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In the Hebrew Scriptures the term ... (massa) can designate not only individual prophecies but also sections of prophetic books and prophetic books in their entirety. This is potentially significant in view of current attempts to read prophetic books synchronically and holistically, in contrast to the conventional historical-critical method of separating the text into original prophetic speeches and subsequent redactional additions. If a book or a section of a book is labeled a ... in its superscription, this could tell us something about how to read it as a whole, provided that we know what this term means. This article will argue that ... is a genre of prophetic literature and will attempt to show that this definition can provide a key for reading the prophetic books.
I. Unsuccessful Attempts to Define ... Etymologically
The word ... has generally been translated as "oracle" in most recent English versions of the Bible (RSV, NRSV, NEB, NAB, NIV, etc.). Other translations, however, resort to more neutral terms such as "pronouncement" or "proclamation," etc. (e.g., JPSV and TEV). This difference reflects the impasse that has been reached in attempts to define the term etymologically.
The word ... is a noun derived from the root ..., which basically means "carry" or "lift up." In thirty-three of the noun's sixty-five occurrences the derivation is fairly clear. In most of these cases it refers to something that is literally carried or lifted, and in a few other cases to something that is figuratively weighty or burdensome.1 In twenty-seven other occurrences, however, the same word designates speech or writing that somehow pertains to prophets,2 and in at least sixteen of these occurrences a specific textual passage is identified as a ...3 The traditional translation as "oracle" depends more on this contextual association with prophecy than on any other lexicographical evidence. To specify what ... means in prophetic contexts scholars have attempted to extend the clearly defined part of the semantic field into the area that is less clearly defined. Some have thus proposed that the well-established sense of the word, referring to something that is literally or figuratively burdensome, be extended to refer to a prophecy that is also a "burden" in the sense that...