The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

HENGEL The Scriptures in Second Temple Judaism 163
Zadok. 3 In the blessing of Moses it is said about the tribe of Levi:
'They shall teach Jacob thy ordinances and Israel thy law.' On the
other hand, in Haggai 1, the prophet is still described as 'Yahweh's
messenger', who 'speaks to the people at the commission of Yahweh'
(Deut. 33.8-11). But in the so called 'Book of Malachi', on the contrary,
both the teaching of the Torah and the function of messenger of
Yahweh are exclusively assigned to the priest (Mai. 2.7):
Men should seek law from the priest's mouth, for he is the messenger of
the Lord of Hosts.
The book of Malachi which was originally an addition to Zechariah,
was rendered independent through the addition of 1.1 in order to
complete the number of twelve minor prophets. The redactor possibly
saw a connection between Elijah's mission in 3.20 and the 'messenger
of God' (mal'akh) as the ideal priestly prophet. The ideal priest,
prophet and exegete coincide in this keystone of the prophetic corpus.
The completion of the bipartite 'prophetic canon' thus seems to have
been an inner consequence of the approval of the Pentateuch as the
authoritative law collection. Once one had come into possession of a
binding law text, which was interpreted by the priestly scribes, and
after political independence under Persian rule had been reduced to a
minimum, the old-style prophet became obsolete. In the small Jewish
cult community two religious authorities, one institutionally inherited,
the other based on free inspiration, could not exist any longer
together. The exegete and scholar, normally of priestly descent, took
over the function of the prophet.
The crisis of the prophetic office in Persian times is evident from
the fact, that, after Haggai and Zechariah, mention of the prophet by
name ceases and new prophetic texts were linked with important older
names, especially Isaiah and Zechariah. This anonymous process of
continuous writing, which lasted for about 200 years, was, among
other things, an expression of the decline of prophetic influence. A
last flash of prophecy, although without particular prophet names,
came about through the shock of Alexander's expedition and the
struggles of the Diadochi. 4 The mention of the abolition of prophecy
3. Cf. 1 Chron. 5.29ff. = Ezra 7.1ff.; 1 Ezra 9.39-40; Josephus Ant. 11.121.
4. Cf. O.H. Steck, Der Abschlufi der Prophetic im Alien Testament (Biblischtheologische
Studien, 17;Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1991): Zech 9.1-8; Alexander the Great
9.13f: Wars of Diadochi 14.1f: conquest of Jerusalem by Ptolemaeus 1302 or 312 BC.