Why is the prophetic voice silenced after Malachi? When when it is heard again during the crisis of Antiochus Epiphanes, why does it have to assume the voice of the long dead Daniel?

 

2 Baruch 85:1-3: Know that our fathers in former times and former generations had helpers, righteous prophets and holy men. But we were also in our country, and they helped us when we sinned, and they intervened for us with him who has created us since they trusted in their works. And the Mighty One heard them and purged us from our sins. But now, the righteous have been assembled, and the prophets are sleeping. Also we have left our land, and Zion has been taken away from us, and we have nothing now apart from the Mighty One and his Law.

After the construction of the Second Temple the prophetic canon is closed. Jer 23:34-40 and Zech 13:2-6 have been taken to signify a sort of decommissioning of the prophets. Lately, biblical scholars have looked at the relationship between canon and prophecy. In an article entitled :"The End of Prophecy and the appearance of Angels/Messengers in the Book of the Twelve," [JSOT 73 (1997) 65-79] Australian scholar Edgar W. Conrad notes that in the intertestamental literature the prophets are praised. Ben Sirach in his hymn praising the ancestors treats the 12 minor prophets "as having a singular message: ' ... They comforted the people of Jacob/and they delivered them with confident hope'." (65). When he looks at the writings of the prophets themselves, he notes a pattern. He divides the Twelve into two parts: " (1) Hosea to Zephaniah and (2) Haggai to Malachi" (67). One of the defining features is how they view ml'chim (messengers/angels) and prophets. Group one treats angels as "a memory from the time of the Patriarch Jacob" and "portrays a periods of confusion over the identification of prophets," while group two mentions angels frequently as a current phenomenon (67). He goes on to examine the relationship of the ambiguity about who is a true prophet within the prophetic material and the definition of a true prophet in Deuteronomy 18: 21-22. The role of hindsight is significant. The early prophets contend with the problem of competing with false prophets. Who is to be believed? Hosea 9.7 "The prophets is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad!" Mic 3.6b-8 "The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God. But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin." Amos 7.12-13 "I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees."

By the time we get to Zephaniah, time has cleared up the ambiguity. Zechariah identifies the former prophets: "Your ancestors, where are they? And the prophets, dot hey live forever? But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your ancestors? So they repented and said;the Lord of host has dealt with us according to our ways and deeds, just as he planned to do.'" (Zech 1:5-6).

Conrad concludes:

The relationship with Deuteronomy is an intertextual one: the Book of the Twelve is not therefore to be understood as a result of Deuteronomistic redaction. Rather the text of the Twelve, like any text, makes its readers aware of other texts not only because it is related to other texts at the time of its origin (its pretext) but also at the time of its reception (the reader's context." Both Deuteronomy and the Twelve share the notion that a prophet is understood to be legitimate if what he says comes true. (73)

Although the design of the Book of the Twelve indicates that the former individuals from Hosea through Zephaniah were prophets and that Haggai and Zechariah, as prophets, stand in continuity with that prophetic past, by the end of the Zechariah section of the Book, prophecy itself is seen to have not future. If there was confusion in the past about who was a prophet and who was not, Zechariah's oracle makes it clear that there will be no confusion in the future because prophecy will end. [Cf. Zech 3:1-6] (75)

 

The spoken word of God is replaced by the written, a development evident in Malachi and anticipated in Jeremiah and Ezekiel (cf. 1 Maccabees 4:46; 9:27).

 

Judaism becomes the people of a book; the book becomes the prophetic conscience. The story is told and the story becomes the call to return (shuv) to the Lord and love Him with all our heart, soul, and might.

 

Ours is a narrative theology: our relationship with God is based on the story we tell. The character of our community -- its habits of the heart -- is shaped by that story.

 

One of the fundamental misunderstandings of Christians is to equate the biblical Israelites with the Second Temple Jews. The conflict between the early church and the synagogue resulted not in the fact that the Jews were a faithless or unfaithful community but in that they saw the authoritative word of God as residing in the text. When Jesus' audience notes that he speaks with authority unlike the Pharisees and scribes, they are not necessarily praising him.

The topic of the end of prophecy has produced some heated discussion during the last decades:

Blenkinsopp, Joseph. "'We Pay no Heed to Heavenly Voices' : the "End of Prophecy" and the Formation of the Canon." Biblical and Humane. Atlanta : Scholars Press, 1996. Pp. 19-31.

Gevaryahu, Haim M I. "End of prophecy" : a Religious, Literary and Historical Problem [Hebrew] Proceedings, 9th World Congress of Jewish Studies. Jerusalem : World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986. Pp. 87-92.

Overholt, Thomas. "The End of Prophecy: no Players Without a Program" The Place is too Small for us" : the Israelite Prophets in Recent Scholarship. Gordon, Robert P. ed. Winona Lake, Ind : Eisenbrauns, 1995.

Petersen, David L, "Rethinking the End of Prophecy." Wünschet Jerusalem Frieden. Frankfurt am Main : Peter Lang, 1988. Pp.. 65-71.

Reid, Stephen B. "The End of Prophecy in the Light of Contemporary Social Theory." Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers, No 24. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985. Pp. 515-523.