Fifteen Books of Bible's Prophets Well Interpreted, Spark Discussion

Byline: Robert Royal, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Around the time that Homer was composing the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" in ancient Greece, an even more mo-

mentous set of texts was beginning to come into existence in the Middle East. By the time that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle began their philosophical labors, that contemporaneous current had come to end. But in the span of those three centuries, the future cultural and religious course of the West and, by its extension, large swaths of the rest of the world had been altered forever by the 15 or so books of the Bible that we call the Hebrew prophets.

The prophets, of course, convey deep spiritual truths about God, man, nature, and life in the world. But several of them also wrote breathtaking poetry, stern moral exhortation, and trenchant political and social commentaries, which are interrelated in their unified vision of reality. In fact, we owe to them much of our Western sense that time is more than a meaningless passage or series of natural cycles. The prophets make it clear that our temporal ups and downs are not distinct from our relationship to God, and that the trajectory of history - appearances at times to the …

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Publication information: Article title: Fifteen Books of Bible's Prophets Well Interpreted, Spark Discussion. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: The Washington Times (Washington, DC). Publication date: February 2, 2003. Page number: B08. © 2009 The Washington Times LLC. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group.

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