and reached so far back in the history and memory of what transpired that such deep memory had the potential to unravel the fragile talks before they ever settled into forming something permanent and formidable. So the question is whether the possibility exists that imagination can be born out of such deeply set memory? The answer must be “yes.” Though it comes with substantial challenges, it can be a road that leads to redemption. “In some way too, with the exception of surviving victims, all are witnesses to memory rather than remember themselves. They have an ‘unstory’ to tell.”35
1. Langer, Shoah Testimonies, xv.
2. Brueggemann, “Fissure Always Uncontained,” 73.
3. Tollington, “Ethics of Warfare,” 72.
4. Langer, Shoah Testimonies, 150.
5. Isa 6:8–13.
6. Sweeney, Reading the Hebrew Bible after the Shoah, 91.
7. Dobbs-Allsopp, Lamentations, 45.
8. Ibid., 48.
9. Tracy, “Hidden God,” 13.
10. Sweeney, Reading the Hebrew Bible after the Shoah, 8.
11. Ibid., 9.
12. Ibid., 13.
13. Ibid., 103.
14. O’Brien, Challenging Prophetic Metaphor, xxi.
15. Sweeney, Reading the Hebrew Bible after the Shoah, 198–99.
16. Brueggemann, “Fissure Always Uncontained,” 73.
17. Bard, “Nazi Olympics,” n.p.
18. Ibid.
19. Fretheim, Untamed Creation, 101.
20. Hall, God and Human Suffering, 58–60.
21. LaCocque and LaCocque, Jonah, 139.
22. Ibid.
23. Wis 11:23–24.
24. LaCocque and LaCocque, Jonah, 143.
25. Ibid., 145.
26. Hos 8:14.
27. Hos 4:6.
28. Lapsley, “Genius of the Mad Prophet,” 136.
29. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down, 294.
30. Isa 42:9–10a.
31. Lapsley, “Genius of the Mad Prophet,” 134.
32. Jer 6:15.
33. Smith-Christopher, Theology of Exile, 76.
34. See Sells, “Kosovo Mythology,” 180–207.
35. Langer, Shoah Testimonies, 39.
2
Prophecy and Prophetic Literature
Arguably it is the case that biblical scholarship over the last 400 years or so has been shaped principally by the Reformation/Counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment. In large part what this has done is to emphasize the centrality of rationalistic thinking and somewhat later, historical criticism. Indeed for a prolonged time these methods have been granted a privileged status in biblical scholarship, and in all of this time, while surrounded by the presence and influence of imperialism and colonialism, biblical scholars have been remarkably reluctant to employ other methods in shaping the trajectories of biblical hermeneutics.
There are two greater dangers within the field. One is an uncritical acceptance of the principal tenets of the discipline, and the other, its failure to relate it to the society in which its work is done. Biblical Studies is still seduced by the modernistic notion of using the rational as a key to open the text and fails to accept intuition, sentiment and emotion as a way into the text. By and large the world of biblical interpretation is detached from the problems of the contemporary world and has become ineffectual because it has failed to challenge the status quo or work for any sort of social change.36
It is sometimes quite difficult for us to understand the encounters between the Hebrew prophets and the communities and peoples with whom they related, and the relationship between God and these prophets. For the most part these kinds of divine and prophetic encounters are absent, or at best sparese in today’s world. Invariably when I speak to groups about the Hebrew Prophets, I ask the question, “who are the prophets in our generation or who have been the prophets in the last century or so?” Without providing too many details, I have suggested to the various audiences that they use the Hebrew Prophet as something of a model. In posing this question I typically have not had any preconceived names that I am seeking to elicit in particular, but the responses that I have received have been quite revealing. There was often a challenge to generate names and while Gandhi and Martin Luther King invariably made the list, it was typically not long before names of popular preachers or even celebrities were cited. It is not to suggest in any way that many of those named did not have merit in terms of who they were and what they did, but to speak of a prophet is distinctive.
