The Book of the Twelve

A workshop production of a new play by Charlie Mayhew and Leo Egger based on the Book of the Twelve, or the Minor Prophets, from the Bible. The show is about dreams, exile, squabbling over interpretation, and the genre of the church/synagogue play.

Here is the dramaturgical note from Sean Pergola: 

The Book of the Twelve (known to Christians as the Minor Prophets) is a section of the Bible that collects the visions of twelve prophets active between the 8th and 5th centuries BCE. Their core message was the impending doom facing Israel, Judah, and the surrounding nations.

The identity of the ancient Jewish people was tied to their sacred covenant with the Hebrew God, who promised protection and flourishing in exchange for justice and devotion. In a period of profound crisis, the prophets invoked this covenant and the people’s failure to uphold their end of it to explain devastating military conquests: the destruction of Israel and later Judah and its Temple, leading to exile and the first experience of mass diaspora for the Jewish people.

Different faith traditions have differing stances on whether the prophets saw into the future. What is certain is they saw their present moment with exceptionally critical eyes. Empty ritual, social injustice, and hypocrisy are excoriated in their speeches, which abound both with warnings of divine judgment as well as beautiful, poetic imaginations of God’s return and Israel’s restoration.

Each of the twelve prophets, against a backdrop of catastrophe, wrestles in his own way with human failure and divine justice. The collection makes up a varied, complex chorus, but the one element which unites them all is an enduring hope for redemption, a belief in a better world to come.