Hebrew Prophets’ Cultural Memory Study

The tradition of Hebrew prophets is an important part of Hebrew culture, laying a foundation of Hebrew thought and imagination, even more, affecting clansman experiencing the world and explaining the facts. Hebrews do not attempt to find the implication of prophets’discourse, as history has proven, they want spiritual belief. Moreover, in the background of multi-cultural and multi-ethnic, Hebrew prophets committed to shape national classic text and clarify national cultural identity. This essay takes cultural memory as research method to explore the structure of cultural memory system and its influence, which made by Hebrew prophets.The first chapter discusses the identity of Hebrew prophets. First of all, Starting from Hebrew cultural context, try to analyze different characteristics of Hebrew nation and other ethnic groups. To sum up, there have three characteristics:Each individual assimilates himself into the whole Hebrew, maintaining his identity of past and future, keeping a "dust" attribute of life. The word of YHWH means action, thence, Hebrews take action as first step, then is to understand. Hebrew culture has created a far jump to the past of its own temporal horizons. In this timeliness, the past is still present on today. Secondly, taking Hebrew history as locus, we want to clarify the change of Hebrew prophets’image. Starting from patriarch Abraham, Hebrew prophets went through period of nomadic tribes, the State, the collapse of the regime, they still adhered to the faith of YHWH.The second chapter analyzes content of Hebrew prophets’cultural memory from three aspects, that is text system, ritual system and imagery system. First, text system is consist of prophecy and covenant. Prophecy completely recorded the history of Hebrew religion. Covenant became the basis of social and moral judgment, which is to restraint people’s behavior. Second, ritual system can be divided into two categories:election, worship. Election means to select Hebrew as the Lord’s people and to anoint a king. Worship means prophets or priests to hold ritual and festivals. Ritual has deeply permeated into Hebrews’ daily life. Third, the symbolic attribute of Hebrew prophets’ cultural memory vividly demonstrates the complex relationship between YHWH and Hebrews. Cultural memory has the ability to communicate, making the meaning will not disappear with time.The third chapter takes over the influence of Hebrew prophets’ cultural memory from social cognition aspect. First, Hebrew prophets’ cultural memory perfect links every parts of Hebrew nation, maintaining community image and close relationship between Hebrew and YHWH. Second, it not only limits clansman’s cognitive model, but also positions Hebrew prophets’ own responsibilities and roles. Third, because of vagrant life, prophets developed introspection model of suffering.The fourth chapter also discusses the influence of Hebrew prophets’ cultural memory, but from Hebrew literature aspect. Based on the analysis in chapter three, We learn a cognitive model of Hebrew prophets’ cultural memory system.On this basis, we take into account that Hebrew prophets lived thousands of years ago, and the system of cultural memory also has period a lot. We try to find a trace of them in Hebrew literature. Final, we find that Hebrew prophets’ cultural memory is no longer impacting future generations with the way of its content, but the way of cognitive model. These are vividly reflected in the subject areas of Hebrew literature. It means that Hebrew literature contains three themes of ancient prophets mode,which is faith, salvation and assimilation.All in all, Hebrew prophets’ cultural memory decided Hebrews how to explain events, and influenced the way Hebrews how to experience the event itself. Hebrew prophets develop a system of YHWH worship with deeply hope, extending this system to the entire Hebrew community, penetrating into all aspects of daily life.