- We generally think of the 15 books attributed to prophetic authors in
the middle of the Hebrew Bible or at the end of the Old Testament in Protestant and
Catholic Bibles as identifying the prophets of Israel
- But there are more prophets than these books would indicate
- According to the rabbis (b. Meg. 14a) there were 48 prophets and 7
prophetesses in Israel
- Earliest of the canonical prophets (Amos, Hosea) not only knew they
had predecessors but stood quite consciously in that tradition (Amos. 2:11-12, Hosea 6:5,
9:7-8, 12:10,13)
- By the 8th century B.C.E.
Israelite prophecy had already been in existence for about 300 years
- Canonical prophets almost always refer to a class of
"prophets" with whom they disagree
- Perhaps they did not want to be identified with that group (Amos
7:14)
- But this indicates there was an established institution functioning
primarily within the cultic religion
- One of the big questions of discussion is how the prophets we think
of were related to these cultic functionaries
- In any case, the prophets whom we study as authors of books composed
only a small minority of those who were called prophets