Sargeant Pepper

There seems to be a certain passage of the bible that I can't shake whenever I have to argue about it. Isaiah 44:28 - 45:1 talks about Cyrus rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. Now the gist of it is that Isaiah was written 100 years before Cyrus was born. Is there some kind of response to this? Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Peter Kirby

R. N. Whybray writes: "All but the most conservative scholars now accept the hypothesis put forward by Doederlein in 1775, but already anticipated by Ibn Ezra in the twelfth century, that the prophecies contained in chapters 40-66 of the book of Isaiah are not the words of the eighth-century prophet Isaiah but come from a later time. The further hypothesis of B. Duhm (1892) that chapters 56-66 must equally be distinguished from chapters 40-55 has met with less unanimous agreement, but is nevertheless very widely accepted." (Isaiah 40-66, p. 20)

John Scullion writes: "The reasons for separating chaps. 40-66 from chaps. 1-39 are always the same and convincing: 1) historical background: destruction, exile and suffering are presumed; there is familiariarity with the history of the 6th century, above all with Cyrus, and firsthand experience of Babylonian religion; and a prophet speaks both out of and into the situation of his contemporaries. 2) themes: there are the themes of comfort and salvation, a new salvation under a new covenant; God is presented as creator and maker, and his action in history as redeemer and saviour is rooted in his action as creator. 3) style and vocabulary: chaps. 40-66 are more prolix; there is constant repetition and doubling of words; there is familiarity with the style of the psalms of descriptive praise with their heaping up of present participles; Jerusalem and objects are personified." (Isaiah 40-66, p. 17)

Gerald T. Sheppard writes: "Scholars have, for many years, observed that the latter half of the book addresses the conditions of people in the Babylonian exile; in the times of Isaiah, Assyria alone was a threat and Babylon was viewed as a friendly, historically minor nation (see Isa. 39). Furthermore, on its own terms, the prophet's message in Isaiah 40-55 describes social circumstances in which the audience is positioned in a time after 'former things' have been fulfilled. This fulfillment could have occurred only during the time of the Babylonian exile (see Isa. 40:21; 41:4, 27; 42:9), a fulfillment that provides the basis for the prophet's argument that trustworthy 'new things' can be announced. Among these 'new things,' the prophet states that Cyrus will expedite the restoration of the nation of Israel and its return to the promised land. The logic of the prophet's argument turns on a recognition that the historical setting is the Babylonian exile and that previous oracles have been fulfilled in that time. For that reason, the prophet can mock other prophets who pretend to promise things without similar proof, namely, that they actually have come to pass (see Isa. 41:21-24). This prophet to the Babylonian exiles could not be identified with the historical Isaiah without either violating the logic of the argument or introducing a strange understanding of prophecy, one at odds with even a traditional view of how prophets performed and what they foresaw. Still, a modern admission of underlying similarities in theme and subject matter between the two parts of the books inspired critics to call this later unknown prophet Second Isaiah. One could speculate, without explicit biblical support, that this later prophet must have been a gifted disciple of the eighth-century 'First Isaiah.'" (Harper's Bible Commentary, p. 543)

best,
Peter Kirby

Sargeant Pepper

Thank you for that information. posting on an all Christian site tends to delude me for large periods of time, and sometimes I actually think they're right.. Then I snap out of it. Thanks anyway.