Profiting from the Prophets

A Review of Reading the Prophets as Christian Scripture by Eric J Tulley

All the quotes below are from the book unless otherwise stated.

Profiting from the Prophets

“When we talk about inspiration, we don’t mean that the prophets were inspired in the way that a painter is inspired by a beautiful sunset or enters into some kind of highly creative state. In that case, the source of the inspiration is not always clear, and the artist does not always even know the meaning; it may be more of an emotion. But a true prophet undergoes a different kind of inspiration. He or she knows that the word is from God, and the meaning of the words is understandable (though perhaps the prophet does not know the full implications). In the case of the artist, inspiration means that the content comes from within; in the case of the prophet, it means that the content comes from God.”

It’s likely that at some point this year you’ll find yourself reading one or more of the prophetic books of the Bible. If that’s the case, I can highly recommend that you go and pick this book up to help you in that endeavour. It covers all of the prophetic books, meaning that if you go and pick this up on Logos that’s $2.63/£1.94 per prophetic book + eight brilliant chapters on everything from the Historical and Theological contexts of the prophetic literature to false prophets.

Disclaimer: I think it’s always a good idea to get a specific commentary on any book you’re looking to study in detail. That said, this book is a great idea if you’re wanting to get more out of the prophetic books of the bible, understand how they fit together with one another and with the overall narrative of the Bible.

With that said, here’s how I would recommend reading this book:

2 Books

My suggestion would be to treat this book as two separate books. I would read Parts 1&2 (Chapters 1-8) as if that was a whole book, perhaps a month or two before you start any prophetic literature in your bible reading plan. This will give you some time to process, chew on anything you struggled with within that literature, and then digest the wisdom. Especially if you’ve always struggled with the prophets or haven’t read them before, this is a great primer. Once you’ve read that, the first book, use Part 3 as a set of commentaries. Again, to my prior disclaimer, it would be worth getting a commentary or a few commentaries on a few of the books which would help to make sure you’re hearing a variety of voices on what you’re reading.

CCC

You can’t be surprised that I would bring this up, but I would still recommend making sure you’re doing this. The introductions to the books are a great way of making sure that you’re getting the context of the books, then after that point, read the bible before each section.

Here’s the best thing though, that’s how the book is structured!

You’re encouraged to read the word (Amos 1:2-2:16) and then it will give you historical, geographical, and theological information to help you understand that text better.

The only difference would be that points 2 & 3 are switched. Point 2 being comparison with other texts in the Bible. The three c’s in this book are, therefore:

Context

Consistency

Comparison

I would advise you to try and re-order that and look at comparing the texts at hand with others in the Bible yourself before heading back to this book. If that would be too much at this stage, the book will give you exercises like:

Compare Amos 5:21-24 with Isaiah 1:10-17. They sopund similar. How are they actually unique in their respective contexts?

Which will assist you in developing the skill of comparison.

Final Word?

My final word on this is that Reading the Prophets as Christian Scripture is not the final word, the Bible is. The author, I sincerely hope, would 100% agree with me here that his writing is fallible and therefore you shouldn’t simply be adopting his views as your own simply because it’s the only voice you’ve ever heard on these books of the Bible. This may be obvious to many of you, but for those of you who are younger Christians, an audience I think could thoroughly benefit from a book like this, this could be a serious temptation. I’ve already mentioned buying other commentaries on a few books, but I hold to what we say on the Consider the Ravens podcast, “discipleship should happen primarily in the context of the local church,” though I believe in conjunction with that that literature the principal way that discipleship has been bolstered throughout Church History, if you’re struggling, go to an Elder, leader, or trusted member of the body to help you work through your questions. Ultimately though, remember that the Bible has the final word and has ultimate authority.

With that said, I think this book (set for release on the 29th March 2022) is well worth picking up. I look forward to using it again in the future and referencing back to it over time.

Grace and Peace,

Adsum Try Ravenhill

Bonus

As a quick aside, for those of you who are nerdy like me, here’s a brilliant quote from the book:

“Consider this nerdy example: some people talk about the "Star Wars canon" and which movies and books really count for the real Star Wars story and universe. I could sit down and write a story about Luke Skywalker, but it would not be canon, and no one would be required to take it seriously. But perhaps you are a longtime fan and do not like one of the new Star Wars movies: too bad! If it is one of the official movies, it counts. It is canon, and the story is authoritatively part of the larger universe long, long ago whether we like it or not. Similarly, each of the prophetic books in our Bible is part of the biblical canon. That means that they are recognized as being official—the Word of God—and just as authoritative as Genesis or 1 Corinthians.”