Message and Composition of the Book of Isaiah

An Interpretation in the Light of Jewish Reception History

Antti Laato

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9783110761863
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Bibelkritik & -auslegung

The study deals with the theological message and composition of the Book of Isaiah and promotes a thesis that an early Jewish reception history helps us to find perspectives to understand them. This study treats the following themes among others:
1 Hezekiah as Immanuel was an important theme in the reception as can be seen in Chronicles and Ben Sira as well as in rabbinical writings. The central event which makes Hezekiah such an important figure, was the annihilation of the Assyrian army as recounted in Isaiah 36-37.
2 The Book of Isaiah was interpreted in apocalyptic milieu as the Animal Apocalypse and Daniel show. Even though the Qumran writings do not provide any coherent way to interpret Isaianic passages its textual evidence shows how the community has found from the Book of Isaiah different concepts to characterize the division of the Jewish community to the righteous and sinful ones (cf. Isa 65-66).
3 Ezra and Nehemiah received inspiration from the theological themes of Isaianic texts of Levitical singers which were later edited in the Book of Isaiah by scribes. The formation of the Book of Isaiah then went in its own way and its theology became different from that in the Book of Ezra–Nehemiah.

1 Introduction

1.1 The Task of the Study

The aim of this study is to deal with the theological message of the Book of Isaiah and promote a thesis that an early Jewish reception history helps us to find perspectives to understand it. Understanding the message of Isaiah is also related to the complicated redaction history of the Book during which its composition was formed. While the composition is difficult to reconstruct in all details, the message of Isaiah – as understood in early Jewish reception history – often becomes apparent in relation to certain aspects of the compositional structure of the Book of Isaiah. Therefore, this study is not only an attempt to understand the message of Isaiah but also to contribute to its composition. Before developing my thesis, I shall present some of the – in my view – most important modern theories to understand the composition of the Book of Isaiah. As many good surveys have already been done on older studies on the Book of Isaiah¹ I limit myself to those modern approaches which not only consider older research but which I have also found most helpful in describing the stand of modern research on the composition of the Book of Isaiah. Literature on the Book of Isaiah is so enormous nowadays that I am sure that I have missed many good studies. This being the case, what follows is not an extensive survey of research.

1.2 Survey of Research and Starting-Points in this Study

Isaiah 1–39 and the Final Form of the Book of Isaiah

Peter Höffken’s survey from 2004 has made it clear that scholarly interest has moved on since the late 1900s toward understanding the Book of Isaiah as one literary unit.² This tendency has intensified even more since the publication of Höffken’s study. Recent studies on the Book of Isaiah witness methodological starting-points where the whole book – not merely one part or some parts of it – is in focus. The earlier idea that the Book of Isaiah could be divided into three parts, namely Isaiah 1–39, 40–55 and 56–66 each containing collections from three different prophets, has practically lost its meaning. Today scholars argue that Isaiah 1–39 contain texts which should be related intimately to Isaiah 40–66, and Isaiah 40–55 and 56–66 are closely linked with each other too.

An illustrative example is the scholarly discussion which concerns the very beginning of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah 1. Already in the 1950s L. J. Liebreich argued that Isaiah 65–66 contains linguistic references to Isaiah 1.³ A little later on, Georg Fohrer developed a thesis that Isaiah 1 was a summary of Isaiah’s proclamation in Isaiah 1–32.⁴ Today, however, scholars agree mainly with Liebreich. In their studies scholars argue that Isaiah 1 should be regarded as a redactional unit which aims to be an introduction to the whole prophetic book.⁵ What concerns Isaiah 1 has become a natural starting-point to all texts in Isaiah 1–39. Scholarly research today begins with the presupposition that every chapter in Isaiah 1–39 is potentially related to the latter part of the Book, and therefore Isaiah 1–39 can no longer be separated from the so-called Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55) and Trito-­Isaiah (Isaiah 56–66) corpuses.

Some recent studies illustrate this well. Rainer Albertz, in his article,⁶ and Hugh G. M. Williamson, in his monograph⁷ proposed that Isaiah 40–55 is a literary continuation of Isaiah 1–39. Williamson’s study, in particular, has been influential in scholarly research on the composition of the Book of Isaiah even though scholars have not followed his proposal without criticism.⁸ I shall return to his work in this Introduction.

Ulrich Berges’ study Jesaja: Der Prophet und das Buch (2010) takes as its starting-­point that the Book of Isaiah is one literary unit which has a dense network of literal allusions between the different parts.⁹ This network has a meaning when the Book of Isaiah is read synchronically and, therefore, the synchronic network must be clarified when one aims to interpret the message of the Book. On the other hand, the network of intratextual references inside the Book of Isaiah does not exclude diachronic readings of Isaiah material. As Berges writes: “The question about the unity of the book of Isaiah is one of legitimate concern for exegetical research, both in synchronic as well as diachronic respects.”¹⁰ A scholar who today wants to get a good overview of the Book of Isaiah, its synchronic and diachronic interpretation, should begin with Berges’ study.¹¹

Jacob Stromberg’s study Isaiah After Exile (2011) takes, methodologically-­speaking, quite a similar approach to Williamson’s, but his focus is on Trito-Isaiah rather than Deutero-Isaiah. Stromberg begins his study with the statement that “if the earlier scholarship represented by Duhm sought to establish the composite nature of the book, more recent studies have begun to recognize the many connections between each section within it.”¹² Stromberg refers to several scholars who have argued that Isaiah 56–66 presupposes and alludes to earlier material in Isaiah 1–55. He himself speaks about the author of the Third Isaiah who is the reader of the earlier Isaiah material and finally also the redactor of the whole Book of Isaiah.

A good example of the modern way of analyzing a theological theme in the Book of Isaiah is the study of Bernd Obermayer, Göttliche Gewalt im Buch Jesaja (2014). He deals with the texts of the Book of Isaiah where divine violence has been handled, and goes through different parts of the book, Isaiah 1–12, 13–27, 34, 36–37, 40–55 and 56–66, detecting connections between them as well as certain literary developments. Thus, the topic of the divine violence is seen from the perspective of “diachron reflektierten Synchronie”.¹³

Another illustrative study on a theological theme in the Book of Isaiah is Michael Maier’s Völkerfahrt im Jesajabuch (2016). His topic deals with the pilgrimage of the peoples to Zion; he discusses all relevant texts in the Book of Isaiah, seeks their internal links and finds similar theological concepts in the texts which are located in all three parts, Isaiah 1–39, 40–55 and 56–66. Nevertheless, Maier also finds that it is not possible to read all relevant texts concerning the pilgrim age of the nations to Zion in a homogenous way and, therefore, the diachronic analysis of Isaiah material is justified.¹⁴

The task of this study implies that I am interested in analyzing the message of Isaiah in the present form of the Book of Isaiah which means that the final compositional structure and historical reasons behind its development cannot be ignored. Indeed, many parts of the Book of Isaiah contain traces of earlier compositional levels, and in this study, I will argue that they have influenced the way the message of the Book of Isaiah should be understood.

Isaiah 40–55 and the Development of Isaianic Traditions

The question of the existence of the so-called prophet Deutero-Isaiah responsible for Isaiah 40–55 has been an important topic in the research on the Book of Isaiah.¹⁵ The hypothesis of Deutero-Isaiah has been the focus of critical examination since scholars detected how the texts in Isaiah 1–39 are linked with those in Isaiah 40–55. Two main solutions dominate in recent scholarly discussion.

First, the internal links between Isaiah 1–39 and Isaiah 40–55 have been related to the literary development of the Book of Isaiah. A person (or alternatively a group) who stood behind Isaiah 40–55 was responsible for the formation and early redaction of Isaianic traditions in the early postexilic period. Hugh G. M. Williamson has presented one of the most attractive proposals concerning this theory. In his important study, Book Called Isaiah (1994), Williamson discusses several texts in Isaiah 1–39 which are linked with the texts in Isaiah 40–55 and comes to the conclusion that earlier Isaianic material collected in Isa 1–12 and Isa 28–31 were actualized during the time of the exile. According to Williamson, it is possible to see traces of the so-called Deutero-Isaianic redaction in the present form of the Book of Isaiah. This is not to say that this redaction would have been final, but rather that it was an important stage in the development of the Isaiah material.¹⁶

Another way to understand the internal links between Isaiah 1–39 and Isaiah 40–55 is to efface Deutero-Isaiah from scholarly discussion. The existence of the so-called Deutero-Isaiah and his “book” has not been self-evident among scholars. Höffken and Berges have emphasized that already Caspari (1934) put the hypothesis of Deutero-Isaiah in question and suggested that Isaiah 40–55 consist of hymns and songs of those who returned from the exile.¹⁷ Critical voices against the existence of the so-called Deutero-Isaiah have always existed among scholars¹⁸ and today there is a more intensive discussion as to whether the hypothesis of Deutero-Isaiah should be rejected once and for all. An important step in this discussion has been the redaction-critical studies on Isaiah 40–55 which reached a zenith in Jürgen Werlitz’s study Redaktion und Komposition (1999). Werlitz argued that Isaiah 40–55 has gone through different redactional stages, and the original corpus was relatively small. Those who were responsible for the edition of Isaiah 40–55 were exiles who had returned and who had had contacts with pre-exilic temple singers and who argued that a new period would arrive when Zion received its comfort. Their message led to the editing process of texts of different origin.¹⁹ In his recent study Das Ende Deuterojesajas (2017) Alexander Weidner argues that scholars should abandon the concept of Deutero-Isaiah.²⁰ A sim...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 “Hezekiah did not Hymn” – The Pro-Hezekiah Reception of the Book of Isaiah
• 3 “Sometimes Their Eyes Were Opened, and Sometimes They Were Blinded” – The Book of Isaiah and the Eschatological Plan of Salvation
• 4 “Holy Seed” – The Books of Isaiah and Ezra – Nehemiah
• 5 Understanding the Message and the Composition of the Book of Isaiah
• Index of References
• Index of Modern Authors