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Despite some superficial affinities, the Christian understanding of inspiration is not closely related to the classical idea of poetic inspiration by the Muses; it is, however, rooted in the Jewish understanding of the prophet, and therefore the author attempts to identify what is distinctive about the experience of a shepherd from Tekoa or of a tent-maker from Tarsus that gives them an authoritative claim upon believers in every age. Because the nature of inspiration has been debated so widely in recent decades, the book provides an analysis of the principal theories being proposed among theologians of various schools.