Rating: 
Summary: JUDEN! Heraus!
Review: Amusing survey of the ancient "prophets" -- some parts of which still have relevence today. Podhoretz will never rival David Letterman as a comic, but he has his moments, bless his soul. Ultimately, one comes away from this screed with a refreshed appreciation of the Greek Gods, who are neither so self-righteous nor so whiney as the Hebrews. Hermes is so much brighter than a Moses or an Isaiah -- and let's not even bring Diana into it! Podhoretz is astonishingly ignorant about modern-day Palestine, alas -- although one can forgive this from somebody from his underprivileged background. How one wishes a Henry Cabot Lodge or a Henry Adams were around to do this history up right! Chomsky does his best, but he too has a vulgar history and cannot always be trusted.
Rating: 
Summary: An Incomplete Picture of the Prophets
Review: As a Christian reader of "The Prophets" by Norman Podhoretz I felt I was wandering in the wilderness and my faithful and trusted guide was lost. If what is written here was the full extent of the prophet's messages I'd be very depressed. Fortunately, it wasn't and I'm not.
Trying to express the message and the purpose of the prophets while ignoring the completing and clarifying ministry of Jesus and the apostles found in the New Testament is like listening to a beautiful symphony with the only instruments playing being the trumpets and drums. You can't even recognize the piece being played anymore.
What we're left with are strong intellectual and academic arguments that come to reasonable and logical conclusions regarding the prophets. But only the Old Testament is considered so the conclusions are incomplete at best.
I slogged through the whole thing, but really didn't enjoy myself. I did so because I have a great respect for the author's insights into current events and his comfortable, friendly way of writing.
While the author may have some understanding of the prophets of the Old Testament, unfortunately he doesn't grasp the bigger picture of which they were but a part.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book
Review: I have been reading the writings of Norman Podhoretz for about twenty years and find him consistently rewarding. This book, which seems meant for the general reading public, is no different. Though I do not have the technical expertise to evaluate his elucidation of the prophets, this book provided a perspective that was very helpful to me. It will give my reading of the books of the Old Testament a remewed focus of interest. His concluding chapter is particularly well written, well reasoned and enlightening, even prophetic. He might have spoken louder.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: I have been reading the writings of Norman Podhoretz for about twenty years and find him consistently rewarding. This book, which seems meant for the general reading public, is no different. Though I do not have the technical expertise to evaluate his elucidation of the prophets, this book provided a perspective that was very helpful to me. It will give my reading of the books of the Old Testament a remewed focus of interest. His concluding chapter is particularly well written, well reasoned and enlightening, even prophetic. He might have spoken louder.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: I have read Norman Podhoretz for about twenty years and always find his writing rewarding. This book was no different. Though I cannot judge the technical accuracy of his interpretation of the prophets, it helped me put the Old Testament into a much more living perspective, and I found his conclusion chapter so well written and so enlightening, even prophetic.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: I have read Norman Podhoretz for about twenty years and always find his writing rewarding. This book was no different. Though I cannot judge the technical accuracy of his interpretation of the prophets, it helped me put the Old Testament into a much more living perspective, and I found his conclusion chapter so well written and so enlightening, even prophetic.
Rating: 
Summary: Out of his field
Review: I have to admit up front that I haven't read this book, only summaries online (some by fans and some by critics), but a major shortcoming of the book is already evident. Like Harold Bloom in his "Book of J," Pohoretz has apparently ventured into a highly technical field without the necessary expertise. His analysis is evidently based on traditional notions about the historical context of the texts he's interpreting, notions that would not regarded as accurate by the consensus of specialists in the field. In essence, his analysis starts with bad data, so it doesn't seem likely that his conclusions will tell us about who the Prophets were so much as about who Norman Podhoretz is. While I agree with Podhoretz that the content of the prophetic texts has been appropriated in anachronistic ways since they were written (by later ancient Isrealite and Judean editors and interpreters as much as by modern Jews, Christians, and secularists), that minimal insight by itself is no more than a commonplace among actual scholars of Ancient Near Eastern texts.
Rating:
Summary: Out of his field
Review: I have to admit up front that I haven't read this book, only summaries online (some by fans and some by critics), but a major shortcoming of the book is already evident. Like Harold Bloom in his "Book of J," Pohoretz has apparently ventured into a highly technical field without the necessary expertise. His analysis is evidently based on traditional notions about the historical context of the texts he's interpreting, notions that would not regarded as accurate by the consensus of specialists in the field. In essence, his analysis starts with bad data, so it doesn't seem likely that his conclusions will tell us about who the Prophets were so much as about who Norman Podhoretz is. While I agree with Podhoretz that the content of the prophetic texts has been appropriated in anachronistic ways since they were written (by later ancient Isrealite and Judean editors and interpreters as much as by modern Jews, Christians, and secularists), that minimal insight by itself is no more than a commonplace among actual scholars of Ancient Near Eastern texts.
Rating:
Summary: A Rare Contribution to Public Understanding of the Bible
Review: I'm giving Podhoretz' book five stars not because I agree with everything he says, but because he has made a rare contribution here in writing a book with is scholarly enough to be of use to those who want to understand the Hebrew Bible, yet with a style that makes it accessible to the general public.
Most widely read books on the Bible are written for people who assume a certain paradigm, either conservative or liberal, and they mainly reinforce the beliefs of the reader without discussing alternatives to underlying premises. Not so Podhoretz. Although he is in a sense a "believer," he states firmly in the beginning that he is not a fundamentalist, and this is clear in his methodology. For example, Podhoretz accepts that some sections of some biblical books were not written by their purported authors, especially in regard to Isaiah, but takes the approach that if Isaiah was written by three or more authors over three centuries, we should still look at what they have to say. He also rejects the idea that prophets are foretellers, and notes several instances where he believes they got prophecies wrong.
Podhortez' main thesis is that the prophets were warriors of the word, struggling against paganism, and that the prophetic period came to an end because they won - paganism was no longer widely accepted among Israelites, so prophets were not needed. In terms of modern application, Podhoretz argues that just as idolatry was a form of self-worship, man worshipping the products of his own hand, the prophets are relevant to us today becuase so much of our society is built around forms of self-worship.
Podhoretz' secondary thesis is more academic - he again and again attempts to refute the idea that the prophets abandoned the ritual emphaisis of the Mosaic law. This is sort of an anti-evolutionary argument; he argues that the prophets did not change the substance of their message so much as their emphasis. As circumstances changed and the Israelites became more infatuated with foreign gods, the prophets focused more on that threat, emphsizing that ritual observance was of no value to God without purity of heart.
Rating: 
Summary: Old Testament as ideology
Review: My first reaction to this book was moderate outrage, kneejerk politics, mind you, followed by grim satisfaction, the author should cap his conservative ministrations with re-entanglement with the altogether radical prophets of yore. The last embers of the once (and future) hothead still glimmering.
Need one indulge in the obvious observation that this proves an old charge, that the OT is ideology, a sentiment reminding one of Lewis Feuer's Ideology and Ideologists, a work so irate on the subject that it outstripped its anti-marxist tirade enough to find the source of the genre in the realm of the ancient Israelites.
The prophets are indeed remarkable by any reckoning in the mystery of the Axial Age, and science has not understood them. But the progression of Biblical Criticism has delivered the subject to a new world, and we are left with something almost more interesting than the 'last chance' efforts in a neo-conservative vein to keep American mentation in line and money flowing. Cf. The Bible Unearthed, by Silberman and Finkelstein.
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