ABSTRACT
Without the Israelite prophets there would have been no prophetic books. Behind the biblical prophetic books as literary works stands prophecy as a socio-historical phenomenon. Prophetic books resulted from prophetic practice. However, the precise relationship between the books as literary products on the one hand, and the activity of the historical prophets on the other, is difficult to determine. Whereas most of the traditions that ultimately led to the prophetic books may have started as the result of prophetic activity, their development became a literary enterprise with its own dynamics, in which, at least in some cases, no prophetic activity was involved any more.
