Adrian Matus reviews Jeffrey Edward Green’s, Bob Dylan- Prophet Without A God (Oxford University Press, 2024), 347p.
Nine years after Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the volume of literature dedicated to better understanding his life and work has grown exponentially. A certain and undeniable fascination for the emblematic American musician and writer haunted literary critics, historians, movie directors and journalists alike. At the same time, this editorial increase is not only intellectually stimulating but also a marketable commodity that always attracts a large public segment. The most recent example in this regard is James Mangold’s movie A Complete Unknown. In this context, Jeffrey Edward Green’s book Bob Dylan- Prophet Without A God seems to be determined by these two vectors: fascination and appeal to the public. Thus, it raises a crucial question: to what extent does this work offer a new perspective into Bob Dylan’s persona, or does it merely repack interesting ideas for a broader audience?
“Bob Dylan- Prophet Without God” aims to revisit the already rich scholarship dedicated to Bob Dylan’s work, while trying to place it within the broader framework of political theory. Bob Dylan, in this light, is a prophet of diremption, which means someone who speaks in support of “a free selfhood, the claims of social justice, and adherence to God, but who continually insists, tragically, on the divergences and conflicts between these ideals” (vii). By taking into account this definition, the angle of focus falls on the importance of Dylan in the history of political thinking rather than his poetics or style.
The author, Jeffrey Edward Green, is a political theorist and a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His previous works, The Shadow of Unfairness: A Plebeian Theory of Liberal Democracy and The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship focused on inequality in democratic participation, respectively on the role of spectatorship in politics. Having this background in political theory, it might seem unusual to discuss Bob Dylan. Jeffrey Edward Green needed to clarify in a podcast with Tim Benson in December 2024 how he came to discuss the musician. Initially stirred by a fascination, Jeffrey Edward Green aimed to use political theory to explain Dylan’s role by placing it alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau by using the concept of ‘prophetic figure’.
The book’s main claim is that the concept of prophet is the best tool to understand Dylan’s work. In this situation, Green follows the definition initially proposed by Max Weber: a prophet is defined by “charismatic authority (…) which stems from an individual’s capacity to win and maintain a following based on the unique personal qualities of the individual qualities” (24).This understanding, whilst acknowledging the theological component, also directs the attention towards the social and political meaning of the musician. This idea seems compelling at first sight, yet it quickly falls into circular arguments, often producing a hagiography instead of a solid critical argumentation.
A hagiography is defined by an excessive reverential tone towards its subject. The book’s preface and afterwords are good examples in this regard. Instead of critically stating the author’s positionality and carrying out a deeper analysis of the existing scholarship, the tone is rather theological. In the preface, it uses a monastic humble tone when talking about Dylan: “I have doubted, at times, the propriety of the project, wondering at some moments if I was a worthy miner of Dylan’s depths and, at others, if there was enough in the mine to justify my extraction. (xi)” , whilst in the afterwords, the tone is combative towards the reader that might not support the claim: “I return to the perspective of the skeptical reader whom I mentioned at the beginning, a reader who doubts the very enterprise of treating Dylan in prophetic terms (…)It should be emphasized that one does not have to believe in prophecy to take it seriously” (349). These two statements provide an unclear argumentation, that risks avoiding a thorough debate and often reinforces circular reasoning about the prophetic role of Dylan.
Jeffrey Edward Green structures his hagiography of Dylan into three parts. The first part explains the conflict between individual freedom and justice. The claim here is that Dylan, whilst an inspiration for 1960s social and cultural movements, also revealed the tension between a commitment to social justice and the use of individuality. Having this observation, Green differentiates Dylan from Emerson, Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr. and other folk musicians. The second part proposes the religious framework to understand Bob Dylan’s work in a post-secular society. His aim, in this logic, is to inspire greater respect in the non-religious for the dignity and plausibility of religiosity. His argumentation ends with the third part, in which the focus falls on pessimism and political realism. The claim here is that Dylan’s pessimism does not come from the religious tradition; instead, its closely linked to political realism: “he democratizes the tradition of political realism represented by Thucydides, Machiavelli, Weber, Morgenthau, Kissinger, and others.“ (332) Again, there is only one implication from this example, as the author states in the very next sentence: “Bringing Dylan into conversation with these bodies of thought not only establishes what is philosophically fresh about his views but also enables even those skeptical of Dylan’s prophetic status to understand his cultural and intellectual importance.” (332). All these parts aim to constitute an argument from different perspectives about Dylan’s prophetic nature.
The book’s premise is that Dylan was always more than a musician. Instead, he was an iconic figure of the 1960s social and cultural movements, he converted later to evangelical Christianity, wrote poems that brought him a Nobel Prize, all of which, in turn, brought him significant moral authority, according to Jeffrey Edward Green. To explain these enigmatic statements and unique artistic evolution, the conceptual choice is to refer to him as a ‘prophet without God’, which can offer a better understanding of Dylan’s political, religious and ethical ideas.
This structure tries to reinforce in almost a Baroque style why Bob Dylan should be considered as a prophet and not a musician. Whilst this line of interpretation provides new insights and understandings of Bob Dylan’s work, the argumentation is often cyclical and repetitive. Two examples are particularly relevant to this sophistry: “but it is in fact, a premise of my argument that Dylan is an unrivaled prophetic voice within popular music. This assertion must ultimately rest on the substance of Dylan’s message, which the rest of this book is devoted” (40) or “Dylan’s indisputably magisterial talent as a singer-songwriter means that he is best approached as a poet rather than as a prophet” (24). Thus, while the concept is appealing and relevant in its proposal, its overuse within the text weakens the claim through such logical fallacies- takes for granted broad claims that ‘Dylan is an unrivaled prophetic voice within popular music’ (p.21).
This conceptual overuse persists throughout the whole argumentation. Footnote 68 from page 24 is particularly relevant to this discussion. This quote refers to different instances of prophets, as they were stated by Jacob H.Kaplan in his 1908’s Psychology of Prophecy: A Study of the Prophetic Mind as Manifested by the Hebrew Prophets. Yet, whilst the distinctions are listed (prophet as wonder-worker, predicator, preacher and teacher of ethics), such taxonomies that might help better define what a prophet means are not fully expanded. These argumentative maneuvers represent one of the book’s limitations: while selectively tracing the history of religions and theology, it fails to establish a clear conceptual framework or a thorough method to definitively define what a prophet might be and to substantiate its claim more convincingly. The scholarship of this topic is selectively created- focusing on names such as Jacob H.Kaplan and avoiding opposing views on the history of religions that might contradict the claim.
The overlap between ‘prophet without God’ and Bob Dylan creates broader confusion.In this book, Jeffrey Edward Green smartly avoids the question whether other musicians besides Dylan should also be included in this category. The book’s main shortcoming lies in avoiding the question: to what extent can other musicians be named prophets? The answer is often avoided: “Many of the other popular figures I have mentioned as being like Dylan in inspiring a religious-like following from their fans diverge from Dylan in having voices that- from a prophetic standpoint, at least- are relatively more muted, because they either largely do not write their songs (Elvis), or do so in collaboration, thereby attenuating the singularity of their voice (Hunter/ Garcia and Barlow/ Weir in the case of the Grateful Dead; Page/Plan, often along with Bonham and Jones, in the case of Led Zeppelin), or have no words at all” (21).
Whilst the political theory component is strong, its overuse leads to unanswered questions. One of the most obvious gaps in the picture created by Green is the question regarding the replication of the concept. In other words, to what extent can the concept of ‘prophet without God’ be further applied to other cases, such as those of David Bowie, Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, and Patti Smith? This answer is not clarified, and the focus lies solely on Dylan itself; Leonard Cohen, for example, could fit in this categorization or stand as a clear point of contrast. And yet, his name does not appear at all throughout the book.
Thus, Jeffrey Edward Green’s Bob Dylan- A Prophet without God is a new addition to already the vast scholarship dedicated to the Nobel Prize winner. Fans interested in understanding how Bob Dylan gained traction in the context of political theory might find this book appealing. The book might disappoint the public interested in placing Dylan in a critical context. Once the reader believes in Dylan’s prophetic character, little nuances are added to this framework. The conceptual overlapping between Dylan and ‘prophet without God’ leaves little place for replication. In this context, questions about the prophetic nature of Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, or Patti Smith are left unanswered.
