What are the Minor Prophets about? Should we read them together, as one unified book? Or should we read them as twelve discreet books, written (Nahum) or spoken (the other 11) by twelve different prophets?

These are questions worth asking when we study the Book of the Twelve. And as our church has studied Jonah, is starting Nahum, and will soon look at Haggai, I wanted to share another post on ways we find unity in the Twelve. Already, I’ve shared the helpful work of Paul House. If you haven’t read that, start there and then come back here.

In this post I will look at the work Old Testament scholar David L. Petersen (not to be confused with David G. Peterson, the New Testament scholar) and biblical theologian Jim Hamilton. In David Peterson’s survey of research (“A Book of Twelve?” in Hearing the Book of the Twelve, ed. James D. Nogalski and Marvin A. Sweeney, pp. 1–10), he lists five evidences of unity in the Twelve. And in Jim Hamilton’s book God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, he shows how each book is connected to the others through various catchwords and themes. We’ll look at each of these studies to better read the Bible and better understand the unity of the Twelve.

Five Evidences of Unity

In his short study on the Minor Prophets (“A Book of the Twelve?”), David Petersen presents five ways that unity is seen in the Twelve. While addressing the question of whether or not the Twelve is truly a “book,” a question he answers in the negative, he provides some helpful guides for ways we might see unity and arrangement in the Twelve. In his survey, these forms of unity total five.

1. Scribal Practice. The scribes made a practice of copying of the Twelve onto one scroll, adding weight to their unity. Written across a period of five centuries, with twelve different authors, these books were not written as a unity. But once collected, they always were recorded and read together.
2. Size. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve all share a common length. “Jeremiah is the longest prophetic book, occupying 116 pages in one edition of the Hebrew Bible. Ezekeiel is the shortest, occupying ninety-five pages. The Twelve stands in between, with ninety-six pages” (5). Accordingly, as others like Stephen Dempster have observed, the Twelve when taken as unit is a comparable to the other Major Prophets.
3. Order. While various manuscripts (MT, LXX, etc.) possess different orderings, the Twelve show many signs of arrangement. They are not simply randomly selected and assembled; they demonstrate order. And some of the proposed methods of arrangement include chronology, catchwords, length, and geography.
4. Formation. Coming from a higher-critical perspective, Petersen writes, “There is significant evidence that the formation of the Twelve was a complicated process, extending over a long period and attributable to many individuals” (8). For Petersen, this does not a book make, but it does suggest an intentional arrangement.
5. Literary Features. Finally, the most compelling reason to read the Twelve as a unified “book” is because of literary themes that develop throughout. Whether this shows up in a plot development, like Paul House espouses, or a singular theme, such as “repentance” (LeCureux) or “the Day of the Lord,” which Petersen prefers, there are clearly themes that interpenetrate the Twelve and which help us understand the message.

From these five features, Petersen argues for the evidence of unity in the Twelve, even as he’s not convinced about the term “book.” Agreeing that the term book is conceptually anachronistic, Petersen’s view thematic approach to the Twelve is worth considering. He writes,

Each of the Major Prophets includes a dominant theme. So, too, the Twelve. If Isaiah focuses on Zion, Jeremiah on the rhetoric of lament, and Ezekiel on the glory of Yahweh, the Twelve highlight Yahweh’s day. Each of these four scrolls offers a distinctive theme.

The vocabulary of temporality — of time —is a key to understanding the Twelve, and for good reason, especially when one compares the other three prophetic books with the historical breadth offered by the Twelve. . . .  In contrast [to the Major Prophets], the Twelve contains the earliest and the latest exemplars of prophetic literature. On the one hand, Amos reflects the conditions of the mid-eighth century; on the other hand, Zech 9–14 stems from well into the Persian period. So, with the Twelve, we are dealing with a period of roughly 400 years. None of the major profits can compare with the historical sweep offered by the Twelve. Hence, it is a really appropriate for these books to share a temporal lens — The day of Yahweh — by means of which to focus their vision. (10)

Catchwords Demonstrate Unity

In his book God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, Jim Hamilton demonstrates how “catch words” function to unify the whole Twelve. In a compact chart, he shows where these “link words and thematic connections” show up in the Twelve.

To these links, Hamilton provides a helpful caveat. He both affirms “an intentional arrangement” of the Twelve and offers caution that the arranger of the books may not have edited them to fit together. Hamilton writes,