Boshko

On another forum I'm arguing with an exceptionally <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Christian about the authorship of Isaiah and Daniel. He's argueing against there being a Second Isaiah and he's really frustrating me in continually asserting that Isaiah must have been all written by the same person because it was found as a unified book in the dead sea scrolls etc.

I did an internet search looking for articles to help me rebut him, but I haven't be able find any. Could anyone give me a hand?

Pantera

How does this logic work? Deutero-Isaiah can't have been added c500 BC, because the work appears as a whole a mere 500 years later? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Pantera ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Friedman's Who wrote the Bible

Also, see the Skeptical Review website here at Infidels. Look in the library under magazines. The book of Daniel has been discussed incessantly there for the last two years, laid out in more detail than you could ever want.

Michael

John the Atheist

Boshco,

Most of the DSS dating comes in from the second century B.C.E. to the first century C.E.. Like others, I don’t know how he could come up with anything conclusively either, that Isaiah must have been written by the same person simply because it’s found in a unified book in the DSS. Does he mention what language it is written in?

Tim Callahan devotes an entire chapter (about 30 pages)to Daniel in “Bible Prophecy Failure or Fulfillment?” and he gives a great deal of arguments why it couldn’t have been written by one person. Just way too many to list here. If you don't have access to that book, surely II library should have something on this.

John

Apikorus

Presumably your opponent is harping on the fact that the earliest witnesses we have to Isaiah are complete texts, running from chapters 1 through 66. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran cave 1 (1QIsa^a) is the earliest complete (more or less) text of Isaiah and it dates from the second century (or possibly third) century BCE.

Since the work of Duhm in the late 19th century, modern critics have recognized that the Book of Isaiah is not the work of a single author. Duhm posited three Isaianic authors: proto-Isaiah, the author of the bulk of Isa 1-39, wrote in 8th c. BCE Jerusalem; deutero-Isaiah, the author of the rather coherent unit Isa 40-55, wrote in exile ca. 550 BCE; trito-Isaiah, the author of Isa 56-66, was a Jerusalemite writing ca. 450 BCE.

Duhm's hypotheses have been challenged by many scholars, but virtually all (save for evangelicals, of course) acknowledge that there were multiple Isaianic authors. The trend of late has been to recognize that Isa 1-39 is an accretion of many authorial voices (see e.g. Sweeney 1993 or Blenkinsopp 2001), the earliest being identified with an 8th c. BCE prophet, whom we might as well call Isaiah.

The provenance of deutero-Isaiah is also all over the map. Most scholars still adhere to an exilic date, but some, such as Klaus Baltzer, place it much later (Baltzer says ca. 400 BCE).

As I mentioned, Isaiah 40-55 forms a coherent unit, and one which is linguistically and terminologically easily distinguishable from the rest of the Book of Isaiah. Proto-Isaiah (by which I mean the agglomeration of material in Isa 1-39) is concerned with the threat of Assyria, and the tenor is generally dark and foreboding. Deutero-Isaiah is largely concerned with Babylon, and his message is one of redemption.

The terminus a quo for Isa 40-55 clearly is the beginning of the Persian period (539 BCE), since Cyrus is mentioned in 45:1. When arguing with evangelicals, however, conventional logic is tossed aside, and it is possible, even likely, that an 8th century BCE author "prophesied" the advent of Cyrus the Great.

Baltzer's Hermeneia commentary (2001) on Isa 40-55 is outstanding, and I find his arguments for a somewhat late date (ca. 400 BCE) to be fairly compelling. (Some have argued that the unit is even later. Obviously the Qumran scroll itself provides a terminus ad quem of ca. 200 BCE.)

The bottom line is that the existence of a "complete" Isaiah as of 200 BCE in no way falsifies the hypothesis that the book consists of distinct units by different authors. The name Yeshiyahu ben Amotz (Isaiah son of Amoz) never appears after chapter 38, incidentally.

Chapters 1-39 are often a mess and clearly are a patchwork. Those of us who read Hebrew can immediately tell that Isa 40-55 is a different kettle of fish, even if some themes of from Isa 1-39 are echoed by the later author. The provenance of trito-Isaiah is an interesting question.

Adamantia

This talks about ‘traditional’ and ‘scholarly’ viewpoints...
<a href="http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible3.html" target="_blank">http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible3.html</a>

The arguments were compiled by mainly religious people:

A word about us: Dex is Conservative Jewish; Euty is a lapsed Southern Baptist. We felt that two people looking at the subject from different and sometimes opposing viewpoints would give a more complete portrayal. We are also indebted to Straight Dope Message Board regulars CMKeller (Orthodox Jewish) and tomndebb (Catholic) as well as to Dex's friend Pastor Allan (Lutheran) for their help in reviewing, adding, and challenging. Their help was valuable, and we thank them for it.
<a href="http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible5.html" target="_blank">http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible5.html</a>
===

<a href="http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/biorpmoody.html" target="_blank">http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/biorpmoody.html</a>
Here’s a quote from an American evangelist called Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899). His words seem to imply that while he believes in two Isaiahs, he doesn’t want the masses worrying about such details...Maybe his words will hold sway with this believer.

"I don't see why you men are talking about 'two Isaiah's half the people in the country do not know that there is one Isaiah yet; let's make them know about one, before we begin to tell them about two."

<a href="http://www.biblebelievers.com/moody/20.html" target="_blank">http://www.biblebelievers.com/moody/20.html</a>
===

These anti-missionary sites provide arguments against jesus being the messiah of the ‘old testament’.
<a href="http://www.outreachjudaism.org/questions.html" target="_blank">http://www.outreachjudaism.org/questions.html</a>

<a href="http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/" target="_blank">http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/</a>
(go to ‘knowledge base&#8217 )
===

also : <a href="http://www.atheists.org/church/daniel.html" target="_blank">http://www.atheists.org/church/daniel.html</a>

and finally, one of my favorite pages on the web...this should give any fundie good food for thought...
<a href="http://www.atheists.org/church/realbible.html" target="_blank">http://www.atheists.org/church/realbible.html</a>

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Adamantia ]</p>

John the Atheist

Just got back from the Strait Dope link that Adamantia provided. On Daniel:

"Thus, the scholarly view is that the book was written much later, probably during the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BC....The book stands firmly in opposition to the reign of tyrants, and declares their days are numbered--a very popular message in 165 BC, less so in 580 BC."

Boshco, maybe your Christian has a point that a unified book of Daniel is found in the DSS. But it sure the hell blows holes in prophecies all to hell for this late of a date.

John

Boshko

Thanks for the links. I think I can nail him on Daniel fairly well but I still don't have much on Isaiah (especially with the II search engine now working)

Apikorus

Daniel 7-12 is pretty easy to date almost to the very year - 165 BCE. Everything before this time is "prophesied" more or less accurately, and everything afterward is quite wrong. Example: Antiochus did not die "between the sea and the glorious holy mountain" (Dan 11:45) but rather at Tabae, in Persia.

We have no complete Book of Daniel from Qumran, although we do have fragments from every chapter.

I once had an interesting exchange with Glenn Miller, a fellow who runs a Christian apologetics web site. He has an essay up there which deals with the provenance of Daniel. Of course he believes it is a unified, coherent text which dates from the Persian period.

In an earlier version of his Daniel web pages, he made a rather embarrassing error. He had excerpted a table from an article by Peter Flint (on p. 53 of "The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years", vol. 2) which listed the Daniel fragments from Qumran and their dates of composition. The dating came from palaeographic analyses by Frank Moore Cross of Harvard. Miller was very excited to read in Flint's table that a particular fragment, 4QDan(e), apparently was dated to the "1st half of 2nd century BCE". Miller highlighted this line in red, so important was it to his case. A Daniel fragment from the first half of the 2nd century BCE! Surely this was slam-dunk evidence that Daniel is pre-Maccabean!

Unfortunately for Miller, the entry in the table was a typographical error. That it was an error was immediately obvious to me, as it should have been to anyone who knows even a modest amount about the Daniel fragments from Qumran. It is well-known that Cross's palaeographic studies assigned 4QDan(c) the earliest date, and 4QDan(c) dates to the late 2nd century BCE. The dating of 4QDan(e), as reported in the recently published DJD vol. XVI, is "early Hasmonean, c. the beginning of the 1st century BCE".

Indeed, had Miller bothered to read on in Flint's article, he should have realized this himself:

One of these manuscripts, 4QDan(c), has the distinction of being closer to its autograph than any other book among the biblical Scrolls. According to the forthcoming edition in DJD 16, 4QDan(c) is inscribed in an early semicursive script that is dated by F. M. Cross to the late second century BCE, "no more than about a half century younger than the autograph" (ca. 168-165 BCE), of that book.

Having written these words, it is inconceivable that Flint could have thought that 4QDan(e) was even earlier than 4QDan(c) - let alone pre-Maccabean (which would be earth-shattering and would certainly have elicited extensive commentary). Furthermore, the 1989 BASOR article by Eugene Ulrich, cited by Flint in his DSS50 chapter, confirms that 4QDan(c) is the earliest of the Qumran Daniel fragments.

I must admit that Miller responded appropriately to my message (I hammered him a bit). He immediately took down the Daniel pages from his web site, and when he verified that what I told him was true and that he had gotten all excited over a typo (he also wrongly attributed the dating of 4QDan(e) to Flint, when in fact it was dated by Cross and confirmed by Ulrich), he rewrote this section of his Daniel pages.

Alas, Miller still believes Daniel was written in the 6th or 5th century BCE. But he's learned a lesson about copying stuff from secondary (or tertiary, in this case) sources without checking his facts.

[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>