THE BIBLE AND CRITICAL THEORY REVIEWS Review of Ronald L. Troxel, Prophetic Literature: From Oracles to Books. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Ronald Troxel’s Prophetic Literature: From Oracles to Books offers the reader a concise but detailed study of the literary form and structure of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, paying particular attention to the significant scribal influences upon the form, content, and rhetoric of these books. In his preface, Troxel acknowledges the value of both literary and historical methods of reading the prophetic literature. However, studying the literary form of a biblical book alone, he advises, leaves important questions unanswered; such questions about the sources, histories, and originating contexts of the prophetic material – “what lies behind these books ” – are vital and their answers may offer additional and valuable ways of knowing this ancient literary genre (p. ix). His goal, therefore, is to address these questions by considering both the literary features of the prophetic books and the history of their composition and redaction. Troxel begins his investigation with a coherent and concise discussion in the first chapter, which aims to answer the question, “What is a prophetic book? ” Here, he clarifies what appears to be the primary aim of his book: to illustrate the central role of scribes in the transformation of Israelite prophets ’ utterances and deeds into the prophetic literature of the Latter Prophets found in the canon of the Hebrew Bible. Using comparative studies of prophetic traditions and extant propheti