Monday, November 25, 2024

It's plausible that Joel quoted (and inverted) Zenos

In "Zenos was quoted by Joel, Nephi, Alma, Malachi, and Paul," I proposed that Joel 2:28-32 paraphrases or alludes to Zenos. (See that post for the evidence behind this assertion.) However one of these links seemed a little dubious at first. Joel writes, "I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh" (Joel 2:28), while Nephi, in a passage we had identified as containing Zenosian material writes, "the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men" (1 Ne. 22:16). The expression "pour[ed] out . . . upon all" is unique to these two passages, but the meaning is obviously completely different. Furthermore, nothing in Joel suggests that he is quoting or paraphrasing anyone else -- no "thus saith the prophet" or anything like that.

Since reading Jonathan Neal Atkinson's 2002 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dissertation "New Exodus, New Covenant, New Creation: The Reuse of the Old Testament in Joel," I no longer have these misgivings. As Atkinson documents, the Book of Joel is extremely allusive, almost on the level of the Book of Revelation. Of its 73 verses, Atkinson reckons that 58 of them -- 79% -- quote, paraphrase, or allude to other books of the Old Testament, including Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 1 Kings, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Malachi. There is some disagreement among scholars over the direction of these influences -- whether Joel is a very early prophet quoted by all these other books or a very late prophet who quotes them all -- but Atkinson makes a convincing case that it is the latter. In no case does Joel ever explicitly cite his sources. Given that background knowledge about Joel, we can assume that of course he would have alluded to Zenos, too, if he had access to that prophet's writings, but would not have mentioned his name.

But is it plausible that he would completely invert the meaning of his source, alluding to Zenos's negative outpouring of wrath but changing it to a positive outpouring of God's spirit? Yes. We have an example of just that, where Joel alludes to Micah and/or Isaiah but inverts their meaning:

. . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore (Isa. 2:4 = Micah 4:3).

Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong (Joel 3:10).

Joel clearly alludes to these earlier prophets (see Atkinson's dissertation for evidence regarding the direction of dependence) but turns their meaning on its head, making Isaiah's prophecy of peace into a call to war. It is therefore highly plausible that he could have given Zenosian material a similar treatment.

No comments:

It's plausible that Joel quoted (and inverted) Zenos

In " Zenos was quoted by Joel, Nephi, Alma, Malachi, and Paul ," I proposed that Joel 2:28-32 paraphrases or alludes to Zenos. (Se...