Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 59:234 (Apr 1902)
Article: Is The Book Of Amos Post-Exilic?
Author: Edward E. Braithwaite

BSac 59:234 (April 1902) p. 366

Is The Book Of Amos Post-Exilic?

Edward E. Braithwaite

This is the title of the leading article in the January number of the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures. The joint authors of the article, Edward Day and Walter Chapin, of Springfield, Mass., answer the question in the affirmative. At the outset, one is tempted to say, that, if this be correct, there can be no certainty as to the date of any Old Testament book. There has been a great unanimity of opinion among scholars in placing Amos at the very beginning of the literary prophets. A second temptation is to add that such a theory, must not only revolutionize our whole view of the development of the Old Testament religion, but also cause us to abandon many conclusions that we have regarded fundamental. But perhaps neither of these inferences is warranted. Critical investigation has before transferred literature from an early to a late date, and in so doing has done no great violence to our important religious beliefs—nay, may even have added something of value to these. Is this to be another case of this kind? At any rate, whatever the truth may seem to be, it must be faced, regardless of results. The question is considered here, largely because it has an important bearing on the present writer’s discussion of Amos in the January issue of the Bibliotheca Sacra. In that discussion it was stated, that the position there taken (for the first time as it is believed) as to Amos’s reason for predicting the captivity might be made clearer by reviewing the course of the prophet’s argument in the different sections of his book. But, as preliminary to this, it seems necessary to glance at the contention that the book properly belongs to a period after the exile.

The article under consideration begins with a set of statements which it would seem maybe properly viewed as chiefly introductory to the main arguments of the waiters, rather than as themselves constituting an important part of the argument. These statements may be conveniently grouped under four heads: —

1. There is, first, a reference to the wonderful attainment of the prophet Amos if he lived in the eighth century B.C. and amid the surroundings usually attributed to him. Cornill is quoted as calling Amos “one of the most marvelous and incomprehensible figures in the history of the human mind”; Cheyne, as characterizing the prophet “a surprising phenomenon,” and his book “a literary as well as prophetic phenome-

BSac 59:234 (April 1902) p. 367

non”; George Adam Smith, as asserting that “the book of Amos opens one of the greatest stages in the religious development of mankind.” In the opinion of Day and Chapin, this is all to be explai...