Another Look at the Hosea/Malachi Framework in The Twelve

Abstract

Abstract Though most scholars agree that the prophetic books identified as “The Twelve” (or “The Book of The Twelve”) have gone through extensive stages of redaction, debate ensues as to whether they should be read as a literary unity or as a collection of independent prophetic works. A closer look at the framework surrounding this material—the book of Hosea and the book of Malachi—suggests that the primary purpose of the redaction of The Twelve was not to be read as a literary unity or as an anthological collection, but to establish a model of how priestly scribes were to countenance and teach diverse textual corpora in the context of a single, dominant temple establishment. The redactors of the Twelve were probably a Levite scribal group, who created the work to affirm their own status within the hierarchy of the Jerusalem temple in the Late Persian period.