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Title: The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are by Norman Podhoretz ISBN: 0-7432-1927-9 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Old Testament as ideology
Comment: My first reaction to this book was moderate outrage, kneejerk politics, mind you, followed by grim satisfaction, the author should cap his conservative ministrations with re-entanglement with the altogether radical prophets of yore. The last embers of the once (and future) hothead still glimmering.
Need one indulge in the obvious observation that this proves an old charge, that the OT is ideology, a sentiment reminding one of Lewis Feuer's Ideology and Ideologists, a work so irate on the subject that it outstripped its anti-marxist tirade enough to find the source of the genre in the realm of the ancient Israelites.
The prophets are indeed remarkable by any reckoning in the mystery of the Axial Age, and science has not understood them. But the progression of Biblical Criticism has delivered the subject to a new world, and we are left with something almost more interesting than the 'last chance' efforts in a neo-conservative vein to keep American mentation in line and money flowing. Cf. The Bible Unearthed, by Silberman and Finkelstein.
Rating: 2
Summary: Out of his field
Comment: I have to admit up front that I haven't read this book, only summaries online (some by fans and some by critics), but a major shortcoming of the book is already evident.
Like Harold Bloom in his "Book of J," Pohoretz has apparently ventured into a highly technical field without the necessary expertise. His analysis is evidently based on traditional notions about the historical context of the texts he's interpreting, notions that would not regarded as accurate by the consensus of specialists in the field. In essence, his analysis starts with bad data, so it doesn't seem likely that his conclusions will tell us about who the Prophets were so much as about who Norman Podhoretz is.
While I agree with Podhoretz that the content of the prophetic texts has been appropriated in anachronistic ways since they were written (by later ancient Isrealite and Judean editors and interpreters as much as by modern Jews, Christians, and secularists), that minimal insight by itself is no more than a commonplace among actual scholars of Ancient Near Eastern texts.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent book
Comment: I have been reading the writings of Norman Podhoretz for about twenty years and find him consistently rewarding. This book, which seems meant for the general reading public, is no different. Though I do not have the technical expertise to evaluate his elucidation of the prophets, this book provided a perspective that was very helpful to me. It will give my reading of the books of the Old Testament a remewed focus of interest. His concluding chapter is particularly well written, well reasoned and enlightening, even prophetic. He might have spoken louder.
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Title: The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis by Leon R. Kass ISBN: 0743242998 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 27 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Prophets by Abraham J. Heschel ISBN: 0060936991 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 16 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Discovery of God : Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism by David Klinghoffer ISBN: 0385499736 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz ISBN: 047146502X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Ex-Friends: Falling Out With Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer by Norman Podhoretz ISBN: 1893554171 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: July, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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