AbstractsPhilosophy & Theology

In this thesis, Moore attempts to explain the development of Hebrew prophetic texts based on comparative evidence from other ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cultures. He investigates three different but connected topics followed by two case studies that apply the results of his investigations to Hos 1-3 and Ezek 18. The first study explores the social horizon of literacy in the ANE. Moore shows that knowing an ancient Hebrew writer's social context can aid in an interpretation of the text. He questions the long standing view that only elites were literate in the ANE. The second study focuses on different mediums on which ancient writers wrote. Circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion that wax-boards were likely used in ancient Israel and Judah for various literary genres, including letters, and for drafting purposes. A final study examines various prophetic texts from the ANE to determine which literary genres were likely used in the textualization of the Hebrew prophecies. Moore opines that some, if not many, Hebrew prophecies were first written as letters. Applying these findings to Hos 1-3, he demonstrates that Hos 1-3 underwent a Judahite redaction after an original writer composed Hos 1-3 as a letter to a king. This historical reconstruction explains the enigmatic problem of shift in grammatical person between Hos 1-2 and Hos 3. A second case study on Ezek 18 claims that a writer composed Ezek 18 as a letter to the leaders of Jerusalem. Based on its distinct literary units, five prophetic utterances and two didactic expansions, Moore reconstructs how it was drafted and proposes that it may have been drafted on wax-boards. The study proposes new ways of thinking about redaction criticism, scribal activity, and the Hebrew prophets.