Yet he admits that the use of
classical rhetoric has its limitations and problems, especially in
establishing the conscious use of
standards for oratory in the writing of narratives and letters.
This is to say, then, that the
classical prophet, although highly creative and proclaiming a new word, was debtor, and certainly conscious debtor, to a core tradition already long
established.1 This is also to say that one must of necessity define the essentially prophetic quality in pre-Amos Israel by the
standards of
classical prophetism, and further that no history, and perhaps least of all biblical history, may be appropriated in sterile chronological fashion.