The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets: Imagining the Minor Prophets' World

Written by Dr. John Goldingay

Narrated by Alan Irving and Angharad Price

Understand the Prophets Like Never Before with Amazing Insights from One of Today's Foremost Old Testament Scholars

For many Christians reading the Old Testament, trying to understand Israel's prophets is like listening to just one side of a phone conversation--you only get half the idea of it. You hear the answer, but how do you know what question the prophet is answering?

In The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets, John Goldingay uncovers the questions behind the prophets' answers that make their meaning and relevance intelligible to us. Written as a series of imaginary letters to the twelve Minor Prophets, The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets asks the kinds of questions that Hosea, Micah, Zechariah, and others were answering. The letters make clear the issues these prophets of Israel were dealing with or deliver the news they were responding to in their Old Testament writings. For example,

• To Hosea: Why did you marry someone you knew might be unfaithful?
• To Joel: It looks as if a locust epidemic is on the way: what should we do?
• To Amos: What should we do about the war crimes of peoples around us?
• To Obadiah: The Edomites have occupied our land and pushed us out: what's up with that?
• To Jonah: When is God going to fulfill his undertaking to destroy Nineveh?
• To Micah: Will God always be angry with us as a people?
• To Nahum: When is God going to fulfill his undertaking to destroy Nineveh?
• To Habakkuk: When is God going to do something about injustice in Judah?
• To Zephaniah: What do you mean by "the day of the Lord"?
• To Haggai: When is God going to fulfill his promises about rebuilding the temple?
• To Zechariah: Should Jeshua be High Priest when he has been in an unclean land?
• To Malachi: Why does serving God seem pointless?

These and other questions help readers peer behind the veil of Minor Prophets' utterances and unlock their significance for today's Christians. Each chapter:

• begins with a brief paragraph of background about the prophet
• recounts questions or reports that have been addressed to the prophet in the form of a letter
• sums up message of the prophet responding to that question
• offers a brief comment or explanation after each passage

The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets offers an imaginative, fun, and engaging way for students, pastors, and all serious Bible readers get a better grip on what is happening in these often misunderstood biblical books and get more out of their Bible reading and study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9780310145042

Dr. John Goldingay

John Goldingay (PhD, University of Nottingham; DD, Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth) is professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, but lives in Oxford, England. His numerous books include An Introduction to the Old Testament, A Reader’s Guide to the Bible, Reading Jesus’s Bible, and commentaries on Psalms, Isaiah, and Daniel. He has also authored Biblical Theology, the three-volume Old Testament Theology, and the seventeen-volume Old Testament for Everyone series, and has published a translation of the entire Old Testament called The First Testament: A New Translation.  

Reviews for The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets

[revjmark · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting premise for the book. Brings a sometimes useful angle to understanding the context of the prophets.

One major weakness is that the format allows only for the authors interpretive decisions to be seen/heard without showing the other alternatives. This in town can badly skew your understanding of the book and, I believe, your understanding of God. This is evident in his treatment of Hosea in which the faithlessness of Gomer is played down and Hosts portrayed in a poor light—thus undermining the portrait God is painting of Israel and himself.

The audio book has a rather irritating error—the narrator repeatedly pronounces ’coup’ as rhyming with ‘soup’ rather than ‘coo’—and the word appears frequently in the first chapter.

There are other mispronunciations which grate on the ear as the book progresses. Poor form.