The Book of the Twelve Prophets - 1896 Author:George Adam Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I THE BOOK OF THE TWELVE IN the order of our English Bible the Minor Prophets, as they are usually called, form the last twelve books of the ... more »Old Testament. They are immediately preceded by Daniel, and before him by the three Major Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah (with Lamentations) and Ezekiel. Why all sixteen were thus gathered at the end of the other sacred books, we do not know. Perhaps, because it was held fitting that prophecy should occupy the last outposts of the Old Testament towards the New. In the Hebrew Bible, however, the order differs, and is much more significant. The Prophets1 form the second division of the threefold Canon : Law, Prophets and Writings ; and Daniel is not among them. The Minor follow immediately after Ezekiel. Moreover, they are not twelve books, but one. They are gathered under the common title Book of the Twelve;2 and although each of them has the usual colophon detailing the number of its own verses, there is also 1 Including, of course, the historical books, Joshua to 2 Kings, which were known as " the Former Prophets"; while what we call the prophets Isaiah to Malachi were known as " the Latter." 2 -HVV nn 1BD, the Aramaic form of the Hebrew "ItW DJB1, which appears with the other in the colophon to the book. A later contraction is "ID'1n. This is the form transliterated in Epiphanius: S one colophon for all the twelve, placed at the end of Malachi and reckoning the sum of their verses from the first of Hosea onwards. This unity, which there is reason to suppose was given to them before their reception into the Canon,1 they have never since lost . However much their place has changed in the order of the books of the Old Testament, however much their own internal arrangement has differed, the Twelve have always stood t...« less