Browsing by Subject "Isaiah"

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modern historical-critical study of the book of Isaiah succeeded in showing that the text emerged in stages over perhaps three hundred years, rather than as the fully formed product of a preexilic prophet. This mode of inquiry resulted in the widespread assumption that Isaiah is best approached as at least three distinct texts that express little if any intrinsic relationship with each other. The rise of literary criticism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, reminded readers that the Bible deserves to be studied as a body of theological literature regardless of the multiplicity of authorial contexts from which it derives. Overcoming Isaiah’s well-established diachronic fragmentation, however, has proven no straightforward task; readers have often and understandably resorted to thematic generalizations in their effort to describe the whole. The differences characteristic of these two approaches to Isaiah reflect the methodological splintering of biblical studies at large, where analysis of a text’s literary shape and theological message is frequently pitted against its rich history of composition.

Recent research has begun to ask a more profitable, interdisciplinary set of questions: What is the relationship between Isaiah’s diachronic development and its final form, and what might synchronic analysis of its final form teach us about its history of composition? Indeed, as several scholars have pointed out, a synchronic examination of Isaiah’s language and argument is a necessary first step in making accurate judgments regarding its diachronic development. Fresh inquiry into the book’s synchronic shape that does not ignore the history and culture from which it arose therefore represents a leading edge in Isaiah studies today.

History and Hope: The Agrarian Wisdom of Isaiah 28–35 examines the rhetorical function of Isa 28–35, a relatively overlooked series of six woe-oracles, in relation to the reader’s encounter with the book of Isaiah as a whole. At a diachronic level, the project seeks to improve the historical model that typically informs scholars’ perceptions of Isaiah’s construction. Through comparisons to the thought and practice of several contemporary agrarian thinkers, it draws attention to the holistic, agrarian worldview of the people who wrote and transmitted the Bible. This comparison suggests that an “agrarian hermeneutic” provides a historically- and phenomenologically-appropriate lens by which to examine the eight chapters in question. At a synchronic level, the project uses modern literary theory to describe the written text’s “epistemological layering,” thereby accounting for important differences between characters and readers. When combined with an agrarian hermeneutic, this move opens scholarly understanding of Isaiah’s written rhetoric to the associative logic by which it is constructed, and which is everywhere evident in the “intratextual” web of Leitwörter, motifs, and recurring ideas that run throughout the book. Through careful, exegetical analysis of Isa 28–35 in its sequential unfolding relative to the book as a whole, the project argues that these eight chapters use the language of agrarian wisdom to issue a call to obedience that transports the reader from prior reflections on historical destruction into a vision of ultimate hope.

This dissertation argues that domination in its many forms (political, economic, cultural, theological) continues to significantly affect Old Testament hermeneutics and homiletics. Those who write about preaching the Old Testament frequently depict the Old Testament as a sort of Suffering Servant—despised, rejected, and acquainted with grief. However, as a review of literature in chapter 2 shows, despite the helpful strategies and insights offered by homileticians who write on Old Testament preaching, the majority do not significantly address larger issues of domination and marginalization in their treatment of these texts. By contrast, a close reading of the four Suffering Servant Songs as preaching in chapter 3 highlights several key ways in which domination affected, and continues to affect, homiletical approaches to the Old Testament. These insights are developed further in chapter 4 by reflection on the work of Alexander Deeg, a German, Christian homiletician learning from Jewish hermeneutics and working to undo centuries of Christian domination. Examination of recent leading African American homileticians in chapter 5 also shows a long-standing and developing homiletic that frequently draws on the Old Testament to respond directly to contexts of injustice.

Preaching the Old Testament with an awareness of ancient and contemporary domination leads to a different homiletic approach. The Old Testament becomes an ally and example for combatting marginalization and a model for proclaiming older texts in new contexts. Further, Second Isaiah’s use of the Servant trope, Alexander Deeg’s work on preaching in the presence of Jews, and the witnesses of African American preaching invite Christian proclamation that focuses on undoing the oppression of othering, preaches with the Spirit, announces the Liberating, Creator God, and engages messianism without being anti-Jewish. These approaches demonstrate that the Old Testament sings good news, especially in contexts of suffering and domination.

Economics primarily focuses on describing the systems that govern the allocation of resources in human society. Many religious traditions also use terminology from these economic systems to express theological concepts; within the Hebrew Bible, this is especially evident in Isaiah 40-66. Drawing from theories from the field of Cognitive Linguistics, particularly the Blending Theory of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner and treatments of literary metaphor by Paul Werth and others, I argue that redemption in Isaiah 40-55 draws from the ancient economic practice of paying a price to buy somebody back. YHWH, having sold Israel into debt servitude in the exile to pay off the debt of her sins, later redeems her by paying off this debt himself. The language that the authors use to express YHWH’s retribution also comes from the economic realm—YHWH pays wages to Israel and YHWH’s enemies in exchange for work. These two images are distributed unequally in different parts of Isa 40-66, as redemption discourse abounds only in Isa 40-55 and retribution discourse abounds only in Isa 56-66. Other economic metaphors also appear on a smaller scale in this corpus, which shows the extent to which economic thought was starting to take hold of the imaginations of the Judean thinkers of the time.

By explaining the meanings of redemption and retribution in their original historical contexts, this dissertation also sheds light on many other key motifs in Isaiah 40-66 (such as sin, forgiveness, atonement, mercy and retribution), which leads to a better understanding of the section as a whole. My conclusions also bear on other discussions in Hebrew Bible scholarship. First, this study fills a lacuna in treatments of metaphors in the Hebrew Bible by treating economic metaphors, which have not received sufficient attention. Second, it argues that the rise in economic rhetoric amongst the Judeans started already in the exile and thus earlier than previously recognized. Third, it indicates that different authors wrote Isa 40-55 and Isa 56-66. Finally, it shows that Isa 40-55 is an authorial or editorial unity and that Isa 56-66 is a composite text.