A study devoted to the “The Theology of the Book ofAmos” sounds as though it is meant to bypass the issues that havenormally been the preserve of “the historical-critical method”– issues about the historical origins of the book, the context in whichthe prophet lived and worked, and the possibility of additions and changes tohis original words. Contemporary biblical study has rightly put back on theagenda the need to interpret the finished product, the book as it lies before uswhen we open a Bible, and not to spend all our energies on“genetic” questions about how the book came to be, or on trying toidentify an original core. But these conventional critical issues cannot beeasily bypassed. Most books in the Old Testament are almost certainly the resultof a long period of compilation, and the various stages through which theypassed have implications for their meaning even as they now stand. In turn,intuitions about their meaning often condition our hypotheses about how theycame to be. So we cannot avoid discussing historical-critical matters as aprelude to trying to analyze the theology of this prophetic book. In point offact, this, too, is part of the mandate of the present series in which thepresent book is appearing.

The interwovenness of interpretative and critical issues can be seen most clearlyif we begin with the most extreme critical positions. There are still scholarswho defend the derivation of the entire book, or all but a few small fragmentaryadditions, from the eighth-century prophet Amos himself: examples include JohnH. Hayes and Shalom M. Paul. For them, the prophet delivered a message to boththe Hebrew kingdoms, which included both judgment to come and a following periodof peace and prosperity – which is how the message of most biblicalprophets appears in the books as we now have them. In this view, because it isquite thinkable that Amos would have uttered this combined message of judgmentand hope, there is no reason to “delete” (to use the oldercritical vocabulary) the “epilogue” in 9:11–15 from thebook as a later addition.