Our “Route 66” journey through the Bible’s 66 books covered 16 books on Sunday – not counting the small book of Lamentations, which is also part of what Christians call “The Prophets” section of the Bible.
Sometimes this can be confusing because that’s not the only place in the Bible where we read about prophets. This section is specifically called “The Prophets” because these are the prophetic books – that is, the writings of the prophets themselves. In some cases, such as Jonah, the book is about a prophet and was written by someone else. Other prophetic books are a combination of both.
This Sunday, our Route 66 road trip takes us through another section of the Bible that includes prophets: “The History,” from Joshua through 2 Chronicles. The stories of the prophets are found especially in 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. These books introduce us to the classical prophets, sometimes called “the prophets of old.” They were the “king-making” and “king-breaking” prophets, wonder-working prophets surrounded by all manner of miraculous events. They provided leadership to the nation and spoke God’s word into the life of Israel.
In last week’s sermon, I addressed this, but I wanted to share a little more in this week’s article. The role of the prophet is unique in the history of the world’s religions. There really is no parallel in other ancient cultures that embodied the same religious role. Advisors and counselors to kings and queens can be found in plenty of places. But the role of the prophet was something different – a direct mouthpiece for God, speaking God’s message, often delivering words of warning and judgment to the monarchy as well as the powerful, and the socially elite. In the end, the prophets of Israel and Judah took their message directly to the people themselves.
And they were right!
Not only is the phenomenon of the prophet unique among world religions, but we can add the distinction of their remarkable accuracy. Of course, it is difficult to pin down every specific detail we read, but without question, in general, the prophets’ understanding of the social and political realities of their day – and what those realities would lead to – proved accurate from approximately the 8th century BC through the 5th century BC.
Doesn’t that make you want to learn and study more?
The role of the prophet is so important in the faith of the Old Testament that our Jewish friends refer to most of their Scripture as “The Prophets.” Of course, they do not call it the Old Testament; they call it the Tanakh. Tanakh is an acronym that represents the three major divisions of their Scriptures. (We divide ours into five sections.)
The three divisions are:
Torah – Law or Instruction
Nevi’im – Prophets
Ketuvim – Writings
(TaNaKh = Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim)
The Torah, or “Law,” is the same as ours: the first five books from Genesis through Deuteronomy.
The section called Nevi’im, meaning “Prophets,” includes all the books we identify as prophetic books (except Lamentations and Daniel), but it also includes much of what we call “The History.”
Our Jewish friends consider the following books part of “The Prophets”:
Joshua, Judges (but not Ruth), 1 & 2 Samuel (originally one book spread across two scrolls), 1 & 2 Kings (also originally one book on two scrolls), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the “Book of the Twelve,” which they regard as a single book rather than twelve separate ones: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
The final section, Ketuvim, or “Writings,” includes all the books we call Wisdom or Poetry, along with the remaining historical books not included among the Prophets: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and 1 & 2 Chronicles.
There are also a few additional books (three associated with the Prophets and four with the Writings) that are not included in our Protestant Bibles.
Clear as mud? More than you wanted to know?
I told you I can nerd out about this stuff.
Or, to put it in terms of our Route 66 theme, part of the fun of a road trip is sightseeing and taking time to enjoy things you might not normally stop to look at.
See you Sunday as we cruise through “The History.”
