.
2. Bible. O.T. Prophets—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Edelman, Diana Vikander, 1954- 
II. Ben Zvi, Ehud, 1951- 
B S1198.P73 2009 
2 24 '.06—dc22
2 0 0 8 0 4 1 3 5 5
Typeset by S.J.I. Services, New Delhi
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Lightning Source UK Ltd, Milton Keynes
http://www.equinoxpub.com
C o n t e n t s
List of contributors 
Abbreviations
The Production of Prophecy: Constructing Prophecy and 
Prophets in Yehud. An Introduction and an Invitation 
Ehud Ben Zvi
Towards an Integrative Study of the Production of 
Authoritative Books in Ancient Israel 
Ehud Ben Zvi
From Prophets to Prophetic Books: The Fixing of the 
Divine Word 
Diana Edelman
Why Do We Know About Amos?
Philip R. Davies
The Concept of Prophetic Books and Its Historical Setting 
Ehud Ben Zvi
Public Recitation of Prophetical Books?
The Case of the First Edition of Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 40:1-52:12*) 
Rainer Albertz
Persian-Empire Spirituality and the Genesis of Prophetic Books 
Erhards. Gerstenberger
Kings among the Prophets
Axel Knauf
Jonah Among the Twelve in the MT: The Triumph of Torah
over Prophecy 150
Diana Edelman
The Formation of the Book of Jeremiah as a Supplement to the 
So-called Deuteronomistic History 168
Thomas Römer
Jeremiah MT: Reflections of a Discourse on Prophecy in the
vi The Production o f Prophecy
Persian Period 184
Rannfrid I. Thelle
Scripture Index 208
Subject Index 220
Author Index 231
L i s t o f c o n t r i b u t o r s
Diana Edelman
Department of Biblical Studies 
University of Sheffield 
England
Ehud Ben Zvi
Department of History and Classics
University of Alberta
Canada
Philip R. Davies
University of Sheffield 
England
Rainer Albertz
University of Miinster 
Germany
Erhard S. Gerstenberger
Philipps-Universität Marburg 
Germany
Ernst Axel Knauf
Institut für Bibelwissenschaft
UniTobler
Switzerland
Thomas C. Römer
University of Lausanne 
Switzerland
Rannfrid I. Thelle
Wichita, KS,
USA
L i s t o f A b b r e v i a t i o n s
AB Anchor Bible
BBB Bonner biblischer Beiträge
BEATJ Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des 
antiken Judentum
BET Beiträge zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie
BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium
BHQ Biblia Hebraica Quinta
BHS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrififür die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
El Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical 
Studies
ETR Etudes Théologiques et religieuses
FOTL Forms of Old Testament Literature
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen 
Testaments
HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament
HS Hebrew Studies
HThKAT Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Altes Testament
ICC The International Critical Commentary
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
X The Production o f Prophecy
KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament
KHC Kurzer Hand-Commentarzum Alten Testament
LHBOTS Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
NRSV New Revised Standard Bible
OTL Old Testament Library
PFES Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society
SBL Society of Biblical Literature
SBLSymS Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series
SBLWAW Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World
SJOT Scandinavian Journal o f the Old Testament
STAR Studies in Theology and Religion
TB Theologische Bücherei
V T Vêtus Testamentum
VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum
WMANT W issenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen 
Testament
ZAW Zeitschrift für die altestamentlicher Wissenschaft
T h e P r o d u c t i o n o f P r o p h e c y : C o n s t r u c t i n g P r o p h e c y a n d
P r o p h e t s in Y e h u d 
A n I n t r o d u c t i o n a n d a n I n v i t a t i o n
Ehud Ben Zvi
This volume consists of revised versions of papers that were read and 
discussed in three sessions of a research programme of the European 
Association of Biblical Studies (hereafter, EABS) devoted to the study of 
“Israel and the Production and Reception of Authoritative Books in the 
Persian and Hellenistic Periods”.1 Although “research programme” is the 
usual term for programme units of the EABS, it is not devoid of its basic 
meaning here. Each EABS session is meant to research the vast, general 
topic of its mandate by elucidating particular issues. It seems clear to Diana 
and me that the issue of the production and reception of “authoritative” 
books stands at the centre of much of the recent discussion about the social 
and intellectual history of Persian Yehud and (pre-Maccabean) Hellenistic 
ludea and about the biblical books themselves, even if the matter is not 
often addressed in any implicit way or if positions on the issue are tacitly 
assumed. Thus, we feel that there is an urgent need to address the matter 
directly. We thank the EABS for encouraging and supporting us in this 
endeavour.
Both of us are well aware that the issue this research programme is 
addressing is vast and complex, involving a myriad of aspects. We think 
that one of the best ways to advance a critical debate on the production and 
reception of authoritative books in the Persian and Hellenistic periods is 
to parcel it out in scholarly conversations focused on particular, more 
manageable subsets that relate directly to the general issue. The essays 
gathered in this volume represent an important subset of the papers 
presented in our 2006 and 2007 meetings. This subset is marked by its 
concentration on the construction of prophecy - now understood primarily
2 The Production o f Prophecy
from the perspective of the group whose viewpoint is reflected in the 
Hebrew Bible in prophetic books - and indirectly on prophets during the 
Persian period. Other subsets deal with large but more manageable issues 
such as systemic preferences in terms of language, style and poetics or, as in 
one of our 2008 sessions, on more narrow matters that resist easy resolution, 
such as which texts the Chronicler considered authoritative and what 
“authoritative” might have meant in this context. The work of our research 
programme on these subsets will be published in future volumes.
The goal of this volume is straightforward: to advance knowledge about 
the process or processes that led to the production of the prophetic books 
and by doing so, to inform the general discussion on the production and 
reception of authoritative books in Israel in the Persian and Hellenistic 
periods. O f course, one goal does not mean one voice. This volume is clearly 
multi-vocal, by design. Neither Diana or I nor any of the participants is 
interested in any form of “group thinking” or in the establishment of a 
“school of thought”. To the contrary, this volume is meant to represent and 
communicate a conversation amongst scholars of differing perspectives. 
At times we agree to disagree, but all of us are convinced that discussing 
matters is a way to sharpen the issues and improve our reconstructions of 
the historical processes and ideological systems involved in the production 
and construction of prophecy in the Achaemenid and early Hellenistic 
periods.
To be successful, a conversation must involve a substantial amount of 
interaction amongst the positions advanced by the various participants or 
at least amongst the arguments that underlie them and the works with 
which they each interact. When this does not occur, people simply talk 
past each other and no real communication takes place. This collection is 
characterized by interaction; there is partial convergence in positions that 
is fleeting at times but significant in other instances; there also are clear 
divergences. In fact, as I reread these essays what struck me the most was 
that I could imagine brief sections of some of these essays as written by, or 
representing the position of a contributor other than its actual author. In 
all these cases, however, these sections led the argument either into paths 
which my "alternative” author would not have trod or to claims that s/he 
would have actually rejected. It is this combination between similarity and 
dissimilarity that I, for one, found so helpful in this collection of works.
As for the realm of convergence, I would argue that there is a general 
image of biblical prophecy as a written phenomenon, though perhaps open 
to selected public readings, which emerges in the volume.2 In addition, 
there seems to be a widely shared awareness that the study of the
E d elm a n a n d B en Z vi The Production o f Prophecy 3
construction of images of prophets of the past in Persian Yehud is crucial 
for research on the emergence of the genre of the prophetic book. There is 
convergence on the point that studies of the construction of these past 
prophetic figures cannot be carried out in isolation; research on the 
(multiple) ways in which the past in general was imagined and re-imagined 
in Yehud (and Samaria) is necessary since such constructions were part 
and parcel of an ideological discourse that was influenced by the socio­
political circumstances within which the intellectual elite developed its 
voice/s. Several participants emphasized, though in differing ways, the 
close links between the processes that led to the emergence of both 
individual prophetic books and an authoritative corpus, the crystallization 
of the so-called Dtr History, and above all, to the emergence of the 
Pentateuch/Torah. The range of possible meanings of the term Torah/ 
YHWH's teaching/Moses’ teaching in Persian and early Hellenistic Judah 
is not directly explored in this volume, but readers should be able to 
understand what individual contributors had in mind when they used 
this term from the larger context and argument in each essay.
The volume tries, successfully I hope, to maintain a creative balance 
between attention to the general/systemic and the particular. It includes 
some general methodological and comparative contributions but also a 
significant number of studies on particular issues/books (e.g., Deutero- 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Jonah and Kings), each of which raises general 
questions and illuminates (or, at times, depending on one's perspective, 
casts a creative shadow over) claims advanced in the more methodological 
chapters.
Several essays in this volume deal with matters such as the relationship 
between prophetic and other authoritative written texts (e.g., Ben Zvi, 
Edelman, Knauf, Römer), Zoroastrian influences (Gerstenberger), the 
historical interaction between Jerusalem and Benjamin (Beth-El and 
Mizpah), and at times between Jerusalem/Yehud and Samaria/Shechem 
during the Persian period and its direct and indirect reflections in the 
authoritative literary repertoire (e.g., Davies, Knauf, Edelman, Ben Zvi), 
oral proclam ation (Albertz), and models and comparative studies 
illuminating the possible reasons for a focal shift from monarchic prophetsto post-monarchic prophetic books (e.g., Thelle, Edelman). Also, however, 
less expected issues such as constructions of Elijah and Elisha in biblical 
books are raised (e.g. Knauf). Of course, no volume on this topic can or 
should even attempt to cover all the possible issues and angles.
The volume opens with a programmatic essay in which I maintain that 
the present compositional forms of the Pentateuch, the prophetic books
and the so-called Dtr History originated in a shared, integrative discourse 
that existed for a few generations during the Persian period. I try to 
characterize this discourse in very broad strokes.3 Most importantly, I 
maintain that re-readings of one particular text were constantly informed 
by re-readings of other texts within the same community/ies of ancient re­
readers; therefore, the meanings they associated with diverse texts within 
their repertoire evolved together. Many of the issues raised in this essay are 
echoed, directly or indirectly, in most of the essays gathered in this volume. 
Among these issues, one may mention those related to aspects of the 
ch aracteriza tio n o f the discourse o f the Yehudite elite, to the 
interconnectedness of the processes that led to the production of the 
prophetic books and those that led to the production of the Pentateuch/ 
Torah and the Dtr historical narratives, and to the generative value of a 
constant re-signification of read material within a community.
In her contribution “From Prophets to Prophetic Books: The Fixing of 
the Divine Word”, Diana Edelman addresses a vexing question: Why were 
prophetic books produced in ancient Israel but to the best of our knowledge 
not in the adjoining cultures? She explains matters in terms of "the 
development of early forms of monotheistic Judaism amongst the priestly 
elites and intelligentsia who had been removed from the territory of Judah 
to settlements in Babylonia in the Neo-Babylonian period and their further 
development during the Persian period, both in Yehud and in the diaspora”. 
As per its title, her contribution addresses this issue in terms of a general 
discussion about a historical trajectory that moves from monarchic period 
prophetic figures to Persian period prophetic books. Accordingly, she first 
addresses the setting and various activities of a range of historical, “priestly” 
figures in monarchic Judah and Israel who would all be re-construed as 
“prophets” (i.e., KO}) in postmonarchic times (cf. Gerstenberger’s “[the] 
label n â b ï and the theological homogenization of individuals who 
communicated the Word of Yahweh to his people into one, single profession 
seem to be rather late developments”). Then she outlines a process by which 
the fall of the monarchic polities led to the disappearance of these roles 
and settings and eventually, to the creation of prophetic collections along 
with an understanding that "the book itself became the revelation, 
expressing anew the divine will with each reading”. The first section of her 
essay explores the range of activities associated with cultic personnel in 
monarchic-era Israel and Judah, using comparative Mesopotamian and 
Egyptian evidence. Her second section includes a discussion of the role of 
temples in post-monarchic Judah and Benjamin, a classification of materials 
included within the prophetic collections, and the use of the prophetic
4 The Production o f Prophecy
E d elm a n a n d B en Z vi The Production o f Prophecy 5
corpus in late Persian and Hellenistic periods. In multiple ways this 
contribution also directly or indirectly interacts with most of the essays 
gathered in this volume.
Philip R. Davies discusses the creation of one particular prophetic book 
in Persian times: Amos. He proposes a historical scenario for a trajectory 
from an original collection of Amos’ words that found its way to a palace or 
temple (Bethel?; see also Edelman) archive to the present book of Amos, in 
which whatever remained of that original collection is re-signified and 
complemented so as to create a very different product. Davies’ focus is 
clearly on the “book of Amos”. He looks for the "[main] purpose and theme 
that explains why the book was created” and for the historical setting that 
best explains them. Davies suggests that the climax of the main theme of 
the book is “the supersession of Israelite sanctuaries by Jerusalem, within 
the context of a broader supersession o f ‘Israel’ by Judah; or rather, of old’ 
Israel by a ‘new Israel”! This being so, he concludes that the book of Amos
was com p iled n o t before th e seco n d h alf o f th e fifth cen tu ry BCE (o r possibly 
som ew h at later) as p art o f a m u ch w ider p rocess o f te x t-p ro d u ctio n in w hich 
th e fo rm er political h egem on y o f B enjam in and th e privilege enjoyed by its 
san ctu aries w as rem o ved , w hen Jerusalem o n ce m o re b ecam e th e cap ital o f 
Judah an d for th e first tim e was ch am p ion ed as th e only legitim ate san ctu ary 
for Yahw ists.
Davies’ interaction with the work of my teacher and friend, John Hayes, 
is of particular interest from a methodological perspective - and I would 
say also from a pedagogical perspective, as I see it to be excellent reading 
material for a seminar. Despite their many differences, both agree on the 
unity of the book and its more or less unified message. Both share the 
position that the book and its message must reflect particular, historical 
circumstances and that the former is the key for understanding the latter. 
Davies’ conversation with Hayes about the message of the book and its 
historical implications in terms of the setting and goals of the book 
permeates his essay and illuminates the methodological issues associated 
with dating prophetic books. His essay not only interacts with Hayes’ work; 
the issues raised in his essay directly relate to matters discussed by Edelman 
and myself in this volume, as well as in other contributions (e.g., Knauf, 
Römer). Moreover, several of the other essays also point to a tension between 
Yehudite Jerusalem and Yehudite Benjamin as a central, generative element 
in the production of prophetic and other biblical books.
Balancing the focus on the particular and the general, the next essay 
shifts the direction away from a particular prophetic book (in this case, 
Amos) towards the general concept and the associated genre of prophetic
6 The Production o f Prophecy
book. In my second essay in this volume I address what image and 
expectations the primary readers associated with such a book. Which 
central features would they have expected to find (and often found) in a 
prophetic book, as prophetic book? A discussion of these main features 
leads to an evaluation of the most likely social setting for the crystallization 
of the concept of prophetic book. Of all the possible alternatives, the most 
likely is the Jerusalem-centred literati in Persian Yehud prior to the time in 
which Jerusalem became the social, political economic and religious heart 
of Judah. This conclusion opens an important area of research needing 
further exploration. It carries implications for, and raises central issues 
concerning: (a) interactions between Jerusalem and Benjam in and 
Jerusalem and Samaria; and (b) the potential reasons for substantial 
literary activity in Jerusalem that led at that time not only to the production 
of the concept of the prophetic books and the books themselves but also 
to a written torah and the so-called Dtr History. The chapter explores these 
matters and as it does so, it enters into conversation, in one way or another, 
with all the other chapters in the book.
It is usual in scholarly discussions about the writtenness of the prophetic 
books to mention that the books or portions thereof were probably read 
aloud in some sort of public setting within ancient Yehud. It is unusual, 
however, to find scholars interested in the written aspect to proposeparticular settings for these readings and to detail how they could have 
contributed to the process that led to the creation of a particular prophetic 
book.4 Rainer Albertz takes on this challenge directly and forcefully. As he 
does so, he also leads us back to studies that focus on a particular book or 
portion thereof, but which cannot but raise strong implications for the 
general process/es involved in the production and reception of the 
prophetic books. Albertz’s contribution brings to the forefront of our 
conversation the issue of the public performance of prophetic books. It is 
to be stressed that the matter is not simply whether these books were read 
aloud and publicly or not, but whether public performance may hold a 
very substantial key to understanding the production and purpose of some 
prophetic books. Albertz finds that this is the case for the first edition of 
the book of Deutero-Isaiah. He reconstructs the extent of the first edition 
of this book, dates it to 521 b c e , and analyses its main features. This part of 
the study leads him to conclude that the book was a “well thought out” 
composition "written to be recited in public”. But where and when? Albertz 
maintains that “the gathering of all men of a settlement [i.e., the no] that 
takes place every evening ... [is] the best occasion for non-cultic public 
recitations” and suggests that
E d elm a n a n d B en Z vi The Production o f Prophecy 7
the prophets, who had hurried from Babylon to Judah after Darius had 
captured the rebellious capital in the winter of 522 BCE and again in the 
summer of 521, recited their book [the first edition of Deutero-Isaiah] ... 
during several evening gatherings in Mizpah, Jerusalem and other places .... 
[T]heir intention was to convince the hopeless Judeans that God would now 
offer them a wonderful new chance of salvation .... They tried to encourage 
them to start organizing a new beginning, and they wanted to induce them to 
accept repatriates from Babylonia and elsewhere.
Albertz concludes that the success of these readers/prophets and of their 
text provided this first edition of the book with a high degree of public 
authority that led to the transmission and expansion of the text by 
“prophetic and scribal circles” who created a second edition of the book 
(Isa. 40-55) that eventually “was connected to the famous scroll of Isaiah”.
Erhard Gerstenberger has written before about oral, cultic readings of 
prophetic texts, but the main thrust of his contribution in this volume 
concerns matters of intellectual discourse and, like Edelman, he brings 
evidence from societies other than ancient Israel/Yehud forcefully into the 
discussion. Whereas I deal with the inner discourse of the Yehudite elite, 
Gerstenberger looks for the ways in which it participates in, and is influenced 
by a “new intellectual and spiritual” atmosphere in Persian times. Indeed, 
one of the central points that his essay advances is that there was "a common 
religious and spiritual discourse in Achaemenid tim es.... The composition 
of the prophetic canon (and of Torah!) belongs exactly in this context” 
(see also Ben Zvi). To support this central point, Gerstenberger explores 
“mental patterns and ways of thinking and talking particular to that period 
and its peoples in their social, political, and religious institutions”. For 
instance, he compares the concept of prophet that appears in the prophetic 
books and Deuteronomy - a post-monarchic development - with the 
characterization of the prophet/priest Zoroaster and concludes that the 
development of the concept of a central divine envoy commissioned for 
life to receive instruction from the “universal Deity” and transmit and 
teach it to the community that shapes the construction of the images of 
Zoroaster and Moses was possible (only) within the new intellectual and 
spiritual climate of the Persian period. The same holds true for the concept 
of text-based religious communities and its practical manifestation 
(“Zoroastrians and Judeans identified themselves increasingly via their 
Scriptures which, in both instances, were primarily needed as practical 
orientations for worship, liturgy, and daily life”). He explores also matters 
of binary thinking, which is so common in Zoroastrian sacred literature 
and deuteronomistic, levitical and prophetic texts in the Hebrew Bible,
s The Production o f Prophecy
and the development of much thinking about “the last things”, noticing 
that it was the ancient Iranians who “over time, cultivated a universal 
expectation of the end of history and a new creation”
Gerstenberger’s emphasis on the generative power of the community 
(not the individual author) finds echoes in several contributions in this 
volume; however, his call to study the shared basic discourse in which the 
older parts of the Avestan tradition and the Hebrew Scriptures grew is not 
addressed in any other essay. It is hoped that this volume will encourage 
more research and further conversations on this matter.
It is expected that a volume devoted to the production of prophecy in 
Israel will focus on the biblical prophetic books, but one should also expect 
some discussion of how prophets and prophecy are construed and re­
construed in other biblical books that participated in the general discourse 
of the period. Axel Knauf’s contribution addresses this aspect by focusing 
on the use of prophets in the book of Kings, “a book from the Persian 
period, not only by the date of its main redaction but also by the conflicts 
that it presupposes” (see also Davies’ essay on Amos and Römers on 
Jeremiah). Kings is about kings, but also about prophets. Knauf refers to an 
editorial process that led to the construction of a successio prophetica 
accompanying the line of kings (see also Gerstenberger’s claim about a 
discourse in which [Moses-like] prophets continually communicate the 
divine will to the people). Moreover, Knauf maintains that Kings was 
“intended as a ‘historical’ introduction to the corpus of the Latter Prophets'! 
This claim involves Kings directly in the processes of production and above 
all, of the reading of prophetic books. In fact, Kings provides an 
interpretative key for the understanding of the Latter Prophets. These 
books are historical just as Kings is, because both kings and prophets are a 
thing of the past.
[E] verything that was announced has been fulfilled. The task of the prophets 
was to teach Torah during the temporary absence of the Book; now their 
books provide an opportunity for further discussion and interpretation of 
Torah by the circles that create the books.
It is in these circles that the literary, theological construct of the biblical 
prophet developed in the Persian period.
Knauf points out that the Persian period readers/redactors/authors of 
Kings approached it in a way informed by the Torah/Pentateuch; therefore, 
they could not but observe a consistent pattern of numerous Torah 
infractions from the outset of the monarchic period and understand their 
theological implications. Thus, from a slightly different perspective from
E d elm a n a n d B en Z vi The Production o f Prophecy 9
other contributors to the volume, Knauf raises the relation of the Dtr History, 
prophetic and pentateuchal books and the ways in which each contributes 
to the meaning of the others during the Persian period. This is a recurrent 
motif in this collection of essays, as is his stress on the centrality of Torah 
and the study of Torah in Persian times, though, as expected, each author 
approaches these matters from the prism of her or his particular research 
approach.5 The same can be said regarding Knauf’s focus on the history of 
Yehud, the inner tensions, and the conflict between it and its neighbours. 
His study of the intended relation between Kings and Isaiah, however, is 
not explored elsewhere in this volume. Nevertheless, the issue of the 
relation between Kings and Jeremiah is approached,though from a different 
perspective, in Römers contribution.
Diana Edelman’s second contribution brings us back to the prophetic 
books in general and to the book of Jonah in particular. Although she 
discusses in detail some aspects of the book of Jonah - in itself a careful 
contribution to the study of Jonah - the main thrust of her argument deals 
with the question of what kind of reading/reception of the prophetic books 
(and by implication, other authoritative books) is considered “proper” from 
the perspective of the writer of the book, whom she situates in either the 
late Persian or more likely, in the early Hellenistic period. This programmatic 
point is clearly communicated from the outset in her essay6 and informs it 
throughout. Although the book of Jonah is clearly not a detailed instruction 
manual, her analysis leads her to portray the traits of the “proper” reading 
that the author had in mind. For instance, she states that
God’s dialogue with Jonah is designed to have him, and the audience, rethink 
their views of the divine nature and divine will in light of their interaction 
with other books among the Twelve, the prophetic writings, and, by 
implication, among the Writings and Torah as well. The implied underlying 
view of the writer, which he wants his audience to share, is that when reading 
Torah with an eye to learning about God, one must not choose between two 
conflicting views. Instead, one should develop an understanding that can 
embrace both.
Elsewhere she states,
the lesson of Jonah clearly favours an inclusive approach but does not provide 
a model of how such integration is to be accomplished in individual cases. It 
suggests, however, that a failure to grapple with the multivalent nature of 
many prophetic utterances found within the prophetic books, a failure to 
integrate conflicting views into a larger picture that allows both to be included, 
and a decision to read prophetic texts only as predictions for God’s future 
action in history, insisting on their fulfilment in reality and not acknowledging
1 0 The Production o f Prophecy
their function as illustrations of the divine nature and will, are all pitfalls to 
be avoided.
She also stresses that the book teaches its audience to understand that 
“at no time should a human presume to ‘know’ God so completely as to be 
able to declare definitively what the divine intention would be in a given 
situation or circumstance”. The larger implications of these matters in 
terms of the production and reception of the prophetic books in the late 
Persian or the early Hellenistic period turns this essay that focuses only on 
Jonah into one of extensive methodological importance.
As she discusses these issues, she enters into direct and indirect 
conversations with several other contributors to the volume and, in 
particular, with me.7 But in other sections of her essay she enters into 
dialogue with scholars working on “The Book of the Twelve”; particularly, 
though not exclusively, with the work of J. D. Nogalski, which has been 
highly influential and largely foundational within this approach.8 By doing 
so she raises another set of issues and expands the reach of the scholarly 
debate with which the present volume engages.
Thomas Römers essay, on the one hand, completes his study of the 
formation of the “so-called Deuteronomistic History’!y He asks if prophetic 
scrolls were added to this deuteronomistic library. On the other hand, it is 
an essay about what may be learned about the production of prophetic 
books based on his understanding of the redactional history of the book of 
Jeremiah. His main argument and his methodology are clearly stated from 
the outset:
the book of Jeremiah was created in the Persian period by scribes belonging 
to the Deuteronomistic (Dtr) circle, in order to become part of an existing 
Dtr collection of books or ‘library’ housed in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem.
This is supported by a number of cross-references and parallels between the 
book of Jeremiah and other texts in the Dtr History.
He analyses cross-references and parallels among Dtr. works and 
Jeremiah and focuses on the historical, ideological and redactional 
inferences that follow from these studies. A section of his essay is devoted, 
for instance, to 2 Kings 22—23, Jeremiah and the “rise of the book” and he 
concludes:
2 Kings 2 2 -2 3 and Jeremiah 36 should be understood to clear the way for two 
related ideas: the end of prophecy during the Persian period and the rise of 
the book in its stead.... For the Persian-era editors of the scroll of Jeremiah, 
which did not yet contain all the material it does today, Jeremiah was the last
E d elm a n a n d B en Z vi The Production o f Prophecy 11
of Yahweh’s prophets10 and at the end of his career, was transformed into a 
book, a book that was added as a prophetic supplement into the Dtr library.
Readers of this volume will be able to observe the implicit conversation 
that emerges between the positions of Römer and Knauf on the way in 
which the books of Jeremiah and Kings relate to each other. On three other 
topics, the shift from prophet to book, the close interrelation between 
prophetic and historical books, and the central role of a “library” housed in 
the temple, R öm ers essay enters into conversation with multiple 
participants in this volume.
Rannfrid Thelle also deals with the book of Jeremiah. She reflects on the 
discourse on prophecy in the Persian period through the prism of MT 
Jeremiah. Like Diana Edelman, she is interested in the processes that led 
from prophets in the m onarchic period to prophetic books in the 
postmonarchic era. Given the temporal parameters, she assumes the 
calamity of 586 b ce must have created circumstances that not only allowed 
but actually supported such a process (cf. Edelman’s essay on the matter). 
Unlike Edelman’s, however, Thelle’s essay represents an interaction with 
the work of M. H. Floyd on the production of prophetic books, aimed at 
fine-tuning and further developing it.11 She summarizes Floyd’s argument 
about three factors that
might have caused a change in the practice of divination are: a change in 
world view, a change in demographics (including the end of the monarchy), 
and any new form of divination that would involve the writing class (such as 
the genre of prophetic book).
She then proposes that “the book of Jeremiah exhibits evidence of the 
influence of the major factors in Floyd’s model.” As a result, she concludes 
that these “factors influenced the scribes who produced the book of Jeremiah 
in Yehud during the Persian period" In a nutshell, she maintains that “the 
question of how divination and prophecy could continue at all after the 
fall of Judah would have been the question that was addressed by those 
who had access to the past records of divine-human interaction, the scribes” 
that “one result of their various debates and responses to the new situation 
was the production of the new genre of the prophetic book” and that 
“interpreters could take on the role of a past prophet and ‘speak’ his words 
as if they were meant to be heard in the present, in a new society under 
Persian imperial rule.” She goes on to show how all of this, and in particular 
Floyd’s three factors, is reflected in the book of Jeremiah. Thus, for instance, 
she draws particular attention to the institution of monarchy and its 
symbolic role as the axis mundi until its demise, which prompted a shift in
1 2 The Production o f Prophecy
world view from Jerusalem and David to Babylon and a foreign king. Then 
she analyses the ways in which this shift is reflected in the M T of Jeremiah.
Through the portrayal of the Judahite king and his dealings with Jeremiah 
the prophet, the book negotiates a “power shift” from the king to the imperial 
power figure as the earthly representation of the divine king .... the book of 
Jeremiah points toward a way of re-establishing the axis mundi betweenheaven and earth.... This “power shift” was necessitated by the collapse of the 
Judahite monarchy and prepared a way in which prophecy could continue 
even in a time without a king .... It also makes room for the Diaspora, 
assigning it a possible role in prophetic activity. This may even have held true 
for a community in Persian period Yehud which may have felt alienated from 
the mainstream.
She discusses how the authors of the book of Jeremiah deal with matters 
such as community challenges and controversy about prophecies and their 
interpretation along with their implications for the continuation of 
prophecy in postmonarchic times. Of course, the authority of writing and 
scribes play a central role. Thelle reminds us that “the book of Jeremiah 
contains more references to writing and scribes than any other prophetic 
book” and that it “reflects a preoccupation with scribal activity as a part of 
prophecy and divination, as well as a concern to emphasize the status of 
written prophecy as something that can be reinterpreted in the future”. 
She suggests that these features may be related to "changes in divination 
that involved a new role for scribes”. The scribes are now the “keepers of 
the prophetic tradition”. "One of the results of their "deliberations over 
prophecy was the production of literary prophecy”. The prophetic book 
they wrote (Jeremiah) conveyed a sense of “an unended exile”, but one in 
which “divination and contact with YHWH is still possible under the new 
regime of a nonnative imperial authority”. These literati recorded the past 
“to survive the present” and inscribed “their hope for a future restoration” 
in the book which, as a result, was “able to provide consolation in an 
uncertain and unstable present”.
Some aspects of Thelle’s essay directly interact with Edelman’s, others 
with Albertz s and still others with Römers, while her emphasis on a small 
group of literati and its social and ideological roles with some aspects of my 
contributions.
As any other volume of collected essays on a particular topic, this one is 
also an exercise in advancing knowledge by means of “parallel panels” These 
panels, however, are multi dimensional, not just bi-dimensional. Moreover, 
unlike parallel spaces that by definition never meet and are destined to 
keep a permanent distance among them, these panels may and do get
E d elm a n a n d B en Zvi The Production o f Prophecy 13
closer, meet, interweave with one or more other panels or sometimes grow 
apart from each other. This twisted and ever twisting geometry represents 
a great opportunity to configure and constantly re-configure our approach 
to, and knowledge of, the topic.
The preceding comments only sketch some of the elements of the 
contributions included in this volume, and unavoidably, despite my efforts 
to remain “objective” the sketches are all made through the lens of my own 
glasses. I hope that readers will by now be eager and perhaps impatient to 
read the “real texts”, that is, the essays. Above all, it is my and Diana’s hope 
that after you read them, you will begin to turn over in your minds the 
kind of conversation that emerges through and among these essays. 
Moreover, we hope that as you do so, you will begin to insert yourselves 
into these conversations by accepting, qualifying, modifying or rejecting 
any of the positions advanced in any essay. If you do so, you will become 
members of this research programme and our job will be done. This book 
should not be approached as an attempt to advance any formal (never 
mind, “definitive”) statement of the status of the question but as an 
invitation to join in the discussion, so we may all learn more about the 
production of prophecy in ancient Israel.
I cannot complete this introduction without expressing my thanks to 
my co-editor, Diana Edelman. Not only did she participate in the 
conceptualization of the volume and the usual talks with publisher and 
contributors, but also she has single-handedly improved the style of every 
single contribution. Her careful editing has greatly improved this volume. 
Diana and I wish to express our heartfelt thanks to Philip R. Davies, who 
not only participated in the volume but encouraged and advised us through 
the process of its creation. Finally, we both wish to thank Janet Joyce and all 
the staff at Equinox Press.
Endnotes
1. The sessions were held as part of the 2006 and 2007 EABS annual meetings. 
Another volume coming out of some of our 2007 and 2008 sessions is planned 
and a third volume will follow. This research programme is co-chaired by Diana 
Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi. The sessions we organize are meant to research and 
elucidate the production and reception/s of books considered “authoritative" in 
the Persian and Hellenistic Periods, and what does “authoritative" mean in this 
context.
2. O f course, this is not to say that there were no oral prophets in Persian and early 
Hellenistic Judah/Yehud (see Neh. 6:14). The point is that the concept of prophecy 
that evolved at the time and which we today may call “biblical” prophecy was not 
shaped around these personages, even if some of them may have played some role
1 4 The Production o f Prophecy
in powerful circles (e.g., the opposition to Nehemiah, if one assumes the basic 
historicity of the relevant story in the book).
3. See my “Reconstructing the Intellectual Discourse of Ancient Yehud” forthcoming 
in Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, in which I also address the evidence 
that emerges from the study of Chronicles.
4. See, however, the essay by E. S. Gerstenberger in this volume and above all his 
“Psalms in the Book of the Twelve: How Misplaced are They?” in Thematic Threads 
in the Book o f the Twelve (eds P. L. Redditt and A. Schart; BZAW 325; Berlin/New 
York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), pp. 72-89 .
5. Note, for instance, Knaufs concluding paragraph.
6. “Jonah was included among the Twelve in order to highlight the issue of 
interpreting the prophetic corpus that came to be included within the written 
Torah, both the Twelve and, by implication, the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and 
Ezekiel as well”. So also, “[o]fthe compositions included in the Twelve, Jonah may 
well have the latest date of composition and could have been composed as the 
interpretative key, without circulating as a prior, independent composition”.
7. This holds true in terms of my contribution to this volume and my previous work 
on Jonah. See my Signs o f Jonah: Reading and Rereading in Ancient Yehud 
(JSOTSup, 367; London: Sheffield Academic Press/Continuum, 2003). See also 
my History, Literature and Theology in the Book o f Chronicles (London: Equinox, 
2006).
8. See J. D. Nogalski, Literary Precursors to the Book o f the Twelve (BZAW, 217; 
Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1993); idem, Redactional Processes in the Book o f 
the Twelve (BZAW, 218; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1993).
9. T. Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and 
Literary Introduction (London and New York: T. & T. Clark and Continuum, 
2005; paperback edition, 2007).
10. Cf. Pesiq. Rab. Qah. 13.1, in addition, to b. B. Bat. 12a.
11. M. H. Floyd, “The Production of Prophetic Books” in Prophets, Prophecy and 
Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism (eds M. H. Floyd and R. D. Haak;
I.HBOTS, 427; New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006), pp. 276-97 ; idem, “Basic Trends in 
the Form-Critical Study of Prophetic Texts” in The Changing Face o f Form Criticism 
fo r the Twenty-First Century (eds M. A. Sweeney and Ε. Ben Zvi; Grand Rapids, 
MI: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 298-311; idem, ‘"Write the revelation’ (Hab 2:2): Re- 
imagining the Cultural History of Prophecy”, in Writings and Speech in Israelite 
and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy (eds E. Ben Zvi and M. H. Floyd; SBLSymS, 
10; Atlanta: SBL, 2000), pp. 103-43.
T o w a r d s a n I n t e g r a t i v e S t u d y o f t h e P r o d u c t i o n o f
A u t h o r i t a t i v e B o o k s i nA n c i e n t I s r a e l
Ehud Ben Zvi
Intellectual historians may be interested in a particular literary work and 
its background. More often, however, they are interested in reconstructing 
ancient discourses. They reconstruct, or attempt to reconstruct, the system 
or cluster of interrelated, connective ideas, ways of thinking, webs of images, 
memories, “common” knowledge and linguistic registers that shaped: (a) 
which issues or set of issues were likely to come up in a community; (b) the 
ways in which the community went about thinking about these issues 
when they arose (i.e. which webs of images, social memories and linguistic 
registers were activated to deal with these issues); and (c) not only the 
range of issues but also the range of possible responses to them and the 
rules governing the interaction of the latter within the community.
In our field, there has been a tendency to focus on particular books or 
sets of books as if they were separate worlds, each evolving on its own path 
and each associated with a distinctive social group that worked to uphold 
and develop a particular ideological tradition and above all, a particular 
literary work expressing it. Examples include the Deuteronomistic group/ 
school, the Isaiah tradents, Ezekiel tradents/school, and so forth. According 
to this understanding, sets of separate schools or groups of scribes were 
responsible for writing, editing, shaping and reshaping an ongoing, 
changeable text in a process that eventually led to the present form of each 
of the separate books or sets of books, like the so-called “Deuteronomistic 
History” hereafter, abbreviated DHC for “Deuteronomistic Historical 
Collection”.1
To be sure, these authoritative books are presented to the reader as 
independent works and ask their intended and implied readership 
to understand them as such. For this reason, and given matters of
16 The Production o f Prophecy
present-day sociology of knowledge,2 it is reasonable and advantageous to 
approach them critically as separate units. Yet, there are a number of 
historical questions that require a complementary approach, which do not 
square well with some of the historical assumptions underlying the above­
mentioned tendency in the field.
The notion, for instance, of the separate multi-generational, primarily 
linear development of each book (or sets of books) demands that the 
ongoing authorship and active readerships o f these books were 
longstanding (i.e. multi-generational), compartmentalized groups that 
existed in the postmonarchic period. Each of these groups would have had 
its own sets of images, ideological viewpoint, and "sacred” literature 
consisting of the book or books they were reading, composing and re­
composing. They would have developed a particular sociolect that marked 
linguistic boundaries not only between texts that belonged to their inner 
group vs. those that did not, but also among the different groups of authors/ 
readers (i.e., the Deuteronomists, the priestly group, the Ezekielian group, 
the Isaianic group, and so forth), for each group would have had their own 
distinctive and distinct making ideological/linguistic set. In other words, 
we are talking about multiple, separate discourses, each of which has left us 
one or more of the biblical books. But when and where did these multiple 
separate discourses exist? When and where could these multiple separate 
discourses and their corresponding social groups have existed?
For the most part, there is general agreement that the Pentateuchal 
books, the historical narratives from Joshua to Kings, and most if not all of 
the prophetic books in their present form stem from postmonarchic Judah. 
More specifically, it is commonly assumed, for good reason, that they were 
created in Jerusalem-centred Yehud. The existence of multiple, separate 
discourses requires corresponding social groups and, to some extent, also 
corresponding socio-institutional structures, even if at a basic level. Did 
any of the latter exist at that time?
Elsewhere, I have maintained that it is very unlikely that there were 
multiple, socially compartmentalized, longstanding groups of literati in 
post-monarchic Judah, be that the neo-Babylonian province of Judah 
centred at Mizpah or the Persian province of Yehud centred at Jerusalem 
after ca 450 b ce . After all, there were few highly educated literati in Yehudite 
Jerusalem in each generation, and not many even when multiple 
generations are taken into account. I have maintained that the educational 
training in such a small community would have tended to have produced 
a single group of scribes who shared, for the most part, a common, set 
curriculum rather than multiple, socially separate groups of educated literati
with separate curricula. Moreover, the basic assumption that the only way 
to account for different written works or various literary genres and 
viewpoints or the use of a particular linguistic proclivities in a given written 
document is to posit the existence of disparate communities of authors 
and writers is untenable. The fact that these books possess some degree of 
unique flavour has given rise to a sense of multiple discrete origins that 
does not necessarily reflect the situation of the literati composing, reading 
and rereading them.
Despite all their differences and the various sources that may have been 
embedded in them, the existence of a small literate group of scribes in 
Persian-era Yehud means the prophetic, historical and Pentateuchal books 
were shaped in their present form, read and reread within a tight-knit, 
cohesive social group. We also can assume they arose within a shared social 
discourse, which they reflect in the various products they created.3 In other 
words, these works should provide not only evidence of a common social 
setting but o f some underlying interrelated, connective ideas and 
tendencies, along with a communal set o f images, ideas and memories, as 
well as a more or less shared selection system for linguistic choices. Moreover, 
if all these works evolved within more or less the same social group and as 
part of a shared discourse, they could not have evolved independently of 
each other. Finally, if this is the case, on one level, the intended readers were 
supposed to understand the meaning of each book as a stand-alone work, 
while on another level, their understanding of the messages or significance 
of each one was informed by (the) others.
This approach is not meant to flatten differences among or within books. 
On the contrary, it is to be stressed that a multiplicity of ideological 
viewpoints and voices was a hallmark of the literary works that emerged, 
which reflected the discourse of the period. In any historical study of the 
period, this central, sociological and ideological feature must be explained, 
not explained away.
To enunciate a model or to show that its alternative could not have 
worked in the conditions of Yehud is only a first step; it must be followed 
by an analysis of the heuristic and explanatory potential of this single model 
and of its limitations as well. A few observations suffice to illustrate the 
kind of matters involved. First, this model suggests that a web of interrelated, 
connective ideas provided the fertile ground out of which substantially 
different works arose and without which they would not have been 
generated. Second, this model suggests that literary works informed literary 
works; the literati drew water from a shared sea of literary genres, individual 
texts, expressions and images when they wrote or rewrote their works. An
B en Zvi Towards an Integrative Study o f Authoritative Books 17
IS The Production o f Prophecy
important corollary is that the literati were fully immersed in that shared 
sea when they read and reread the works that existed in their authoritative 
repertoire. Third, a strong tendency towards both diversity and integration 
existed in this repertoire,which demands explanation, particularly in the 
context of a small group of literati.
By raising the first issue, the model leads historians not only to identify 
which ideas can be included in this category but also, and above all, the 
ways in which each of these ideas was deeply interwoven with others and 
why they played a governing role in the intellectual production of literary 
works such as the Pentateuchal, the historical and the prophetic books. A 
few examples suffice.
The primary intention of these books was to instruct the intended 
community of readers and the necessary knowledge to do so existed in 
the form of written texts. An ideological world in which YHWH's word 
or YHW H’s teaching is a written text such as the book of Hosea or 
Deuteronomy is certainly not a necessary or self-evident one. In fact, there 
is a clear tendency in the textual worlds portrayed in these books to have 
YHWH com m unicate orally with the main personages, directly or 
indirectly, unlike the readers of the books, who were supposed to learn 
YHWH’s words or gain reliable knowledge about YHWH by reading them. 
The world of the literati is thus construed as both continuous with those 
portrayed in the books who receive divine knowledge and discontinuous 
with it in terms of the form or method of gaining it. Needless to say, such a 
situation leads to the construction of a series of bridges and gaps within 
bridges and gaps. For instance, some Pentateuchal, prophetic and historical 
texts point to written documents existing in the world portrayed in the 
book, but the latter are now, at best, potentially embedded in these new 
works. In the case of the Pentateuchal and prophetic books, these earlier 
documents are clearly superseded for all practical purposes. Likewise, it is 
still possible that during the time these books were being written and 
rewritten, read and reread, some individual could have claimed to have 
received a direct divine communication, even if s/he were outside the 
authoritative circle of literati who produced “proper” knowledge about 
YHWH. But if knowledge of that direct communication was worthy of 
being included in the long-term instructional curriculum of Jerusalem­
centred Yehud, it had to be transformed into a written text that had to 
follow particular genre requirements. The meaning of the words depend 
on a Sitz im Buch and are written and read in a way informed by other 
texts.
In this world, not only is knowledge about YHWH construed as a written 
text, but memory is also contained in a written text and activated, as it 
were, through reading and rereading. It is through these activities that the 
literati created mental images of their past. These images shaped particular, 
virtual (one may say) spaces and times. They created “sites of memory” to 
be visited time and again by the literati who imagined and remembered 
their (self-construed) past as they read and reread these written texts. 
(I will return to this important, though rarely emphasized point.)
An intellectual discourse in which only the literati can have direct access 
to YHWH’s word and, by implication, to YHWH’s mind and to Israel’s 
memory of itself construes the literati as brokers of divine knowledge. They 
become indispensable mediators between YHWH, the provider of 
knowledge, and Israel, who needs that knowledge to maintain its ways and 
to fulfil its obligations to YHWH. The metaphor of YHWH as the 
Communicator or the Teacher of Israel, which is fundamental in this 
discourse, mirrors the self-construction of the literati as the teachers of 
Israel and communicators of YHWH s message. It is central to and underlies 
all prophetic literature. This position is also crucial for understanding the 
legitimacy and role of the Pentateuchal books. As mediators of YHWH's 
written word, the literati construed themselves as fulfilling a social function 
similar to Moses, who was made the first mediator of the divine message to 
Israel. A similar process was at work in the prophetic books and provided 
legitimacy for the literati's construction of the memory of Israel in the 
DHC (and the “Primary Historical Collection” that encompasses the DHC 
and the Pentateuchal books).
It is worth noting that YHWH's word, utterances, and teachings are 
explicitly set in localized circumstances existing in a construed past; at the 
same time, they are presented as bearing meaning for trans-temporal Israel, 
be that the Israel of the imagined past or of those imagining that past as 
they read (directly or indirectly) about it in their books. Pentateuchal laws 
are all embedded in a narrative world. Similarly, most prophetic books are 
anchored within a particular world of circumstances, most often given in 
the opening of each book. In both cases, a clear temporal anchor co-exists 
with strong de-historicizing tendencies. The emphasis on the construction 
of memories of the past and the social action of visiting them, again and 
again, as the books are read not only is a common denominator of both the 
prophetic and the Pentateuchal books but also stands at the very centre of 
the historical books.
Within this discourse, as memories of the past were construed, reflected 
on, and reshaped, they generated written texts. Rules of “grammar”
B en Zvi Towards an Integrative Study o f Authoritative Books 19
2 0 The Production o f Prophecy
governed this production of memories. For instance, in the DHC and in 
the “Primary Historical Collection” (e.g. G enesis-2 Kings; hereafter, PHC) 
as well, these memories are not conceptualized in terms of any particular 
polity or king (except, perhaps, YHWH) .4 Instead, they are all memories of 
(all) Israel’s past; that is, the past of a trans-temporal entity that went 
beyond and across political structures and which was understood in ethno­
cultural-religious terms. Leaders, leadership structures, and polities all 
came and went, but Israel and YHWH remained interacting with each 
other in these constructions of the past.
The same position is evident in prophetic literature. Significantly, most 
of the reported utterances of YHWH are not addressed to the king alone. 
YHWH addresses transtemporal Israel through the written text and within 
the world portrayed in the text. The same ideological tendency is expressed 
in the construction of a concept of covenant between the deity and the 
people, not the king, or any leader for that matter, which is central to the 
Pentateuchal literature. To be sure, references to leaders and kings can and 
are made, but the prominent roles of Moses and David are put into 
perspective by an overriding focus and emphasis on “Israel”.
Communities do not construct their pasts as a uniform flow across time. 
Certain periods or events are underscored while others are reviewed in 
passing. Within the triad of the Pentateuch, the DHC and the prophetic 
corpus there is a strong emphasis on the Exodus and its aftermath and on 
the period leading to and following the fall of Jerusalem and its temple. 
Both the DHC and the prophetic corpus stress Israel’s sin and the just 
character of the divine punishment, yet both convey hope for the future 
and for a return, not to old conditions, but to a new, future past based on a 
strong awareness of past sin. These motifs, alongside promises of seed and 
land that are ubiquitous in prophetic literature and the patriarchal stories, 
imply the sense of a tenuous grasp of such desired objects and conditions 
by those creating these texts. Reading about Israel’s punishment in the 
past and its causes was a way to acquire knowledge of the divine and YHWH’s 
wishes. In this way, YHWH’s severe punishment of Israel in the past is 
reshaped for pedagogical purposes into an everlasting process relived as 
social memory that enriches, educates and warns Israel, generation after 
generation.
Written constructions of the past create not only times to be remembered 
and vicariously relived through reading but also virtualsites of memory. 
Prophetic texts and the DHC take their readers back time and again to a 
past in which Judah and particularly, Jerusalem, stood at the centre. A 
Pentateuch read in a way strongly informed by the DHC also conforms
well within the ideological parameters of a Jerusalem-centred ideology.5 
Jerusalem is associated with the Temple, the primal cultic space. The 
Pentateuch, the DHC and Ezekiel above all within the prophetic literature 
dwell at length on the construction and description of the cultic centre of 
Israel.6 In all these instances, a text that is directly available only to the 
literati creates a mental replica of the temple/tabernacle to be visited and 
revisited by readers and listeners. Significantly, such a textually-based, 
imagined and virtually revisited cultic place is immune to the vagaries of 
history, including conquest by enemies or desecration by sinners or 
foreigners. Thus, in the DHC, the Pentateuch and the prophetic corpus, 
written texts created a stable, ideal temple through their actualization in 
reading and rereading. This temple was far better than the polluted 
temple that had been destroyed and the present, small temple. This 
textually based temple that existed in the imagination of the community 
was commensurate only with the future, ideal temple and provided partial 
compensation for its absence in the “real” world.7 In the knowledge world 
of these literati, every visit to the text-centred temple could not help but 
also evoke the painful but didactic memories about the process that led to 
the fall of its monarchic version that were imprinted in the literati by the 
DHC and the prophetic corpus.
As mentioned above, the DHC informed the reading of and, to a 
large extent, allowed the acceptance of the Pentateuch as we know it 
in Jerusalem-centred Yehud. When a text is used to inform the reading 
o f another text, a separation or boundary between the two is also 
acknowledged, maintaining the integrity of each. At times, this separation 
may become very significant. For the purposes of this chapter, it is worth 
noting that the m entioned separation between the DHC and the 
Pentateuch allowed the latter to be shared between Yehud and Samaria. A 
combination of a shared authoritative corpus and unshared and unsharable 
interpretation of it is, in itself, an important historical datum for the 
reconstruction of the discourses of Yehud and Samaria as well as for the 
reconstruction of their relations in a more encompassing way, including, 
for instance, socio-political and historical considerations.
Not only the DHC and the Pentateuch informed each other in Yehud;8 
the DHC and the prophetic corpus show numerous links. Many of the 
introductions to the prophetic books were meant to activate in their 
implied and actual readers their knowledge about particular periods in 
the past. That knowledge was provided at least in part by the DHC.9 At 
times, prophetic texts play on representations advanced in Kings. Be that 
as it may, the two provide, shape and reshape sets of images about the
B en Z v i Towards an Integrative Study o f Authoritative Books 2 1
2 2 The Production o f Prophecy
circumstances that existed during particular regnal periods that informed 
and complemented each other, at least from the perspective of the literati 
of Jerusalem-centered Yehud, who held all these books to be authoritative.
Generative, connective ideas and central memories, on the one hand, 
and literary images and linguistic terms or phrases used to shape and 
express the former, on the other, are always interrelated in any community. 
A common discourse employs both and is possible only if there is a shared 
corpus of texts. It is not surprising, therefore, that many textual images, 
expressions, passages and key, multivalent terms appear across the triad.10 
From a system ic perspective, we may consider them as available 
communicative and thinking tools shared by the literati. The use of a 
common set of tools to create various books would have given rise to the 
tendency to link different texts into webs of meaning, especially since the 
literati were well aware of their entire repertoire as they continuously read 
and reread the texts that constituted it. Needless to say, once a link is 
formed, it goes both ways; text “A” informs the reading of text “B" and vice 
versa.
The linguistic flavour of a text, book, or character can also be a 
communicative tool. It conveys a sense of temporal or cultural distance or 
closeness between texts, books as a whole, characters in books, narrators, 
and implied authors, on the one hand, and readers, on the other, but also, 
texts, books and characters. It also may be used to convey a sense of “both - 
and”. For instance, the intended and primary readers of the book of Judges 
cannot but imagine the Deborah of ch. 5 as a distant character who speaks 
a “strange” language; but they also imagine her as one of the regular 
characters that populate the DHC when they read ch. 4. Deborah is thus 
evoked as both a remote character discontinuous with the others in the 
DHC and as one close and continuous to them and to the readers 
themselves, who are well versed in the language of the DHC. This 
combination of closeness and remoteness is important; it leads to the 
consideration as to whether additional characters from the period of the 
Judges or earlier also might have spoken in a “strange language”, even if 
their reported language in the authoritative repertoire consists only of 
variants within the typical SBH range.11 The matter raises important 
questions about the literati’s own construction of the past, their own texts 
and the ways in which they imagine the Hebrew of the past.
It is worth stressing that linguistic choices can certainly be used to convey 
central ideological motifs. For instance, Hosea and YHWH share a 
linguistically marked flavour in their voices in the book of Hosea, while 
YHWH and Jeremiah and YHWH and Isaiah reflect still different flavours
in each book, respectively. From a general perspective, the message created 
by these basic observations was that: (a) YHWH’s voice carried different 
“tones”; and (b) YHWH’s voice became intertwined with, and partially 
shaped by, each of the different, past, godly human voices that were now 
available to the community through the reading of authoritative prophetic 
books.
The fact that the Pentateuchal books, the prophetic corpus and the 
DHC were all penned in the same written “dialect” of Hebrew, SBH, created 
a sense of proximity among these books and separated them from, for 
instance, Chronicles. At the same time, the fact that each prophetic book 
and its YHWH carried its own voice12 balanced the picture. Similarly, the 
presence of Mosaic, that is, deuteronomic/deuteronomistic voices in the 
DHC alongside other voices created a sense of unity and diversity, as did 
the integration of some deuteronomic/deuteronomistic voices alongside 
others in Genesis-N um bers and the eventual construction o f the 
Pentateuch and the PHC as collections of works.
This balance between multiple voices on the level of language is echoed 
by a sim ilar balance among m ultiple ideological viewpoints and 
constructions of the past that exist within particular books and in the 
general discourse of the period. This emphasis on diversity - within certain 
limits to be sure - is perhaps one of the most characteristic features of that 
discourse. It pervades the characterization of both the implied authors of 
authoritative books and of YHWH. Such an emphasis on integration but 
not homogenization cannot simply have resulted from the differing 
opinions amongst the small group of literati. To be sure, even in such 
groups differences exist. Moreover, mental worlds are far more amenable 
to an interactive co-existence of multiple variations based on different 
combinations and recombinations of connective ideas than, for instance, 
positions that carry aclear im pact in term s o f im plem ented or 
implementable policies in an “actual” polity. But the fact that an integrative 
approach to discourse and to mental worlds activated through the reading 
of texts is possible does not explain why they actually evolved and became 
so dominant in ancient Israel. Similarly, the reason cannot be that the 
existing received, written material could not be changed except through 
interpretation. The relevant texts were shaped and reshaped during this 
period, and even a material or source embedded in an evolving book 
constantly assumed new meanings according to its shifting Sitz im Buch as 
the book changed. In fact, it is worth stressing that the latest edited 
manuscript of a book superseded its forerunner, which was eventually 
discarded.
B en Zvi Towards an Integrative Study o f Authoritative Books 23
24 The Production o f Prophecy
A discourse within which YHWH, the main personages in Israel’s past, 
and the implied authors of the authoritative books were consistently 
characterized through the interweaving of different, multiple voices seems 
to reflect and relate to a number of needs at the very core of the community 
of literati. For instance, they were all too aware of the level of discontinuity 
between them and their society and their own constructions of past 
manifestations of Israel. They participated neither in the Exodus nor entered 
the land; they lived neither in David or Solomon’s days nor the last days of 
monarchic Judah or in its aftermath. There was a strong desire and 
ideological need among them to acknowledge fully the obvious gap. At 
the same time, there was a concerted attempt to bridge it so as to allow 
their identification with transtemporal Israel and the Israels they imagined 
and visited through their readings and rereadings of books.
This situation gave rise to the tendency to develop a general discourse 
characterized more by a “both - and” approach than by an "either - or” one. 
Yet, a discourse in which a substantial set of different viewpoints, at times 
appearing to be logically contradictory, are consistently presented in a way 
in which they do not contradict but support one another required 
additional factors to become so dominant. Moreover, it is worth noting 
that the readers of these authoritative texts were constantly asked to 
integrate their meanings by constructing YHWH and the authoritative 
implied authors of their books as integrative figures while, at the same 
time, setting clear boundaries. After all, their discourse was certainly 
contesting other discourses (e.g. any Yahwistic discourse that did not accept 
a Jerusalem-centred viewpoint).
Among other factors at work, one may m ention the historical 
circumstances of the Jerusalem-centred literati of Yehud. Despite the place 
they situated themselves in their own minds, they were a small group in a 
poor and marginal province and at first, they were located away from the 
demographic, economic and political centre of the province, which was 
located in the area of Benjamin during the early Persian period (see my 
other contribution in this volume). The need for and drive towards social 
cohesion is normally much stronger in the "underdog” than in dominant 
groups and is particularly felt by those facing a strong cognitive dissonance. 
Thus, we can expect it to be present at any time among these Jerusalemite- 
centred literati and those supporting them. In addition, the emphatic 
sense of social cohesion mentioned above reflected an ideological 
construction of, and likely an actual sense of social cohesion that existed 
among, the literati who lived at any moment in Jerusalem and among any 
likely-minded, Jerusalemite-centred literati who lived across time but
within the relatively few generations during which the present 
compositional forms of prophetic, Pentateuchal and historical (DHC) books 
came into being.
These literati shared a basic discourse and together contributed to the 
success and eventual dominance of the viewpoint, cult and memory 
advanced by the Jerusalem centre in Yehud within the borders of Yehud. 
Their work successfully empowered the socio-political institutions of that 
centre, primarily those associated with the temple. Although most likely 
related to the temple, these literati participated in Israel and even imagined 
it as, above all, a textual-centred community, that is, a community at whose 
centre stood authoritative (written) texts. From their perspective, Israel 
could exist without a material temple, with or without a Davidic monarchy, 
but not without an authoritative corpus of literature.115 In such a society, it 
is precisely the seeming lack of logical cohesion within authoritative texts 
that not only allows for and serves to develop social cohesion but also 
provides the necessary exegetical flexibility needed to be responsive to 
different circumstances while maintaining the primacy of the texts.
Finally, it should be noted that the ideological discourse of the Jerusalem­
centred literati and their supporters, even if eventually successful in Yehud, 
was contested by other Yahwistic groups in Palestine, particularly in 
Samerina. Such disputes can serve to reinforce social and ideological 
cohesion within the partisan groups. Another tendency associated with 
such disputes, however, is the use of important Figures from the past as 
authoritative spokesfigures or sources of customs or practices to reinforce 
the venerability and “correctness” of the insider's views that are being 
disputed by outsiders. Such figures may be commonly shared by the rival 
Yahwistic groups, but need not be. The use of a Mosaic flavoured language 
in Deuteronomy in the Jerusalem-centred DHC gains a new rhetorical 
perspective if seen from this methodological, systemic viewpoint, as does 
the inclusion of Hosea, a “northern” prophet, and perhaps Jonah14 among 
the prophetic books.
To conclude, significant heuristic questions arise from a recognition 
that: (a) the present compositional forms of the Pentateuch, the prophetic 
books and the DHC originated in a shared, integrative discourse that, even 
after it achieved dominance in Yehud, stood contested in the region; (b) 
rereadings of one particular text were constantly informed by rereadings of 
other texts within the same community/ies of ancient rereaders and, 
therefore, the meanings they associated with diverse texts within their 
repertoire evolved together;15 and (c) although distinct books were indeed 
marked and recognized as different, from the perspective of historians
Ben Zvi Towards an Integrative Study o f Authoritative Books 25
26 The Production o f Prophecy
studying the rereading, Jerusalem-centred literati, these books are to be 
understood also as interrelated manifestations of a single discourse that 
existed for a few generations during the Persian period. To be sure, and lest 
I be misunderstood, I firmly maintain that it remains very important to 
study each biblical book on its own. At the same time, it is also important 
to study the systemic features of the general discourse that gave rise and 
meaning to these books. The latter may shed substantial and at times, 
"new” light on the intellectual history of the scribal elite in Yehud.
Endnotes
1. In referring to the Deuteronomistic History as a collection of books, I wish to 
stress that I view this corpus as a multivocal and complex corpus rather than as a 
tightly written, univocal, coherent unity.
2. After all, no one today can be an expert in many of these books or sets of books 
simultaneously and therefore, scholarly sub-guilds dealing with each one of these 
books or sets of books have developed at least in places such as North America and 
Western Europe (e.g., the sub-guild consisting of scholars of the books such as 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Proverbs, Psalms, Lamentations, Genesis or sets of books, 
such as Pentateuch, DHC, “the Twelve Prophetic Books”).
3. It is to be