Tony Watkins on the Old Testament Prophets and Human Flourishing

Cambridge Papers are published once a quarter (or thereabouts) and address a wide range of topics, offering ‘Christian reflection on contemporary issues’.

The latest paper is available online here (from where a pdf can be downloaded here):

Tony Watkins, ‘The Old Testament Prophets and Human Flourishing’, Cambridge Papers (July 2025).

Here is the summary:

‘The Old Testament prophets spoke to a world craving meaning, much like ours today. They called out Israel’s wrongs – broken relationships with God, people, nature and themselves – while presenting a vision of ‘shalom’: true flourishing. They showed how sin disrupts life and how God longs to restore it. Their words resonate with questions of flourishing in the contemporary world, especially Charles Taylor’s understanding of ‘fullness’. In a Christian reading of the prophets, they point to Jesus as the answer to our deepest desires for connection and wholeness in a fragmented world. This paper invites the Church to draw more deeply on the prophets and their message to commend the gospel in an age when many look for ‘fullness’ but cannot find it.’

Nick Roark on How (Not) to Preach the Old Testament Prophets

There’s a short but helpful piece by Nick Roark, here, on ‘How (Not) to Preach the Old Testament Prophets’:

1. Don’t preach about the prophet. Preach the message of the prophetic book.

2. Don’t focus exclusively upon Israel. Highlight God’s glorious global purposes for all nations.

3. Don’t just preach divine judgment. Point to Christ and the bright hope of the New Covenant.

Currents in Biblical Research 12, 3 (June 2014)

The latest Currents in Biblical Research recently arrived; abstracts of the main articles are as below.

Brad E. Kelle

The Phenomenon of Israelite Prophecy in Contemporary Scholarship

In the mid-twentieth century, the classic historical-critical approach to the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic books gave way to the study of Israelite prophecy as part of a social phenomenon known throughout the ancient Near East. Since the 1980s, research on the phenomenon of Israelite prophecy has been marked by two main paradigms. The first extends the basic phenomenological approach and identifies Israelite prophecy as a socio-historical phenomenon shared across various ancient cultures. Prophecy was a form of intermediation between the divine and human, and a sub-type of the larger religious practice of (non-technical) divination. The second paradigm questions the usefulness of the biblical texts for reconstructing the ancient realities of prophecy and suggests that Israelite prophecy was a literary phenomenon that emerged among scribes in postexilic Yehud. Within these paradigms, present research offers new insights on lines of inquiry, such as the relationship between prophecy and psychology, prophets in the Second Temple period, and female prophets and prophecy. Overall, scholarship reflects a sharpening distinction between ‘ancient Hebrew prophecy’ as a socio-historical phenomenon and ‘biblical prophecy’ as a literary/scribal phenomenon, and generally approaches Israelite prophecy not as a single phenomenon but as a set of related phenomena.

Graham H. Twelftree

The Miraculous in the New Testament: Current Research and Issues

Defining the miraculous, the adequacy of the Western mindset to comprehend human experience, and the ability of the historian to establish the occurrence of a miracle, are issues threaded through study of the miraculous. Current work draws attention to our lack of understanding of the miraculous in the period. So far, research on Jesus has not explained his interest in miracles, their meaning, or how they relate to his other work and self-perception. Also, the nature miracles remain a problem, and a critical study of Jesus remains to be written that takes full account of the evidence of his miracles. More work needs to be done on Paul’s understanding of the miraculous. Further, despite studies on individual stories, insufficient work has been done on the miraculous from the perspective of the Gospel writers. Finally, how far early Christianity can be understood without due regard for the miraculous is open to question.

Angela Standhartinger

Recent Scholarship on Joseph and Aseneth (1988-2013)

This article provides a survey of the last 25 years of research on Joseph and Aseneth, a Jewish Greek novel probably written between the first century BCE and the second century CE. This romance expands on Gen. 41.45 to narrate how Joseph and Aseneth met and later married under the auspices of Pharaoh, after Aseneth had turned away from her Egyptian gods to the God of Israel and was visited by an angel with whom she shares a honeycomb. Later in the story she is introduced to Jacob and Levi, repels the attack of a rival lover, the son of Pharaoh, who then dies, so that Joseph inherits his throne and rules in Egypt for 48 years. The principle [sic] topics covered in this review are recent textual editions of this writing preserved in 91 manuscripts in seven languages, the no-less disputed purpose and provenance of the romance, its date and place of origin, and its genre. Gender issues and other major themes of research and an extended pre-modern history of interpretation will also be discussed.

A Problem Like Syria

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) should be enough to persuade us of the deeply ambiguous nature of existence in the time before the final harvest. To be sure, there is ‘good’ and ‘evil’, but both grow together until the end. Until then, we take seriously the inevitable messiness of life and the requirement for caution in some moral judgments. Unambiguous clarity is not always possible.

This week has seen an acceleration of debate around the conflict in Syria. The recall of Parliament to vote on the principle of armed intervention in response to the probable use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime on its civilians has resulted in what today’s headlines are declaring a humiliating defeat for David Cameron. But what is seen as a victory for common sense by some is seen as an abdication of moral responsibility by others. There are MPs on both sides, campaigners on both sides, Syrians on both sides. And Christians – including Syrian Christians – are on both sides too.

For all of us, a bigger picture may provide some perspective. The Old Testament prophets make it clear that God holds nations to account. A nation or a people cannot conduct itself as though it were an ultimate end in itself. It must understand its own life in the context of a larger dynamic of which it is a part – and which will answer ultimately to God. There isn’t a match between ancient nations addressed by the prophets and their modern counterparts, but there is an uncanny resemblance in the reasons for which they are indicted – pride, greed, violence, injustice – and no one nation has a monopoly on those.

Indeed, the line between good and evil, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who had good reason to yearn for regime change) reminded us, runs through our own hearts.

Prophetic sayings against the nations weren’t designed to help with nitty-gritty decision-making in international politics. They brought hope to the people of God – of his unrivaled supremacy in the world, of his plan to bless all nations even while holding them to account.

Ambiguity about the best way forward needn’t lead to inaction or despair. Even when we can’t see it now, Christians of all people have reasons for hope and confidence. And to pray and work purposefully for things that make for peace now.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (19/50) – Standing Up and Speaking Out

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the nineteenth of the fifty emails, this one written by Margaret Killingray.

The word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations… I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.’
Jeremiah 1:4-5, 9-10

From Moses to Malachi, from John the Baptist to John in Revelation, the prophets of the Bible bring God’s words to his people. Called by God to speak his words, interpreting events, challenging and confronting, predicting and warning, speaking for their own times, speaking for all times, speaking of Christ, speaking of the final day of the Lord, the words of the prophets come across as immediately relevant, even to the 21st century.

They challenged the rich and complacent – those ‘who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, who trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land, who practise deceit with false balances’ (Amos). They will be judged; the Lord will ‘fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty’.

They challenged the priests and religious leaders – ‘and now, O priests, if you will not listen, if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, then I will send the curse on you. You have caused many to stumble’ (Malachi). They will be judged, and Jesus said, ‘woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, for you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven’.

They challenged kings. Nathan confronted David – ‘Thus says the Lord, I anointed you king over Israel, yet you have despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight’. Elijah confronted Ahab – ‘Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, I will bring disaster on you’.

They constantly repeated God’s commands against injustice and idolatry and his calls for social, economic and political righteousness. They warned Israel and Judah of the judgment that would come through foreign conquest and exile. They affirmed God’s promises and spoke of the final day of the Lord, when Jerusalem’s ‘vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch’ (Isaiah). And they also spoke of grace, repentance and forgiveness. Through Jeremiah the Lord says of his people, ‘They shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more’ (31:34).

Margaret Killingray

For further reflection and action:

1. In Acts 2:17, Peter quoted the prophecy of Joel, ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh… even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my spirit; and they shall prophesy.’ Peter said that was what was happening that day of Pentecost. What should be the role of prophecy in the church today?

2. To what extent are Christians called, like the Old Testament prophets, to challenge religious leaders and political rulers when God’s laws are flouted, when injustice and economic exploitation flourishes? How do we recognise that call and support those who take this on?

3. Read Isaiah 65:17-25 and Revelation 21:1-4, 22-27, and rejoice that in the end judgment is swallowed up in glory.