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The Prophets, Vol 2
What manner of man is the prophet?
Amos
Hosea
Isaiah
Micah
Jeremiah
Habakkuk
Second Isaiah
History
Chastisement
Justice
Amos
Hosea
Isaiah
Micah
Jeremiah
Habakkuk
Second Isaiah
History
Chastisement
Justice
287 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
3 people are currently reading
87 people want to read
About the author
Abraham Joshua Heschel
77 books626 followersHeschel was a descendant of preeminent rabbinic families of Europe, both on his father's (Moshe Mordechai Heschel, who died of influenza in 1916) and mother's (Reizel Perlow Heschel) side, and a descendant of Rebbe Avrohom Yehoshua Heshl of Apt and other dynasties. He was the youngest of six children including his siblings: Sarah, Dvora Miriam, Esther Sima, Gittel, and Jacob. In his teens he received a traditional yeshiva education, and obtained traditional semicha, rabbinical ordination. He then studied at the University of Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate, and at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, where he earned a second liberal rabbinic ordination.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 10, 2014
This two volume set covering all the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible was assigned reading for Dennis Haas' one-year introductory course sequence on the biblical canon. It was a very good choice. I was reading the bible from cover to cover for the first time and knew a lot of Greco-Roman history, but little of the period from other perspectives. Heschel worked well as an introduction to the Hebrew perspective. He also touched my heart as Martin Buber had, making me feel Jewish--or at least wanting to be Jewish. The two of them together with the Rev. Haas, our college chaplain and a UTS graduate, were influential in my eventual decision to attend the seminary where they had once taught in New York City.
November 17, 2023
"Our embarrassment in reading the harsh expressions of divine wrath is also due to the general disposition of modern man. We have no sense for spiritual graduier. Spiritual to us means ethereal, calm, moderate, slight, imperceptible. We respond to beauty; grandeur is unbearable."
May 29, 2018
The first volume was a compendium of each of the Hebrew prophets one by one and Heschel's analysis and thinking about their experience and relationship to people on the one hand and to God on the other.
Volume II is a more general overview and analysis of what it is that Heschel sees Hebrew prophets as being and doing including a scholarly literature review even while the book itself is very readable/well-written:
What is prophecy? Who are prophets? How are those of the Hebrew Bible different and similar to other religious figures throughout time and cultures?
I found the general argument compelling: that prophets not only have messages from God but are motivated by deep sympathy for the feelings of God who is loving and also upset when Creatures are not acting out of that love and in right relation to each other and to the Divine.
In some ways, it mimics Buber's I-Thou argument although told in more specificity. I'd be super-interested in reading this with others.
Volume II is a more general overview and analysis of what it is that Heschel sees Hebrew prophets as being and doing including a scholarly literature review even while the book itself is very readable/well-written:
What is prophecy? Who are prophets? How are those of the Hebrew Bible different and similar to other religious figures throughout time and cultures?
I found the general argument compelling: that prophets not only have messages from God but are motivated by deep sympathy for the feelings of God who is loving and also upset when Creatures are not acting out of that love and in right relation to each other and to the Divine.
In some ways, it mimics Buber's I-Thou argument although told in more specificity. I'd be super-interested in reading this with others.
July 19, 2023
The Theology of Pathos
“Never in history has man been taken as seriously as in prophetic thinking. Man is not only an image of God; he is a perpetual concern of God.”
“In sum, the divine pathos is the unity of the eternal and the temporal, of meaning and mystery, of the metaphysical and the historical. It is the real basis of the relation between God and man, of the correlation of Creator and creation, of the dialogue between the Holy One of Israel and His people. The characteristic of the prophets is not foreknowledge of the future, but insight into the present pathos of God.”
“Biblical religion begins with God addressing man, with His entering into covenant with man.”
The Philosophy of Pathos
“The perfect example of an impassive deity is the God of Aristotle. By identifying the Deity with the First Cause, with something which, while it has the capacity of moving all things, is itself unmoved, Aristotle's Deity has no pathos, no needs.”
“The Stoics regarded passion, impulse, desire—the emotions in the widest sense—as unreasonable, unnatural, and the source of evil. To live rightly was to dominate the emotional life by reason, and so to act by will.”
“Plato's dualistic conception of the soul and particularly the Stoic disparagement of emotion have deeply influenced the moral and religious thinking of subsequent generations. Morality has often been equated with the suppression of passion, with the control of desire by reason. Passion and vice, emotion and weakness, have frequently been called synonymous. … No other system in the history of moral philosophy has had such a lasting impact as the ethical ideas of the Stoics. Jewish and Christian morality have shown a tendency to coalesce with the Stoic ideal.”
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“Never in history has man been taken as seriously as in prophetic thinking. Man is not only an image of God; he is a perpetual concern of God.”
“In sum, the divine pathos is the unity of the eternal and the temporal, of meaning and mystery, of the metaphysical and the historical. It is the real basis of the relation between God and man, of the correlation of Creator and creation, of the dialogue between the Holy One of Israel and His people. The characteristic of the prophets is not foreknowledge of the future, but insight into the present pathos of God.”
“Biblical religion begins with God addressing man, with His entering into covenant with man.”
The Philosophy of Pathos
“The perfect example of an impassive deity is the God of Aristotle. By identifying the Deity with the First Cause, with something which, while it has the capacity of moving all things, is itself unmoved, Aristotle's Deity has no pathos, no needs.”
“The Stoics regarded passion, impulse, desire—the emotions in the widest sense—as unreasonable, unnatural, and the source of evil. To live rightly was to dominate the emotional life by reason, and so to act by will.”
“Plato's dualistic conception of the soul and particularly the Stoic disparagement of emotion have deeply influenced the moral and religious thinking of subsequent generations. Morality has often been equated with the suppression of passion, with the control of desire by reason. Passion and vice, emotion and weakness, have frequently been called synonymous. … No other system in the history of moral philosophy has had such a lasting impact as the ethical ideas of the Stoics. Jewish and Christian morality have shown a tendency to coalesce with the Stoic ideal.”
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews