Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 What is prophecy, and can it be validated?
- 2 Jeremiah: the formulation of criteria for discernment
- 3 Micaiah ben Imlah: the costs of authenticity and discernment
- 4 Elisha and Balaam: the enabling and disabling of discernment
- 5 John: God's incarnate love as the key to discernment
- 6 Paul: cruciformity and the discernment of apostolic authenticity
- 7 Prophecy and discernment today?
- List of references
- Index of authors cited
- Index of scriptural references
- Index of subjects
2 - Jeremiah: the formulation of criteria for discernment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 What is prophecy, and can it be validated?
- 2 Jeremiah: the formulation of criteria for discernment
- 3 Micaiah ben Imlah: the costs of authenticity and discernment
- 4 Elisha and Balaam: the enabling and disabling of discernment
- 5 John: God's incarnate love as the key to discernment
- 6 Paul: cruciformity and the discernment of apostolic authenticity
- 7 Prophecy and discernment today?
- List of references
- Index of authors cited
- Index of scriptural references
- Index of subjects
Summary
In our world, the truth seldom goes uncontested. We have seen it before. Let a Jeremiah appear; on the moment there springs up a coven of opposition, peddling other versions of God, of community, or moral behavior. The Jeremiahs are rare, that strong unmistakeable presence, a veritable field of force. Then the opposition proliferates and bears down implacable, over and against the truth-teller.
– daniel berrigan, sj (berrigan 1999:96)Introduction
This quest for criteria for critical discernment of prophetic authenticity will start in what is arguably the only book in the Old Testament to engage with the issue in a focussed and explicit rather than ad hoc way – Jeremiah. The general reason for the presence of such criteria within the book would appear to be the particular context within which Jeremiah's prophetic ministry was situated. The final years of the kingdom of Judah (late seventh and early sixth centuries) raised in an unprecedentedly disputed way the question of what kind of future, if any, the kingdom was to have, especially in relation to the growing power of Babylon. Jeremiah's witness in this context was contested by other prophets in a way that is not evidenced in the books associated with Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, or Micah, or the post-exilic prophets. It is not that the words of these other prophets do not encounter their own opposition, but such opposition is predominantly expressed in terms of a reluctance to take their challenge seriously rather than in terms of alternative Yahwistic prophetic messages.
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- Information
- Prophecy and Discernment , pp. 41 - 99Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006