For Julius Wellhausen, the German biblical scholar best known for formulating “the documentary hypothesis,” prophecy served as a marker of religious authenticity. He portrays Ezekiel as denigrated, deceitful, and weak – the linchpin in the story of the transformation of ancient Israel from tribal vitality to priestly fossilization. Yet the carefully constructed scholarly story Wellhausen tells about ancient Israel is structured through fanciful Romantic dichotomies; he maligns scribal culture while evoking a nostalgia for an imaginary oral culture. Wellhausen was deeply influenced by the orientalist fantasies of writers like Goethe and Herder; furthermore, their melancholia about European writing culture continues to influence biblical scholarship’s (mis)understanding of prophecy. Moving away from Wellhausen, I ask how we could read Ezekiel’s weakness, specifically through his face-turning prophecies – not as “diminished” gestures of once-powerful mantic acts, but as creative, rhizomatic acts which expand the possibilities of the prophetic genre?

This second chapter of Part I continues the thread of the preceding chapter, with a focus on the case of the Edomites. Using both texts and archeological data, it treats the role of the Edomites in the biblical narrative, from Genesis to the fall of Jerusalem. It concludes by reflecting on the implications for theories of the Pentateuch’s formation.