Introduction to Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah statutes and ordinances,” we have strong encouragement to pay attention to links with the Torah.8 But the links are not all backward. The Christian interpreter will want to ask in what sense the prophets proclaim Christ, and the answer will most often be in a typological sense. The forward links relate to God’s history with his people, to the exposition of his design for creation, and to the reality of guilt and reconciliation. These issues are embodied in God’s central self- revelation in Jesus Christ, and the full significance of the prophetic word is therefore discerned in the light of Jesus Christ. For those like myself who accept the truth of the New Testament, the link to the second part of the Christian two-part canon is not one among many one could make but is as firm and important a link (forward) as the (backward) link to Torah. Is there a specific contribution made by the Minor Prophets to the canon? Many of the same motifs and themes are found in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. But none of these gives us the idea of a succession of prophets like the Book of the Twelve. The prophets in the narrative corpus of the Bible fulfill such a variety of functions that one does not get the same sense from them of a prophetic tradition exhorting and encouraging the people of God across the centuries. The similarities of themes dealt with in the Minor Prophets create a sense of unity across the ages, but the particularities of each of the books testify to a dynamic vitality and the fact that the prophetic word is spoken into specific situations.
III. THE UNITY OF THE BOOK OF THE TWELVE Many scholars have come to believe that the Minor Prophets constitute in some sense a single literary entity. They claim that such a unity is suggested by the traditional designation “the Book of the Twelve” and by the scribal tradition of copying the Twelve on a single scroll. These conventions indeed indicate that the writings of the Minor Prophets were thought to belong together. Certainly, each writing associated with a minor prophet is on its own too short to count as a book in the full sense.9 It is no surprise, therefore, that these writings were collected together and that early counts of 8. It seems to me reasonable to assume that the Torah contains a substantial amount of early material to which the prophets could refer back. In particular, I am persuaded of the largely preexilic origin of the priestly material and accept the existence of an early Deuteronomic core. Were these sources dated later, the relationship would take on a more typological nature. In other words, as portrayed in the prophetic books, the prophets based their proclamation on a tradition of the type now contained in the Torah. 9. By way of illustration, the Minor Prophets comprise 180 cols. in the Cairo Codex (see “Excursus: Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts” immediately below). Even if they are taken
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