Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum) (v. 1) [Hardcover]

Craig C. Broyles (Editor), Craig A. Evans (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1997 | Series: Supplements to Vetus Testamentum (Book 1)

This volume combines current approaches that treat the formation and early interpretation of the final form of the book of Isaiah with the more conventional historical-critical methods that treat the use of traditions by Isaiah's authors and editors. Studies investigate: Isaiah's use of early sacred tradition; the editing and contextualization of oracles within the Isaianic tradition itself; and the interpretation of the book of Isaiah in later traditions.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 474 pages
• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub (November 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9004109366
• ISBN-13: 978-9004109360
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,731,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars ends and beginnings, PART 1, April 26, 2006

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David A. Baer (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum) (v. 1) (Hardcover)

This collection of 36 essays provides a telling profile of the state of Isaiah studies following the breakdown of the paradigm constructed by B. Duhm and generations of his followers. This first volume of a twin set is divided by subject matter into two parts: `The Formation and Leitmotifs of the Book of Isaiah' and `Oracles and Passages'. When viewed as a snapshot of Isaiah studies at the end of the century just ended, however, the articles helpfully record clustering of a different nature. Most of them published here for the first time, these essays illuminate the methodological and sometimes ideological divergences which characterise both the speciality in question and biblical studies in general. Whether this represents a post-modern flourishing of variety which is to be celebrated or a fragmentation of the discipline which ought rather to be lamented will depend upon the perspective of the reader.

It is precisely the reader's perspective which comes under analysis in a first group of articles. A number of the essays emphasise the work of `configuring' which falls to the reader of biblical materials, not excluding the biblical scholar. The focus lies not upon excavating or reconstructing the mental, social, religious, and linguistic world of the personalities behind the scroll of Isaiah, but rather upon the book's reception by its readers. The volume's title announces its intention to explore this side of the conversation, a promise which its editors make good.

E.W. Conrad (`Reading Isaiah and the Twelve as Prophetic Books', 3-17), taking his nod from Philip Davies' historiographical work, sees these prophetic books `creating a prophetic past by piecing together existing materials available to its scribes.' Both Isaiah and the Twelve can be read (independently or intertextually) as a literary collage, which reading necessarily involves a `configuring' on the part of both ancient readers and those poised at the turn of our millennium.

R. Melugin (`The Book of Isaiah and the Construction of Meaning', 39-55) reviews several modern arguments for unity in Isaiah, arguing that each is a `construction' of its scholarly creator rather than a `discovery'. Though meanings for texts like Isaiah change, they need not be capricious, since some constructions `fit' the text better than others.

By holding onto some accessible measure of the correspondence between the artefact (the book of Isaiah) and its description by the scholar, Melugin occupies the more traditional wing of the self-consciously `post-modern' cadre of writers who contribute to this collection of essays. By contrast, R.P. Carroll (`Blindsight and the Vision Thing: Blindness and Insight in the Book of Isaiah', 79-93) appears rather to represent the `readers in search of mind-bending encounters with the text' which he describes, embracing the `reflective puzzlement' that its intertextuality offers to such (post-)modern ponderers. Carroll finds the book of Isaiah (`whatever the sign "Isaiah" stands for') to be about `seeing and perceiving, lacking understanding and being blind' from start to finish, though he assures us that his is just one of (infinitely?) many possible readings. Carrying out his thoroughly post-modern engagement of the text, Carroll twice justifies his own approach simply by acknowledging that `it suits my purpose.' Suggestively, the book of Isaiah styles itself a `vision' (1.1, 2.1). The blindness and insight topoi permeate the book with reference to many different subjects (e.g. YHWH, prophets, communities, the `servant'), all of which summons Carroll and readers like him to attempt `profoundly imaginative acts of reading'.

The irrepressible resonance of the `swords to plowshares' text in Isaiah 2 (Micah 4) is surveyed in J. Limburg's `Swords to Plowshares: Texts and Contexts' (279-293). Limburg identifies a core text which is subsequently modified and/or applied to a variety of contexts, from the editorial exhortation of Isa 2.5 (`Come! Let us walk ...') to the Micah setting and through to various novel contexts, ancient and recent. It is indicative of Limburg's approach that his final contexts are not found within the bounds of the Hebrew canon but rather in a modern Protestant lectionary and aboard a Greenpeace launch.

To judge by a second group of these essays, a more classical approach to the Isaiah text is still alive and well, even if its attentiveness to issues of rhetoric show it to be thoroughly conversant with some of the themes more commonly found in those
articles which I have chosen to locate in the first section of this review article.

W. Brueggemann (`Planned People/Planned Book?', 19-37) surveys various notions of YHWH's `plan' in Isaiah, settling on the idea of `Yahweh's intention that will surely prevail'. The architecture of Isaiah emphases this plan over against that of all competitors, offering to Israel a `rhetoric' inside of which she finds life. Brueggemann's deliberations in search of the book's plan highlight the difficulty of finding a `centre' in so large a corpus, each competing candidate apparently marked by some inherent inadequacy.

Y. Gitay (`Why Metaphors? A Study of the Texture of Isaiah', 57-65) identifies the book's speeches as argumentative discourse whose images are used not only to denounce but also to persuade. Metaphor serves-sometimes daringly-to adjust the audience's positions to those of the speech-maker, accomplishing this end by presenting the argument as a fact of life, as self-evident as the images that are utilised.

J.K. Kuntz (`The Form, Location, and Function of Rhetorical Questions in Deutero-Isaiah', 121-141) uses the field of linguistic pragmatics as a lens through which to view questions in Deutero-Isaiah, noting that the versatility of the form makes for complex and polyvalent exchanges. Kuntz sides with those who consider rhetorical question such as those in the text at hand to be true questions which insist upon an information-bearing response, and lines up with Y. Gitay (cf. Prophecy and Persuasion and his essay in this volume) with regard to the rhetorical function such inquiries play.

Kuntz presents an illuminating view of interrogative form and function in Deutero-Isaiah, a poet whom he considers a master of the craft. It is difficult to imagine a scholar of biblical rhetoric or of Deutero-Isaiah who would not be well served by this careful treatment.

John T. Willis (`Isaiah 2:2-5 and the Psalms of Zion', 295-316) applies himself to the same text as Limburg in the essay which precedes his, but from a different angle. Willis explores the remarkable similarity between Isa 2.2-5 (= Micah 4.1-5) and the `Psalms of Zion'. Even if editorial considerations have required the title of Willis' essay to refer only to Isaiah among the prophets, students of Micah will also find this a study not to be overlooked.

Willis details nine correspondences which unite the prophetic and psalms texts in question, nodding respectfully in the direction of scholars who have preceded him along this path. His contribution is not so much to uncover unknown similarities as to place recognised ones and the scholars who have dedicated extensive studies to them in an ordered and accessible scheme, and then to do the same more briefly with scholarly reconstructions of the relationship between the Isaiah and Micah texts. The service is well rendered.

Following his own 1969 study (ZAW 81), Willis is on more innovative ground when he explores the structural similarity between the two prophetic texts, each in its own immediate context. After delineating the (at least) three-way web of relationships which unite Isa 2, Mal 4, and the Zion psalms, Willis sides with von Rad, Levenson, and others in favour of the antiquity of the theological concepts found in the three texts. The statement of the two prophetic texts, placed within the psalms, `would pass for one of the Songs of Zion, or at least for a prophetic oracle which borrowed heavily from such a song'. The prophetic texts take up the same Zion-exalting confession of the psalms in order to resist the `fundamental hindrance' which in time the prophets recognise in Judah's ethical declension.
Willis' contribution is two-fold. Having already recognised the favour of `ordering' that he has paid us, one now mentions only the glimpse he has given us of the relocation of the Zion songs in prophetic texts. What was celebrated unconditionally in the Psalter is now reframed within the ethical conditionality to which Isaiah and Micah give passionate testimony.

The juxtaposition of the Limburg and Willis essays produces a fine photograph of divergent, though hardly contradictory, tendencies in Isaiah studies. While Limburg touches upon similar OT passages on his way to NT and modern contexts for the same phraseology, Willis remains within OT literature to produce a more detailed sketch of the relationship among the voices which are there to be heard.

A third series of contributions, not sharply to be distinguished from those I have surveyed in section two, take up the matter of `unity' which has kept Isaiah scholars busy in the past two decades. These studies illuminate issues of structural, compositional, and thematic unity from a remarkable number of angles. Often `unity' is a subtext which never quite fades from view as an author goes about some different task.

J. Barton (`Ethics in the Book of Isaiah', 67-77) observes that not since Duhm have the scroll's Proto-, Deutero-, and Trito- components endured such subordination to constructions of its unity. Barton sketches the essential quietism of the prophet's ethics, as well as his concern with the `attitudinal' issues of pride, folly and a kind of noblesse oblige which counteracts these. Finally,... Read more ›