Amos and the Cosmic Imagination

Book excerpt: Said to contain the words of the earliest of the biblical prophets (8th century BCE), the book of Amos is reinterpreted by James Linville in light of new and sometimes controversial historical approaches to the Bible. Amos is read as the literary product of the Persian-era community in Judah. Its representations of divine-human communication are investigated in the context of the ancient writers' own role as transmitters and shapers of religious traditions. Amos's extraordinary poetry expresses mythical conceptions of divine manifestation and a process of destruction and recreation of the cosmos which reveals that behind the appearances of the natural world is a heavenly, cosmic temple.