Book of Joel

The Book of Joel is characterized more by the experience of destruction than hardly any other biblical book. Nevertheless, scholars are divided about the fundamental interpretation of the book. Specifically, were the disasters detailed in the book (i.e., a drought, a plague of locusts, and military destruction) actual events experienced by the people of Judah as YHWH’s judgment? Or do they employ figures and symbolic language to imagine the day of YHWH as future eschatological disaster? This fundamental disagreement then leads to different judgments about the origin of the book, its purpose, and its genre (e.g., lament, liturgical or apocalyptic literature, narrative, performative text, etc.). The Book of Joel is only three (LXX or Septuagint) or four chapters long (MT or Masoretic) with a total of 73 Masoretic verses. Chapter 3 of the Masoretic text is in most English and in some German translations counted as Joel 2:28–32. Consequently, chapter 4:1–21 becomes Joel 3:1–21. In the first two chapters disaster seems to have already occurred and people are called to repentance. The second part of the Book of Joel deals with God’s outpouring of the spirit, a day of salvation, and a future judgment against other nations. In older research, Joel 1:2–2:27 and Joel 3:1–4:21 (2:28–3:21) have therefore often been attributed to different authors. It has been assumed that a primary layer by a prophetic author was supplemented by a later apocalyptic addition. In current research, this position has been increasingly abandoned, last but not least because of the numerous resumptions that hold the two parts together and refer almost exclusively to the day of YHWH. Scholars tend to see Joel as a single literary unit with no or few later additions, or they try to explain its formation in the context of the Book of the Twelve using very elaborate literary models. The Book is ascribed to a certain Joel, son of Petuel, in Joel 1:1. Some see him as a cultic prophet, others rather tend to see the book as a simple continuation of other prophetic scriptures, and thus as scribal prophecy (schriftgelehrte Prophetie). While in older research the date of Joel ranges from the 8th century bce until the Maccabean Period, the majority of current scholars dates it to the Persian Period. In favor of this dating are the many cross-references with the Book of the Twelve often understood as “quotations,” and “allusions.”