The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are

The Prophets by Norman Podhoretz

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I decided to begin filling up a large hole in my knowledge base with this book. Obviously, I've been exposed to the writings of the prophets over sixty years of listening to the Mass and general cultural exposure, but my knowledge is superficial at best. I couldn't distinguish Amos from Ezekiel, or what they stood for or preached.

I've had this book since it was published in 2002, but it is a book that I have always put back for later. However, after listening to Isaiah as an audiobook and noting the confusing bipolar framing of the narrative, I decided that the time was now.

It was what I was hoping for. Podhoretz takes the reader on a prophet by prophet journey of nearly three hundred years. Podhoretz is not a professional scholar, albeit he studied the prophets as part of a course in Jewish studies decades ago. As preparation for this book, he has studied the recent scholarship, which he introduces to the reader in the discussion about each particular prophet.

Sometimes I need to be told that how I read a text is how the text reads. I find prophetic writing to be largely illogical and bipolar. Prophetic text can snap from condemnation to hope in the space of a sentence without apparent rhyme or reason. If you are reading this as a conventional text, it is a bumpy and frustrating ride. Podhoretz confirms that this is really what's happening. Prophets do make such abrupt changes. They are also frequently hard to read; Podhoretz notes that certain of the prophets are acknowledged by scholars to be among the most cryptic books in the Bible.

However, Podhoretz also admires the prophets and acknowledges that some of their writings are the greatest poetry in human history. Podhoretz finds it significant that as the prophetic inspiration was dying in Israel, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were making their appearance in Greece. (Podhoretz follows the explanation that the prophetic inspiration died when Jewish culture became more about commenting on inspired texts than about creating those inspired texts.)

If you are looking for uplift and inspiration, this is not your book. Podhoretz acknowledges that a lot of prophetic literature is focused on the “here and now” of Israel or Judah at the time. We might find those issues to be unedifying and confusing. So, as astute readers, we have to winnow out the transcendent from the mundane.

I learned a lot. I knew that Hosea married a whore, but I didn't appreciate that this was enacting a prophetic analogy of God and Israel. I didn't know that Isaiah went naked, or that Jeremiah wore a yoke, or that Ezekiel spent 400 days bound and lying on one side or another. These were not tame people that you would ask to speak at your Rotary Club.

If you are looking for a prophet by prophet walk through the Navi section of the Hebrew Bible by a scholar and literary critic, with a critical assessment of the current scholarship and the historical understanding, then you may find it, as I found it, just the introduction you are looking for.

As is wont as the godfather of Neo-Conservativism, which was a reaction by Jewish liberals against the totalitarian leftism of the New Democrats in the 1960s, Podhoretz ends with his view that the classical prophets “war against idolatry” provides some guidance against the “antinomian” culture of modernity. Antinomianism denies the law, historically, the Jewish Law, but in its modern form, any law that would stifle human freedom or impose responsibility on human beings.

Even then, Podhoretz was arguing that modern antinomianism had recreated the worst features of paganism, not the least of which was idolatry, which in the case of modernity is the exaltation of self over god.

Podhoretz wrote the book in 2002.

Look how much further we have come.