Gamera

Then your argument is weak beyond measure. You now seem to be claiming there is is a central meaning to a redacted text that had multiple layers of redaction with multiple agenda over decades: all of which is discernable by you with perfection some 2700 years later. Frankly that's crazy. You seem to have admitted that Isaiah is a contructed history and not really about this or that event that restricts its sense. I agree. And that supports the notion that it was messianic and about concerns that went far beyond Ahaz and his apostasy.

Gamera

[QUOTE=Apikorus]All the more reason not to mention it. By the way, it's not much of prophesy to say a kid will be born whose name is Immanuel when the guy giving the prophesy is the father and can choose the name. If there ever was a self-fullfillilng prophesy, that's one! If it's meant as a sign I can see why Ahaz wasn't impressed.

I can just see Ahaz roll his eyes: "So, Isaiah, the sign is that your going to have a son and you going to name him Immanual. Wow, that's remarkable"

Now, if a third party, not knowing the prophesy named the kid Immanuel, and if Immanuel were an uncommon name, then maybe, maybe, you got a sign.

Othewise, you don't have a sign, you got a prophet naming his son a funny name.

Actually now that I think about it this moots the issue of whether the name was common. It's meaningful if some third party choices the name; it's not relevant if Isaiah says he's going to name him Immanuel and then does.

Gamera

Of course, many many Hebrew scholars disagree with your translation, but I guess that doesn't concern you.

No, my head wouldn't explode at all to learn that the passage is an earlier redaction. It supports my point, not yours. I assume the entire book is a construct unbound by the sordid history of Ahaz, whatver that is, and that it reflects larger Jewish themes, like messianic expectations. You seem stuck with Ahaz, which is made the more unlikely the less the text is historical.

Apikorus

The fact that a text is redacted does not mean that it is incoherent. Often a skillful redactor leaves behind only very subtle clues. If a later editor makes changes in "Babar and his Children," the focus of the story is still likely to be on the birth and early childhood of Pom, Flora, and Alexander. Maybe a detail concerning Babar's crown or the crocodile will be woven into the early part of the story, and maybe a clumsy editor would include a clue, like the election of Richard Nixon, in the story line.

My exegesis allows the story to speak for itself. You are heavily biased by your Christian faith. A gedanken experiment: Let us take a dispassionate reader, educated in Biblical Hebrew, but unfamiliar with later Jewish or Christian traditions -- say an Asian -- and ask him to interpret Isa 7:14. Would he conclude that it fortells of a miraculous birth, 730 years in the future, or would he interpret it as spin and I have, in the context of the present political crisis?

Apparently you don't understand what a "sign" is in this context. It is also telling that you never answered my question regarding the signs associated with Isaiah, Shear Yashub, and Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. Isa 8:18 says that Isaiah and his children serve as signs. What were those signs?

Gamera

I'm sure philogists and essentialists consider it a flop. But in fact postmodern readings of scripture are becoming more and more common. I refer to the whole literature of emerging church movement, and particularly Brian McLaren's books, which I take it you haven't read.

Apikorus

Generally I don't read theologians. Brian McLaren has no apparent standing in Hebrew Bible. I'd guess you don't read Tom Levy or Bernard Levinson. Now we're even.

Hoo hah. Feminist and Queer readings of "scripture" are becoming more common too.

Gamera

[QUOTE=Apikorus]So there are "clues' to the "real" story in the text which is something other than the text we have -- the essence, so to speak -- and you, the exegete can discern it. Honestly, read Derrida, this is totally naive.

Your claim that there is a story other than the text itself, which you have access to because of your lack of basis is doubly naive. Every exegesis has an agenda. Your claim to the contrary shows a remarkable lack of insight into your own thinking.

Well, I think I said I don't know -- the passage is really obscure. Your interpretation makes sense, but that doesn't mean the passage is clear or that it's meaning is unitary or that other interpretations don't make sense. Again, your essentialism is simply beyond the pale.

Gamera

"Queer readings"? I hope this was meant as a term of art and not an invective

Gamera

Yep, and essentialist readings like yours are considered pretty passe by most scholars with any sophistication in semiotics, theology, or history.

But I'm glad we went down this road since it elicits the real issue, which is not disagreement over minor philological matters, but really about the meaning of how texts mean and what constitutes history.

Toto

Brian McLaren? He has a Wikipedia entry, and appears to be more of an activist than a scholar - one of TIME magazine's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America." Postmodern obscurantism seems to be very useful for modern evangelicals - they can use it to bash science from a more respectable position than fundamentalism.