Ethan Schwartz—“Rethinking the Comparative Study of Biblical and Ancient Mediterranean Prophecy.”

Dear colleagues,

It is my pleasure to invite you our next event, which will take place on Monday, Nov. 5, in Swift 201. Ethan Schwartz, who is a PhD Candidate in Hebrew Bible at Harvard University, will be presenting his dissertation prospectus: Rethinking the Comparative Study of Biblical and Ancient Mediterranean Prophecy.

Here is the abstract of Ethan’s project:

The contextualization of biblical prophecy against the backdrop of ancient Mediterranean divination is one of the liveliest comparative enterprises in biblical studies today. Many aspects of the Latter Prophets in particular have been shown to have remarkable nonbiblical analogues. However, there is one such aspect that has largely eluded this comparison: the prophets’ critique of established authority on behalf of (what they claim to be) God’s true demands of Israel. This is a significant lacuna because this critique of authority is not just one aspect among many but rather a centrally thematized, orienting idea—so much so that scholars, theologians, and laypeople alike often reflexively use the word “prophetic” as a shorthand for principled opposition to illegitimate authority. Amidst so much continuity between biblical and ancient Mediterranean prophecy, what are we to make of this striking discontinuity? In this presentation, which is an overview of my in-progress dissertation, I argue that it actually stems from a larger incongruence between the two corpora: the biblical prophetic texts have been thoroughgoingly shaped into literature in a way that their nonbiblical counterparts have not been. The prophetic critique of authority must be understood as part of a multifaceted literary project. In light of this, I suggest a new avenue for comparative analysis that offers better prospects for understanding the Latter Prophets’ critique of authority within their ancient Mediterranean context.

We hope to see you all then.

Best,

Aslan Cohen Mizrahi.

 

For accessibility concerns, please contact me at aslancmiz@uchicago.edu.

 

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