ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some questions, and provides a few tentative suggestions, about the understanding of prophecy in the post-exilic and intertestamental periods. General books on prophecy are normally historical in plan, beginning with early prophecy and its roots, and with the phenomenon of prophetic experience in pre-exilic Israel and other ancient cultures. Despite some work on prophets in the early Christian community. A hopeful place to start might be by asking what is meant when the second division of the Hebrew Scriptures is called the prophets'. The lack of distinction in the Hebrew tradition can be seen most strikingly in a saying attributed to Johanan b. Zakkai, which is recorded in B. Baba Bathra 14b in justification of the Talmudic ordering of the prophetic books. A prophetic book, then, is an inspired book written in the classical prophetic age, before the Spirit departed from Israel.
