The Prophet and His Day: Isaiah 1-39 - Free Bible Commentary

. There seems to be a parallel structure between 1-33 and 34-66. This dual structurebased on the author’s own day and then the future, was common in the Hebrewprophets (cf. Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah).4. Modern scholarship has no unanimity as to how many authors or where to divide thebook.C. Some reasons for the unity of Isaiah1. Twenty-five terms are found in both sections of Isaiah which are not found elsewhere inthe OT (NIV, Intro. to Isaiah, p. 1014).2. The title “the Holy One of Israel” occurs 13 times in chapters 1-39 and 14 times inchapters 40-66 and only six times in all other OT books.3. Jesus, in John 12:38,40, quotes from Isa. 53:1 and 6:10 and attributes both to Isaiah.4. Passages from Isaiah 40-66 are attributed to Isaiah in Matt. 3:3; 8:17; 12:17; Luke 3:4;4:17; John 1:23; Acts 8:28; and Rom. 10:16-20.5. There is no manuscript evidence of a division of the book at chapter 39 (MT, DSS, orLXX).6. There is no historical mention of a great prophet (Deutro-Isaiah) in the 6th century.R. K. Harrison, in Introduction to the OT, comments on this subject,“Arguments from literary style were greatly in vogue at the end of thenineteenth century, but in the light of a much wider knowledge of ancientNear Eastern languages they have now assumed a far less important position.The very subjectivity of stylistic considerations had a great appeal for theadherents of the Graf-Wellhausen theory of literary analysis, who saw noinconsistency whatever in perusing material ascribed to a Biblical author, andthen denying parts of that very corpus to him because the literary form andvocabulary of each chapter did not happen to be identical. Apparently it didnot occur to those early investigators that it was only possible to derive someconcept of the style of an ancient author as the result of careful study of all thematerial ascribed to him, and that subsequent rejection of part or all of thatcorpus could only be validated on the basis of some rigorous external control”(p. 776).D. Some reasons for multiple authorship of Isaiah.1. In chapters 40-66 the name “Isaiah” is not mentioned.2. Chapters 40-66 do not fit into Isaiah’s historical setting.3. There seems to be a mixing of Isaiah’s references to:a. Assyria’s invasion, exile, and judgmentb. Babylon’s invasion, exile, and judgment4. There are some reasons for theorizing multiple authorship.a. change of historical setting(1) pre-invasion Judah, 1-39(2) exile, 40-55(3) post-exilic Judah, 56-66(4) in Isaiah 1-39 the Temple will never fall, while in 40-66 it apparently hasalready fallen. The author seems to be in exile.b. change of terms to describe God’s chosen(1) Messianic child(2) Suffering Servant3