The doctrine of the prophets of the Old Testament

1. There are three categories of Old Testament prophets who wrote. a) Super prophet: Moses. His brother was the high priest — prophet and priest in the same family; b) The office of prophet; c) The gift of prophet. In addition to this there was another category of prophet, those who did not write, like Elijah and Elisha, and they functioned in the process of communicating God’s message to a specific generation.

2. The first section of the Hebrew Old Testament was written by the super prophet, Moses. It is called the Torah and includes the first five books of the Old Testament, and possibly Job as well. There are actually three super prophets in history: Moses, Jeremiah, and Jesus Christ.

3. The second section of the Old testament is called the Nebiim, and that means “the prophets.” The ones who wrote in this section, the human authors, held the prophetic office. They are divided into two groups: the former prophets - Joshua, whoever wrote Judges, Samuel, Kings; the latter prophets - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve (the so-called minor prophets).

4. The third section of the Hebrew canon is called Kethubim, which means “writings.” Those who were the human authors of this section had the gift of prophecy, not the office. There are three sections: first the prophetical books, Psalms, Proverbs and Job; the second section is called the Megilloth which means the five rolls: Song of Solomon, which was always read at the Passover, the book of Ruth, read at Pentecost, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, given during Tabernacles, and Esther, given during the feast of Purim; the third section has three historical books. Daniel was not regarded as a prophecy but rather as a historical book, Ezra and Nehemiah was one book, Chronicles was one book. So we have Daniel, Nehemiah, Chronicles.