A major prophet is a book in the Major Prophets section of the Christian Old Testament in the Bible. The term "major prophet" is typically a Christian term as the Jewish Hebrew Bible does not group these books together and does not include the deuterocanonical/apocryphal Book of Baruch. The closest analogous grouping in the Hebrew Bible is the "Prophets" (in Hebrew Nevi'im). The major prophets in order of occurrence in the Christian Bible are:
- Isaiah
- Jeremiah
- Lamentations, also known as the Lamentations of Jeremiah (listed with the Ketuvim in the Tanakh)
- Ezekiel
- Daniel (listed with the Ketuvim in the Tanakh).
The term "major" refers to their length, not their importance. See Minor prophet for shorter prophecies in the Bible.
Famous quotes containing the words major and/or prophet:
“As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with “characters,” or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another sense, who would be incapable of a major action or a major passion, or who have not a touch of the ambiguity, the ultimate unaccountability, the enlarging mistiness of persons “in history.” History, as more austerely I now know it, is not romantic. But I am.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“If we could have any security against moods! If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is ready to sell all and join the crusade, could have any certificate that to-morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)