Hosea, like Amos, lived in the eighth
century BCE in the north. Archaeological findings tell us that this was the
first period in which literacy started to spread among the inhabitants of the
Northern Kingdom. This is the reason why the prophecies of Elijah, who lived
one hundred years earlier, were not recorded: there was no literate public to
read them! (Israel Knohl, The Messiah Confrontation: Pharisees Versus
Sadducees and the Death of Jesus [trans. David Maisel; Philadelphia: The
Jewish Publication Society, 2022], 26, emphasis in bold added)
