My Servants the Prophets

by Edward J. Young

My Servants the Prophets is an E.J. Young’s study on the prophetic institution and a comparative study of the prophets of Yahweh with their contemporary, neighboring pagan prophets.

The subjects that he covers are:

• The Divine Origin of the Prophetic Institution
• Moses and the Prophets
• The Terminology of Prophetism
• Prophecy and Theocracy
• The Schools of the Prophets
• The Prophet and the Church
• Prophets False and True
• Were the Prophets Writers?
• The Prophets as Recipients of Revelation
• Appendix: Extra-Biblical "Prophecy" in the Ancient World

This book has a tremendous upside, as well as a slight downside. Young’s exegesis and understanding of the texts which he examines is excellent. Several times, I found myself saying, “That’s so obvious... why haven’t I seen that before?” I’m not sure, however, how easy some of those things really are to see; it seems that Young has an ability to simplify some of the deeper matters of scripture. His writing is, at times, dry and scholarly—this isn’t a book that you want to try to read through in a weekend.

The scholarly aspect of the book is the downside I mentioned. Not that the writing is sometimes dry because of its scholarly nature, but that he ends up spending page after page debating the critical scholars (i.e those Biblical scholars who don’t believe the Bible is inspired) and what they have said about the prophets. Such an exercise may be an excellent work for academia, but it’s not very enthralling for the average Bible student.

Overall, my thought is that this book is worth the read, even though you may have to fight through the doldrums of such academic writing (hey, you might even enjoy those topics). You do need to understand that this book isn’t meant to give you any kind of greater understanding of any prophet in particular, but the nature of the prophetic institution as a whole.

The Editors do not advocate everything taught by the authors of the books we review. Like us, these authors are fallible humans and those who choose to read these books should measure them by the bible, the one true standard.