Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 26:2 (May 1964)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Abraham J. Heschel: The Prophets. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row. 1962. xix, 518. $6.00.

This is a monumental work dealing with one of the most central themes of the Old Testament, that of the prophetic consciousness. Its author, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, presents his subject with great erudition and in a fascinating style. The scope of the work is truly vast. It is many things in one volume. The discussion ranges over the whole history of human thought, both Christian and non-Christian. While it deals with what may be called more specifically Old Testament problems, it considers these problems within the wider context of theology as a whole.

The first part of the book contains a discussion of the contents of several of the writing prophets. Some of the leading motifs of the book, that of the divine pathos and that of human sympathy, are introduced in this part (cf. pp. 48, 116, 59). The words daath elohim are interpreted as sympathy for God, attachment of the whole person, his love as well as his knowledge; an act of involvement, attachment or commitment to God. Stress is laid on the fact that the biblical man knew of no bifurcation of mind and heart, thought and emotion. He saw the whole person in a human situation.

After the analytical treatment of the opening chapters there follows a synthetic part in which the author develops more fully his thoughts concerning the divine pathos. The difference between Greek and biblical thought is stressed. “To the prophets the attributes of God were drives, challenges, commandments, rather than timeless notions detached from His Being” (p. 221). The prophets “disclosed attitudes of God rather than ideas about God” (idem). Of all those attitudes the divine pathos is the ground motive. This pathos is “a central category of the prophetic understanding for God….it is echoed in almost every prophetic statement” (p. 223). It is important to note that the author does not think of this pathos in its psychological denotation, as standing for a state of the soul, but in its theological connotation, signifying God as involved in history (p. 226, cf. p. 231).

The question naturally arises whether the author in his reaction against Greek ontological thinking has possibly fallen into the trap of modern

irrationalism. On this score the reader is reassured by the statement that “pathos, far from being intrinsically irrational, is a state which the prophet is able to comprehend morally as well as emotionally” (p. 227). Issue is taken with those who would conceive of God as the Wholly Other. “...

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