The Minor Prophets or Twelve Prophets ( he, שנים עשר, ''Shneim Asar''; arc, תרי עשר, ''Trei Asar'', "Twelve") ( grc, δωδεκαπρόφητον, "the Twelve Prophets"), occasionally Book of the Twelve, is a collection of

prophet In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...

ic books, written between about the 8th and 4th centuries BC, which are in both the Jewish

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

. In the Tanakh, they appear as a single book, (''"The Twelve"''), which is the last book of the

Nevi'im Nevi'im (; he, נְבִיאִים ''Nəvīʾīm'', Tiberian: ''Năḇīʾīm,'' "Prophets", literally "spokespersons") is the second major division of the Hebrew Bible (the '' Tanakh''), lying between the Torah (instruction) and Ketuvim (w ...

, the second of three major divisions of the Tanakh. In the Christian

, the collection appears as twelve individual

books A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physica ...

, one for each of the prophets: the

Book of Hosea The Book of Hosea ( hbo, , Sēfer Hōšēaʿ) is collected as one of the twelve minor prophets of the Nevi'im ("Prophets") in the Tanakh, and as a book in its own right in the Christian Old Testament. According to the traditional order of most ...

, Joel, Amos, Obadiah,

Jonah Jonah or Jonas, ''Yōnā'', "dove"; gr, Ἰωνᾶς ''Iōnâs''; ar, يونس ' or '; Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spo ...

, Micah,

Nahum Nahum ( or ; he, נַחוּם ''Naḥūm'') was a minor prophet whose prophecy is recorded in the ''Tanakh'', also called the Hebrew Bible and The Old Testament. His book comes in chronological order between Micah and Habakkuk in the Bible. H ...

Habakkuk Habakkuk, who was active around 612 BC, was a prophet whose oracles and prayer are recorded in the Book of Habakkuk, the eighth of the collected twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. He is revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Almost a ...

Zephaniah Zephaniah (, ) is the name of several people in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Tanakh, the most prominent one being the prophet who prophesied in the days of Josiah, king of Judah (640–609 BCE) and is attributed a book bearing his name among th ...

Haggai Haggai (; he, חַגַּי – ''Ḥaggay''; Koine Greek: Ἀγγαῖος; la, Aggaeus) was a Hebrew prophet during the building of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and one of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the author of ...

Zechariah Zechariah most often refers to: * Zechariah (Hebrew prophet), author of the Book of Zechariah * Zechariah (New Testament figure), father of John the Baptist Zechariah or its many variant forms and spellings may also refer to: People *Zechariah ...

, and

Malachi Malachi (; ) is the traditional author of the Book of Malachi, the last book of the Nevi'im (Prophets) section of the Tanakh. According to the 1897 '' Easton's Bible Dictionary'', it is possible that Malachi is not a proper name, as it simply me ...

. Their order, and position in the Old Testament, varies slightly between the

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

and Eastern Orthodox Bibles. The name "Minor Prophets" goes back apparently to

St. Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afri ...

, who distinguished the 12 shorter prophetic books as ''prophetae minores'' from the four longer books of the prophets

Isaiah Isaiah ( or ; he, , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "God is Salvation"), also known as Isaias, was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. Within the text of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah himself is referred to as "th ...

Jeremiah Jeremiah, Modern: , Tiberian: ; el, Ἰερεμίας, Ieremíās; meaning "Yah shall raise" (c. 650 – c. 570 BC), also called Jeremias or the "weeping prophet", was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewis ...

Ezekiel Ezekiel (; he, יְחֶזְקֵאל ''Yəḥezqēʾl'' ; in the Septuagint written in grc-koi, Ἰεζεκιήλ ) is the central protagonist of the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ezekiel is ackn ...

, and

Daniel Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength" ...

Composition

Individual books

Scholars usually assume that there exists an original core of prophetic tradition behind each book which can be attributed to the figure after whom it is named. In general, each book includes three types of material: * Autobiographical material in the first person, some of which may go back to the prophet in question; * Biographical materials about the prophet in the third person – which incidentally demonstrate that the collection and editing of the books was completed by persons other than the prophets themselves; * Oracles or speeches by the prophets, usually in poetic form, and drawing on a wide variety of genres, including covenant lawsuit, oracles against the nations, judgment oracles, messenger speeches, songs, hymns, narrative, lament, law, proverb, symbolic gesture, prayer, wisdom saying, and vision. The noteworthy exception is the

Book of Jonah The Book of Jonah is collected as one of the twelve minor prophets of the Nevi'im ("Prophets") in the Hebrew Bible, and as a book in its own right in the Christian Old Testament. The book tells of a Hebrew prophet named Jonah, son of Amittai, ...

, an anonymous work which contains a

narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional ( memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller Thriller may r ...

about the prophet Jonah.

As a collection

It is not known when these short works were collected and transferred to a single scroll, but the first extra-biblical evidence for the Twelve as a collection is c. 190 BCE in the writings of Yeshua ben Sirach, and evidence from the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...

suggests that the modern order of the

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''

Jerusalem during the Achaemenid period (538–332 BCE), although there is disagreement over whether this was early or late. The comparison of different ancient manuscripts indicates that the order of the individual books was originally fluid. The arrangement found in current Bibles is roughly chronological. First come those prophets dated to the early Assyrian period: Hosea, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah; Joel is undated, but it was possibly placed before Amos because parts of a verse near the end of Joel (3.16 '4.16 in Hebrew'' and one near the beginning of Amos (1.2) are identical. Also we can find in both Amos (4.9 and 7.1–3) and Joel a description of a plague of locusts. These are followed by prophets that are set in the later Assyrian period: Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Last come those set in the Persian period: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, although some scholars date "Second Zechariah" to the Hellenistic Era. However it is important to note that chronology was not the only consideration, as "It seems that an emphatic focus on Jerusalem and Judah was lsoa main concern. For example, Obadiah is generally understood as reflecting the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. and would therefore fit later in a purely chronological sequence.

Sequence of books

In the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...

, these works are counted as one anthology. The works appear in the same order in Jewish,

and

Catholic Bible The term ''Catholic Bible'' often refers to a Christian Bible that includes the whole 73-book canon recognized by the Catholic Church, including some of the deuterocanonical books (and parts of books): those of the Old Testament which are in ...

s, but in

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism. Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or " canoni ...

Christian Bibles they are ordered according to the

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond t ...

. The books are in rough chronological order, according to explicit statements within the books themselves. The twelve books are:

Christian commemoration

In the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, the twelve minor prophets are read in the Tridentine

Breviary A breviary (Latin: ''breviarium'') is a liturgical book used in Christianity for praying the canonical hours, usually recited at seven fixed prayer times. Historically, different breviaries were used in the various parts of Christendom, such a ...

during the fourth and fifth weeks of November, which are the last two weeks of the

liturgical year The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical seasons in Christian churches that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be observed, and whi ...

, before

Advent Advent is a Christian season of preparation for the Nativity of Christ at Christmas. It is the beginning of the liturgical year in Western Christianity. The name was adopted from Latin "coming; arrival", translating Greek ''parousia''. In ...

. In Year 1 of the modern

Lectionary A lectionary ( la, lectionarium) is a book or listing that contains a collection of scripture readings appointed for Christian or Judaic worship on a given day or occasion. There are sub-types such as a "gospel lectionary" or evangeliary, and an ...

, Haggai, Zechariah, Jonah, Malachi, and Joel are read in weeks 25–27 of Ordinary Time. In Year 2, Amos, Hosea, and Micah are read in weeks 14–16 of Ordinary Time. In Year 1 of the two-year cycle of the Office of Readings in the

Liturgy of the Hours The Liturgy of the Hours (Latin: ''Liturgia Horarum'') or Divine Office (Latin: ''Officium Divinum'') or ''Opus Dei'' ("Work of God") are a set of Catholic Church, Catholic prayers comprising the canonical hours, often also referred to as the br ...

, Micah 4 and 7 are read in the third week of Advent; Amos, Hosea, Micah, Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk are read in weeks 22–29 of Ordinary Time. In Year 2, Haggai and Zechariah 1–8 are read in weeks 11–12 of Ordinary Time; Obadiah, Joel, Malachi, Jonah, and Zechariah 9–14 are read in Week 18. They are collectively commemorated in the

Calendar of Saints The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context do ...

of the

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on July 31.

Composition

Individual books

As a collection

Sequence of books

Christian commemoration

See also

References

Further reading