Minor Prophets

Minor Prophets Christopher T. Begg and Fred W. Guyette ________ 1344. Baal and the Baals in the Book of Hosea Szabolcs-Ferencz Kató, "Baal and the Baals in the Book of Hosea: A Comparative Study, " JNSL 49 (1, 2023) 35–54. The identity and function of Baal and the baals in the Book of Hosea is a much discussed issue in Hebrew Bible study. The Baal lexeme occurs in three chapters (2, 11, and 13) in the Book of Hosea and is probably alluded to in Hos 9: 10. But who is this Baal? Is he a storm god, a cipher for any foreign deity venerated in Israel, or a Canaanized Yhwh figure? Is the use of the term in Hosea homogeneous to any degree? After a brief survey of scholarly positions on these questions, I argue that Baal in Hosea 2 seems to be the storm god; the lexeme functions as a generic term for foreign gods in Hos 11: 2, while in its use in the retrospective discourses of chapters 13 (v. 1) and 9 (v. 10), it refers to the Baal cult as manifested in bull imagery. However, even the storm god Baal of Hosea 2 is very different from his Canaanite counterpart. Baal in Hosea is merely a fertility god without any political or military functions. Adapted from published abstract—C. T. B. 1345. The Inclusion of the Concepts of "Law" and "Covenant" in the Older Theological Conception of a "Familial" Relationship between God and Israel in the Book of Hosea Wolfgang Schütte, "Die Einbindung der Begriffe 'Tora' und 'Bund' in die ältere theologische Konzeption einer 'verwandschaftlichen' Beziehung von Gott und Israel in der Hoseaschrift, " Bundestheologie bei Hosea? , 346–68 see #1496. In its original (8th cent. ) version, the Book of Hosea spoke, according to S. , of the relationship between Yhwh and Israel as a "familial" one uniting "my God" and "my people, " while also portraying this as a relationship in crisis due to Israel's failure to meet Yhwh's expectations of a fidelity matching his own and of social solidarity of the Israelites among themselves. Only much later, in the Persian-Hellenistic period, was this conception of the Yhwh–Israel relationship overlain with the Deuteronomic/Deuteronomistic perspective according to which the relationship was governed by a "law" and "covenant" (see Hos 8: 1b). This process—as the text-critical variants in the MT, Greek, and OL wording of the relevant texts in the Book of Hosea and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (and beyond, as in the Book of Sirach) indicate—reached its endpoint only via a whole series of textual and terminological "twists and turns. "—C. T. B. 1346. Covenantal Theology in Hosea? Franz Sedlmeier, "Bundestheologie bei Hosea? Eine alte und neue Frage, " Bundestheologie bei Hosea, 1–67 see #1496. S. 's lengthy essay functions as an introduction to the above volume, the questions it addresses, and component contributions. In accord with this purpose, S. begins with a history of scholarship on the bryt-theme with a concentration on the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s in which earlier claims about the antiquity of the conception of a "covenant" of mutual commitment between Yhwh and Israel came under challenge particularly in the works of E. Kutsch and L. Perlitt, this leading to a prolonged Bundes schweigen among biblicists, which, however, has yielded, in its turn, to a new interest in the possible antecedents of the full-blown covenant theology of Deuteronomi (sti) c literature, a development inspired, inter alia, by attention to the Neo-Assyrian treaty texts of the 8th–7th cents. Against this background, S. then proceeds to a consideration of the particular case of the 8th cent. prophet Hosea where one finds attestations of the term bryt and a predominant use of the marriage metaphor in speaking of the Yhwh–Israel relationship that might be understood as inspirations for the covenant theology of the Deuteronomic/Deuteronomistic corpus. S. concludes his essay with remarks on the other contributions in the volume, here highlighting the need to expand the discussion beyond the biblical and ANE data to include consideration of the universal psychological. . .