Up the steep and stony road: The book of Zechariah in social location trajectory analysis.

摘要

What was the social matrix that gave birth to the strange fourteen-chaptered form of the book of Zechariah? The standard commentaries ignore the question. Michael H. Floyd notes, "It is odd that no recent commentaries have attempted to grasp either the ideational concept or the sociohistorical context forming the matrix of the book as a whole" (1999, 262). This dissertation is an attempt to answer that question by making it possible to ask once again whether the book of Zechariah may, after all, have but one principal author, the eponymous prophet whose name is borne by all fourteen chapters of this strange book. Minimally, I shall argue that a tradent group in a single generation of time is responsible for all fourteen chapters. Maximally, I shall attempt to establish grounds that make unitary authorship tenable.; Differences in social location are usually considered as evidence against literary unity. My research in the relevant sociological literature leads me to conclude that a single prophetic claimant and a single prophetic movement may indeed occupy a wide variety of social locations in the course of its activity, in relatively brief spans of time. This thesis is demonstrable from studies of prophet-led movements, especially those of twentieth-century Africa. These religions arguably provide the closest contemporary base for sociological models applicable to the study of ancient Israelite and Judean prophecy.; The demonstrably divergent social locations of the prophetic figure(s?) and tradent group(s?) responsible for the present prophetic literature in Zech 1--8 and Zech 9--14 thus constitute no definitive argument against reading this material as the remains of a single generation of prophetic activity. Since such differences in social location are usually considered as evidence against such socioliterary unity, my research represents a significant step in a new direction. Something must explain the present redactional unity of this material in the Book of the Twelve. My hypothesis is that a single prophet or prophetic tradent group in a social location trajectory from center to periphery allows us to account for the present shape of the book and its redactional unity under one prophetic name.