Hosea
In the Hebrew Bible, Hosea, also known as Osee, son of Beeri, was an 8th-century BC prophet in Israel and the nominal primary author of the Book of Hosea. He is the first of the Twelve Minor Prophets, whose collective writings were aggregated and organized into a single book in the Jewish Tanakh by the Second Temple period (forming the last book of the Nevi'im) but which are distinguished as individual books in Christianity. Hosea is often seen as a "prophet of doom", but underneath his message of destruction is a promise of restoration. The Talmud claims that he was the greatest prophet of his generation. The period of Hosea's ministry extended to some sixty years, and he was the only prophet of Israel of his time who left any written prophecy.
Most scholars since the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have agreed on the contemporaneous dating of Hosea and the Book of Hosea to the time of Jeroboam II, although some redaction-critical studies of Hosea since the 1980s have postulated that the theological and literary unity was created by editors, and scholars differ significantly in their interpretations of the redaction process, stages, and the extent of the eighth-century prophet’s original contributions. Nevertheless, aspects of eighth-century history are generally considered to be reflected in the text.
In the Martyrology
- October 17 Saint Hosea, prophet