'The Prophets' War Is Not Over'

A few years ago I was invited to give a lecture on the book of Isaiah. I revisited it and got hooked. I found as I went along that the prophets were not at all what I remembered and not at all what most people think they know about them. So I decided to write this book for two reasons: so that I could do what I could to rekindle interest in this great treasure that we've inherited, and to reinterpret these books in a way that seemed to me truer to the text than the standard stereotypes and the conventional interpretations. And finally, I thought that I should try to explore the question of what the prophets might still have to say to us, living in radically different circumstances. I concluded that what they had to say is centrally relevant to our situation today.

What was the primary mission of the prophets?
The primary mission was to conduct a war that had begun in the days of Abraham, roughly 4,000 years ago in 2000 B.C.E., a war against idolatry. A war to establish the truth of the great revelation, namely that there was only one god, not many gods, which is what everyone, including Abraham's own father believed. That you couldn't see him, you couldn't make a picture of him, you couldn't make a statue of him to which you would then bow down. That he was the creator of all things in heaven and earth and the one true God of all human beings.

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