Amos--The Prophet and His Oracles: Research on the Book of Amos.

• Author: Radine, Jason H.
• Position: Brief Reviews - Book Review

Amos--The Prophet and His Oracles: Research on the Book of Amos. By M. DANIEL CARROLL RODAS. Louisville: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2002. Pp. xiv + 224. $32.95 (paper).

The Biblical book of Amos has been an exceptionally popular topic for literary analysis for many years due to, among other factors, its author's purported status as the earliest of the Biblical literary prophets as well as its diversity of literary features in compact size. As the literature on Amos has grown to enormous proportions. several surveys have been written that attempt to organize this material into major movements, themes or tendencies. The book under review is a particularly successful endeavor of this type.

The book is composed of two parts: a history of research on Amos divided into three chapters, and several sets of classified bibliographies, the latter part making up more than half of the book. The first chapter broadly covers the history of Amos research from Wellhausen until 1990, discussing major figures and movements in Amos research and in prophetic research in general with an impact on Amos. The second chapter discusses work of the past decade on Amos with some projections of future research. This chapter uses an organizing principle introduced in the first chapter, that of "what lies behind, within, and in front of the text." "Behind the text" refers to issues of literary, historical, and archaeological background, as well as social-scientific approaches. "What lies within the text" is the rubric for literary approaches to the book's structure and style. "In front of the text" focuses on the reception of the text, particularly its use by different modern communities. The third chapter focuses on this latter area, presenting readings of Amos from various modern, especially disenfranchised, communities both in the first world and the "two-thirds world." The bibliographies are divided into sections on reference works, general works, specific topics and sections of the book of Amos, and dissertations. The bibliographies of general works, commentaries and dissertations are annotated with brief abstracts and comments for most of the...