By Professor Geo. L. Robinson, D.D., McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.
“For about twenty-five centuries no one dreamt of doubting that Isaiah the son of Amoz was the author of every part of the book that goes under his name; and those who still maintain the unity of authorship are accustomed to point, with satisfaction, to the unanimity of the Christian Church on the matter, till a few German scholars arose, about a century ago, and called in question the unity of this book.” Thus wrote the late Dr. A. B. Davidson, Professor of Hebrew in New College, Edinburgh, (Old Testament Prophecy, p. 244, 1903).
THE HISTORY OF CRITICISM
The critical disintegration of the Book of Isaiah began with Koppe, who in 1780 first doubted the genuineness of chapter 50. Nine years later Doederlein suspected the whole of chapters 40-66. He was followed by Rosenmueller, who was the first to deny to Isaiah the prophecy against Babylon in chapters 13:1-14:23. Eichhorn, at the beginning of the last century, further eliminated the oracle against Tyre in chapter 23, and, with Gesenius and Ewald, also denied the Isaianic origin of chapters 24-27. Gesenius also ascribed to some unknown prophet chapters 15 and 16. Rosenmueller went further, and pronounced against chapters 34 and 35; and not long afterwards (1840), Ewald questioned chapters 12 and 33. Thus by the middle of the nineteenth century some thirty-seven or thirty-eight chapters were rejected as no part of Isaiah’s actual writings.
In 1879-80, the celebrated Leipzig professor, Franz Delitzsch, who for years previous had defended the genuineness of the entire book, finally yielded to the modern critical position, and in the new edition of his commentary published in 1889, interpreted chapters 40-66, though with considerable hesitation, as coming from the close of the period of Babylonian exile. About the same time (1888-90), Canon Driver and Dr. George Adam Smith gave popular impetus to similar views in Great Britain.
Since 1890, the criticism of Isaiah has been even more trenchant and microscopic than before. Duhm, Stade, Guthe, Hackmann, Cornill and Marti on the Continent, and Cheyne, Whitehouse, Box, Glazebrook, Kennett and others in Great Britain and America, have questioned portions which hitherto were supposed to be genuine.
THE DISINTEGRATION OF “DEUTERO-ISAIAH”
Even the unity of chapters 40-66, which were supposed to be the work of the Second, or “Deutero-Isaiah,” is given up. What prior to 1890 was supposed to be the unique product of some celebrated but anonymous sage who lived in Babylonia (about 550 B. C), is now commonly divided and subdivided and in large part distributed among various writers from Cyrus to Simon.
At first it was thought sufficient to separate chapters 63-66 as a later addition to “Deutero-Isaiah’s” prophecies; but more recently it has become the fashion to distinguish between chapters 40-55, which are alleged to have been written in Babylonia about 549-538 B.C., and chapters 56-66, which are now claimed to have been composed about 460-445 B.C. Some carry disintegration farther even than this, especially in the case of chapters 56-66, which are subdivided into various fragments and said to be the product of a school of writers rather than of a single pen. Opinions also conflict as to the place of their composition, whether in Babylonia, Palestine, Phoenicia, or Egypt.
RECENT VIEWS
Among the latest to investigate the problem is the Rev. Robert H. Kennett, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew and Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge, whose Schweich Lectures (1909) have recently been published for the British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1910. The volume is entitled, “The Composition of the Book of Isaiah in the Light of History and Archaeology”, and is a professed “attempt to tell in a simple way the story of the book of Isaiah.” The results of his investigations he sums up as follows (pp. 84-85): (1) All of chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 20 and 31, and portions of chapters 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 14, 17, 22 and 23, may be assigned to Isaiah the son of Amoz. (2) All of chapters 13, 40 and 47, and portions of chapters 14, 21, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46 and 48, may be assigned to the time of Cyrus. (3) All of chapters 15, 36, 37 and 39, and portions of chapters 16 and 38, may be assigned to the period between Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great, but cannot be dated precisely. (4) Chapter 23:1-14 may be assigned to the time of Alexander the Great (332 B.C). (5) All of chapters 11, 12, 19, 24-27, 29, 30, 32-35, 42, 49-66, and portions of chapters 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 18, 23, 41, 44, 45 and 48, may be assigned to the second century B.C. Dr. Kennett thus assigns more than one-half of the book of Isaiah to the Maccabean Age.
Prof. C. F. Kent, also, in his “Sermons. Epistles and Apocalypses of Israel’s Prophets,” 1910, makes the following noteworthy observations on. the prophecies of the so-called “Deutero-Isaiah.” He says: “The prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah. … afford by far the best approach for the study of the difficult problems presented by Isaiah 40-66. … Chapters 56-66 are generally recognized as post-exilic. … In Isaiah 56 and the following chapters there are repeated references to the temple and its service, indicating that it had already been restored. More-over, these references are not confined to the latter part of the book The fact, on the one hand, that there are few, if any, allusions to contemporary events in these chapters, and, on the other hand, that little or nothing is known of the condition and hopes of the Jews during this period (the closing years of the Babylonian exile) makes the dating of these prophecies possible although far from certain. … Also the assumption that the author of these chapters lived in the Babylonian exile is not supported by a close examination of the prophecies themselves. Possibly their author was one of the few who, like Zerubbabel, had been born in Babylon and later returned to Palestine. He was also dealing with such broad and universal problems that he gives few indications of his date and place of abode; but all the evidence that is found points to Jerusalem as the place where he lived and wrote. … The prophet’s interest and point of view center throughout in Jerusalem, and he shows himself far more familiar with conditions in Palestine than in distant Babylon. Most of his illustrations are drawn from the agricultural life of Palestine. His vocabulary is also that of a man dwelling in Palestine, and in this respect is in marked contrast with the synonyms employed by Ezekiel, the prophet of the Babylonian exile” (pp. 27, 28).
That is to say, the two most recent investigators of the Book of Isaiah reach conclusions quite at variance with the opinions advocated in 1890, when Delitzsch so reluctantly allowed that chapters 40-66 may have sprung from the period of Babylonian exile. These last twenty-seven chapters are now found to have been written most probably in Palestine rather than in Babylonia, and are no longer claimed to speak primarily to the suffering exiles in captivity as was formerly supposed.