Prophetic movement and Mosaic tradition: The Hebrew experience of axial breakthrough

This article studies the prophetic movement in Israelite religion from the perspective of "Axial breakthrough" theory proposed by Karl Jaspers, which has arose some debates on comparative religions and theoretic sociology. Through the case analysis of Hosea and Ezekiel, the author believes that the dualistic tension between the transcendent and mundane orders was the characteristic element in the axial Israelite prophetic movement. The combination of judgment and salvation in the prophets has both shown the tension between the two orders. On the other hand, from the perspective of the history of thought, the Israelite prophetic breakthrough did not dissect itself from its pre-axial traditions. On the contrary, the prophetic breakthrough has repeatedly traced back to the Mosaic origin of Israelite religion, though the prophets might be different in their traditional heritage, symbols, and terminology. The fundamental feature of the prophetic breakthrough was the strong interaction between the prophetic transcendent characteristics and their returning to Mosaic faith. The reason is that the awareness of transcendence was deeply rooted in the Mosaic faith. In this sense, the prophetic breakthrough was still within the framework of Mosaic faith.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000255531300010&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701ReligionA&HCI0ARTICLE26179-20