Amos 1:3–2:8 and the International Economy of Iron Age II Israel

Abstract

Past historical-critical research into Amos 1–2 has typically relied on one of two strategies in relating the historical Amos's identity as a prophet to the authority and scriptural status of the book. In the first strategy, many interpreters have detected in these eight stanzas allusions to and descriptions of particular political relations, economic contexts, or military engagements, supposing that such correlations secure the book's roots in the eighth centuryb.c.e. Such chronological benchmarks, in turn, are implicitly thought to sustain the importance of Amos's prophetic identity—i.e., the Amos of Tekoa named in 1:1—in effect constituting the text's nature as scripture. A second, somewhat related strategy has centered on the reconstructed “original” or “secondary” status of certain passages. In this redaction-critical variation of the historical-critical endeavor, interpreters assume that an understanding of the text's chronological development can help to flesh out the picture of Israel's (and Judah's) developing theology or theologies. Again, this model tacitly accepts that prophetic identity plays an intimate and necessary role in the text's authenticity (and conversely, that redactional composition contributes to a passage's supposed “inauthenticity”) and also, therefore, in its authoritativeness within various temporally-constrained interpretive communities.