mind in contrast to the calm and well-reasoned reflection of the modern thinker and writer. Because the prophets were speakers, they employed short, selfcontained speech units, often blurted out in a state of uncontrolled ecstasy, as their basic form of discourse. Such short speech units were easily memorized, and they were later placed into collections of the prophet’s words that lacked any sense of logical organization or indication of the settings in which they were spoken. Such collections of