Interwoven Prophetic Texts: An Analysis of the Process of Language Migration in the Biblical Prophets

Abstract

The texts of the biblical prophets are permeated by intertextual references to older traditions and writings. These intertextual elements appear through the shared use of names, figures, images, and technical terms. They reveal the phenomenon of the interweaving of biblical texts with one another, as well as with texts from the culture of the ancient Near East. This linguistic and thematic characteristic gives rise to the central issue addressed in this article: the prophetic text does not appear to stem solely from visionary communication but also from the prophets' intellectual effort and their textual and linguistic memory. The aim of this analysis is to identify intertextual elements in the writings of the Hebrew Bible prophets and to highlight their literary knowledge of the Scriptures and the culture of their time. The analysis applies concepts of texts and textual interweaving as developed within the semiotics of culture, a framework that also elucidates the process of textual migration within the semiosphere of ancient cultures. The corpus consists of texts from the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, which interweave textual and thematic elements from the Genesis creation narrative and ancient myths concerning the struggle against the forces of chaos.