Minor Prophets

Obadiah

Obadiah, the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible: the charge against Edom, how the reference to the fall of Jerusalem anchors its date, its overlap with Jeremiah 49, and what is known of Edom’s end.

Joel and the problem of a book with no date-markers: what it says, why proposals for its composition span six centuries, and what it means for method when a text gives an examiner nothing to work with.

Bible Trivia: The Minor Prophets

Twelve questions on the Book of the Twelve, at three levels, with every answer explained: who wrote what, which book fixes its own earliest date, and which one gives an examiner nothing to work with.

The Fall of Nineveh — Nahum and the Babylonian Chronicles

2 · Probable

Nahum announces the destruction of Nineveh. An independent Babylonian chronicle records the city falling in 612 BCE. The event is superbly attested; the date of the text is where the argument turns circular, and this dossier says so.

Micah

Isaiah’s contemporary from a small town — and the clearest case of one prophet being quoted by name in another book, with the effect of his words described.

Amos

A herdsman from Judah with the sharpest social criticism in the Hebrew Bible, and an earthquake in the superscription that may have left a layer in the ground.

Bible Trivia: Which Prophet Wrote What

Twelve questions on the prophets — which of them left a book and which did not, what each was told to do, and which vision belongs to whom.

Hosea

A marriage as sign-act, the last decades before Samaria fell, and Hebrew so difficult that the textual problems themselves limit what can be claimed from it.

Jonah

The one prophetic book that is a story about a prophet rather than a collection of oracles — which is why this site does not grade it until the genre question is settled.

Bible Trivia: The Return and the Rebuilding

Twelve questions on the deportation and what came after it — the Babylonian court, the Persian decrees, and the two men who rebuilt the temple and the wall.