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A survey of a number of themes common to the Book of the Twelve shows that an intertextual approach to Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and the whole Book of the Twelve offers perspectives on issues in the texts not available to studies that isolate the individual collections. H aggai and Zech 1-8 predict the restitution of Judah and Israel and the reestablishment of the pre-exilic institutions of the temple in Jerusalem and the monarchy in Judah. Zechariah 9-14 and Malachi explain the failure of the religio-political leaders in Judah during the Persian period. Their failure precluded the arrival of the new day envisioned by prophets both inside and outside the Twelve. This article will undertake a survey of a number of themes common to the Twelve, showing that an intertextual approach to Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and the whole Book of the Twelve offers perspectives on issues in the texts not available to studies that isolate the individual collections. OT scholars have long recognized that redactors played a role in the development of the prophetic corpus. As late as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, the significance ofthat role was downplayed as scholars sought the ipsissima verba ("very words") of the prophets and ignored the "contradictor/' work of the editors. With the rise of redaction criticism, however, that inclination changed, and the theology of the redactors themselves became of interest. Next, some modern scholars even wondered out loud if the scribal redactors were not numbered among the prophets, too. Under the impetus of movements like canonical criticism, scholars began to value what the worshipping community valued: the canonical shape of the books. 1 With regard to the Minor Prophets, a serious issue eventually arose concerning what constitutes a "book" among the Minor Prophets. The typical answer was "the sayings attributed 1 Cf. Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). APRIL 2007Interpretation 185 to the individual prophets like Hosea, Joel, and Amos." However, the trouble is that some ancient writers and rabbis considered the entire collection of the "Twelve" one book.2 In the 1990s, a group of scholars following the lead of James Nogalski 3 in this country and Aaron Schart 4 in Germany began to inquire into the possibility of reading all twelve collections as one "book," a process that has borne considerable fruit. The essays gathered in this issue of Interpretation are designed to look at the fruits of those efforts. 5This essay will contribute to that effort by examining the final three collections 6 in the Twelve: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi (hereafter Η-M). 7 The first task will be to show the redactional means by which the redactors combined 1) Haggai and Zech 1-8; 2) Malachi; and 3) Zech 9-14. Then the paper will move on to discuss the themes of those collections. REDACTIONAL DEVICES WITHIN HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, AND MALACHISince many scholars do not accept the idea that redactors knit together the Twelve as a ...
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