Communication and the Role of the Lord in AmosTheir Development and Their Implications for the Text-Immanent Reader Bincy Thomas Thumpanathu

This work entitled Communication and the Role of the Lord in Amos: Their Development and Their Implications for the Text-Immanent Reader belongs in the academic discourse on the book of Amos, bringing new insights into communication in all its aspects, with particular emphasis on how it develops. Through the synchronic communicative method, the Lord, the principal agent of and the central figure in the communication in Amos’ prophecy and his evolving role as it relates to the other characters and to the text-immanent reader, is brought to the fore.

Employing a combined syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approach, this study offers an in-depth textual analysis, exploring in detail the text‑immanent communication, which goes beyond the widely accepted perception of the book of Amos as a manifesto of social justice policies and a litany of condemnations. The analysis of the communication from the perspective of the text-immanent reader provides for the real reader the opportunity to actively engage with the text.

This work is a commendable addition to the already available studies on the book of Amos. It will not only be of benefit to those entering upon exegeses of the book of Amos and various communication layers within it, but also to anyone researching the communication in other books of the Bible.

Bincy Thomas Thumpanathu, a native of the state of Kerala, India, belongs to the Ernakulam province of the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel (CMC). From 2012 to 2014, she attended KU Leuven, Belgium, from where she graduated with a master’s degree in Theology and Religious Studies and obtained an STL. Continuing her studies, she undertook PhD research in the department of Biblical Science at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.