Sage, priest, prophet : religious and intellectual leadership in ancient Israel
"Blenkinsopp investigates three forms of biblical Israel's religious leadership, and examines the development and character of these roles and how they functioned in their particular time and place. Based on sociological insights regarding role theory and audience expectations, the book demonstrates how Israel's prophets, priests, and sages represented their own traditions while responding to the political and professional pressures of their unique situations."--Publisher's description
Print Book, English, ©1995
First edition View all formats and editions
Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Ky., ©1995
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xi, 191 pages ; 24 cm.
9780664219543, 9780664252939, 9780664226749, 0664219543, 0664252931, 0664226744
32013388
Labels and roles
The problem of sources
The goal and point of the study
The intellectual tradition in Israel and its representatives
The idea of tradition
Ben Sira: profile of a Jewish intellectual in the Hellenistic period
Once again, the question of sources
Beginnings: creating a moral consensus
Writing in the service of the state system
The social and moral world of the sages at the time of Hezekiah
Scribes and lawyers
Feminine wisdom: the return of the repressed
The impact of events on the tradition
The job debate: protagonists, issues, outcome
Qoheleth: undermining the tradition from within some provisional conclusions
The bad repute of the Israelite priesthood in the Modern Period
Sources
Early stages
The roles of the priest
Zadok, Aaron, Levi
The priesthood of the second temple
Priests and Levites
Professional training for the priesthood
Creation and distinction: the making of a conceptual scheme
The temporal axis: chronology and history in P
The spatial axis: earth, land, temple
Some provisional conclusions
The definitional problem
Sources for the study of Israelite prophecy
Prophetic role labels
Prophecy in its social setting: the earliest stage
Individual figures
Communal prophecy
Prophets under the state system: continuity and discontinuity
A new kind of intellectual leadership?
The social situation that generated protest and dissent
The substance of dissent
From dissidence to official recognition
The Deuteronomic program
Deuteronomy and beyond