Date of Award

11-1969

Degree Type

Master's Essay

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Program

Religious Studies

Department

Theology

Abstract

The eight century B. C. was a period of violent contrasts for the two tiny states that had descended from the empire of David and Solomon. It began with the last years of the destructive Syrian wars and vivid memories of the internal disorders accompanying the rise of the Jehu dynasty, reached a peak of prosperity and apparant (sic) well-being under Jeroboam II in the North and Uzziah and Jotham in the South, and then ended in total destruction of the Northern Kingdom and humiliating subjugation for the South at the hands of the Assyrians. It is from this period that the earliest prophetic oracles preserved for us in the Bible come down to us. It is in the earliest of all these prophetic collections, the Book of Amos, that we have one of the most fascinating and puzzling oracles in the whole of inspired literature. ''Woe to you who desire the Day of the Lord. Why would you have the Day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light," the prophet announces to the subjects of Jeroboam. "Is not the Day of the Lord darkness and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?"

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