Overview and Themes
The book of Isaiah has had enormous influence on Christian thought and piety. Based on the materials in the Gospels, Jesus’ self-identity seems to have been shaped deeply by Isaiah. The Gospels, the letters of Paul, and the New Testament’s apocalyptic literature are saturated with direct references and allusions to Isaiah. The Church Fathers and Doctors likewise frequently drew on Isaiah as they struggled to illuminate how the God we worship is one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while at the same time establishing their claim that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. Our study of Isaiah therefore offers us an opportunity to delve more deeply into the mystery of God’s redemption of the world through Christ — a beautiful opportunity, particularly as we move through the Autumn season towards Advent.
That opportunity, however, also comes with a challenge. As discussed below, some of the Christological resonances drawn out of Isaiah in the New Testament and in the history of Christian thought seem to go beyond the meaning of the original text, both in historical context and in its original Hebrew language. Our study of Isaiah therefore also offers us an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the Hebrew Scriptures as Christian scripture. How can we as Christians approach this text that was and is first central to Jewish thought and piety? What does the New Testament’s use of the Hebrew Scriptures, including notably Isaiah, tell us about Biblical interpretation?
Our reflection on Christian interpretations of Isaiah also will bring us back to the historical meaning of the collection of texts that make up the canonical book. We’ll see that before — or, perhaps better stated, connected with — the Christian Christological reading are deep, hopeful themes about God’s providence, justice, love, and ultimate restoration of a broken and chaotic world.
Historical Background and Canonical Context
Before we consider the date and authorship of Isaiah itself, it’s helpful to put the book into context within the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures. The narrative arc of the Hebrew Scriptures begins with the “protohistory” of Genesis 1-11 — creation, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the scattering of the nations. The remainder of the Pentateuch — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — concern the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt, the exodus from Egypt, and the giving of the law through Moses.
The period of the protohistory is impossible to date. Genesis 1-11 includes literary, poetic, and mythic elements drawn from surrounding ancient near eastern cultures, meaning that the protohistory, in a very real sense, falls “outside” ordinary time. The period of the Patriarchs, the Exodus, and the Conquest is similarly impossible to date precisely and likely includes literary ornaments and embellishments — although a historical basis for the founding of the people of Israel by these key figures, a rescue from slavery in Egypt, and a movement into Canaan always was and still remains central to Jewish identity.
The “historical” books in the Hebrew Scriptures — Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemia, and Esther — cover:
- The Jewish conquest of the land of Canaan and entry into the promised land;
- A period when the people of Israel were led by “Judges” (charismatic military / political leaders);
- The beginning of the monarchy under King Saul;
- The glorious, though tumultuous, period of King David;
- The reign of David’s son, King Solomon;
- The tragic division of the nation into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah;
- Various good and bad (mostly bad) Kings in Israel and Judah;
- The subjugation of the Northern Kingdom by Assyria and the Assyrian attack on Jerusalem and the Southern Kingdom;
- The destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon and the start of the Babylonian Exile.
The historical books relate more closely to information from archeology and other extra-Biblical historical sources, particularly as they move closer to the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests. This doesn’t mean the Biblical historical books are straightforwardly historical in a modern sense. The historical books sometimes don’t agree with each other, much less correlating in any clear way with extra-Biblical archeological or textual sources. There are intense, intractable disagreements among scholars in the field of Biblical Archeology about whether the Bible’s historical books are broadly historically reliable (“maximalists”) or mostly made up as a kind of later propaganda (“minimalists”).
In addition to the Pentateuch and the historical books, the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures includes the wisdom books and theprophetic books. Jewish readers divide the books somewhat differently than this. The Torah (“teaching” or “law”) is most immediately the Pentateuch; the Nevi’im (“prophets”) include the prophetic books and some of the historical books; and the Ketuvim (“writings”) include the wisdom books along with Chronicles, Ruth, Esther, Daniel, and Ezra-Nehemiah. Thus, Isaiah is part of the Nevi’im. The prophetic books, including the book of Isaiah, are mostly about why God allowed this destruction by the Assyrians and Babylonians and whether or how God will keep the covenant He made with Abraham and David and restore the nation.
Canonical Context, Dating, and Authorship of Isaiah
In the modern period, the nature of the text of the canonical book of Isaiah, and its role in Christian thought, has come under significant scrutiny. Even during the Medieval period, scholars suggested that the canonical text almost certainly was written and ended in multiple stages. Modern textual and critical scholarship shows that the canonical text of Isaiah may have taken shape in three or four stages over about two hundred years.
Although the historical and prophetic books of the Hebrew Scriptures raise many questions about their relationship to history as understood through modern archeology and textual analysis, there is no doubt about the fact of the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions of Israel and Judah or about the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians and the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. There is also little doubt that Isaiah ben Amoz was an important figure during this time. Tantalizingly, archeologist Eliat Mazar recently uncovered a bulla (clay seal) that might be the ancient equivalent of Isaiah’s personal signature, although, as is usually the case with Biblical archeology, Mazar’s interpretation is contested.
The role of the “prophet” in ancient Israel and Judah is interesting and complex. It appears that from early times there were prophets or seers attached to popular shrines, not only dedicated to the God of the Israelites, Yahweh, but also to Canaanite or other gods or to a syncretistic mix of Yahwism and Canaanite religions./1/ In fact, much of the Bible’s prophetic literature sharply criticizes this kind of syncretism, depicting fidelity to Yahweh alone as the key to the nation’s success. It also appears that there were prophets related to the Priestly class that became connected with the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem first constructed under King Solomon.
There also seem to have been independent prophets who were popular teachers or spokesmen outside the Priestly class and who had some kind of authority, recognition, or at least fearful respect, among the political leadership. These prophets often were highly critical of the political class, but at the same time, the Kings often consulted them about weighty matters such as the prospects for a military campaign. Isaiah ben Amoz seems to have been one of these important prophets who lived at the time of the Assyrian invasion of Judah.
Scholars today generally do not attribute the entire text of the canonical book to Isaiah ben Amoz. Contemporary scholars speak of chapters 1-39 as “First Isaiah,” which was probably originally written during the lifetime of the prophet Isaiah ben Amoz, when the Assyrians invaded Israel and Judah in 742-701 BCE; chapters 56-66 as “Second Isaiah,” written by an anonymous prophet who lived during the Babylonian Exile; and chapters 56-66 as “Third Isaiah,” a collection of sayings from various prophets who lived during early Persian-period restoration of Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE. This is based on both textual criticism (study of the language and grammatical forms of the text) and historical criticism (careful attention to historical references that inform the text). Scholars debate the exact periodization and attribution of the different parts of the text, but mainstream scholars generally agree that it was edited and updated at various times over a period of about 200 years to address contemporary circumstances.
Christian Interpretation of Isaiah
From the First Century CE — that is, from the time of Jesus — through today, Christians have claimed that the book of Isaiah points to Jesus as the savior of Israel and of the world. Some Christian readers have argued that the original purpose of specific texts in Isaiah and elsewhere in the Old Testament was to make specific prophecies about Jesus. In this view, the original authors of these texts knew they were foretelling an individual Messiah who would suffer and die for our sins.
These varied circumstances addressed in the canonical text of Isaiah, however, were different from, although in some ways related to, the Second Temple setting of Jesus’ life and ministry. The original writers and editors of texts such as Isaiah likely were not usually themselves intending to make the specific claims later attributed to these texts by Christian readers.
A related problem is that the New Testament authors often allude to or quote from a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that was commonly used by Greek-speaking Jews in the first century, the Septuagint (or LXX). The New Testament literature was produced in Koine Greek, the common everyday language in the Hellenistic Roman world (with occasional snatches of Aramaic)./2/ In some places the Greek translation of the LXX does not accurately reflect the meaning of the Hebrew of the original text, sometimes with significant theological ramifications.
The Christian claim that Isaiah points to, and sometimes directly prophesies about, Jesus as the Messiah, therefore raises numerous exegetical, hermeneutical, and theological problems. One fruitful response to these problems is to set aside the Christological biases of the New Testament and later Christian interpretation and simply to encounter a text like Isaiah on its own terms for what it tells Jewish and Christian (and Islamic) readers about God. Here is a video from Old Testament scholar Chris Hays of Fuller Seminary highlighting some of those themes: (1) Yahweh alone is Lord; (2) God is in control and will bring His salvation to pass; (3) the central importance of social justice.
There is also a long Christian tradition of suggesting an allegorical or figural interpretation of texts such as Isaiah that is teased out in the New Testament and in later Christian thought. This tradition goes all the way back to the early Church Fathers, and indeed, arguably, to the New Testament writers. It remains important today among Christian scholars associated with the “theological interpretation” movement.
For example, in his book Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness, New Testament scholar and former Duke Divinity School Dean Richard Hays says
[T]he Gospel writers summon us to a conversion of the imagination. . . . [W]e will learn to read Scripture rightly only if our minds and imaginations are opened by seeing the scriptural text — and therefore the world — through the Evangelists’ eyes. In order to explore that hermeneutical possibility, we must give close consideration to the revisionary figural ways the four Gospel writers actually read Israel’s Scripture.
Hays, Reading Backwards, 4.
Hays draws out three general interpretive themes based on his figural reading:
(1) The OT [Old Testament] teaches us to take seriously God’s word of judgment: those who oppress the alien, the widow, and the orphan and shed innocent blood will come under God’s fearful judgment, whether in Jermiah’s Judah in the seventh century B.C.E., in Jerusalem in Jesus’ lifetime, or in our own time. . . .
Hays, Reading Backwards, 13.
(2) The OT teaches us that all our prayer and action should be ordered toward Isaiah’s vision of a restored and healed new creation; that is to say, the salvation proclaimed in the Gospels is neither merely individual nor otherworldly. . . .
(3) How will such a redemptive ending take place? The OT hints mysteriously that God’s beloved Son will suffer rejection . . . but that he will also ‘become the head of the corner’ as an exalted king . . . . The Christological treasure [in the OT] is subtly wrapped, but [the New Testament] starts to unwind it. . . .
As we work through our study of Isaiah we’ll try to keep in mind both of these interpretive strategies — the text within its various original contexts and the text read figurally from the perspective of our experience of Christ — and the ways in which these strategies can be connected. In the end we’ll see that Isaiah’s vision is finally one of justice and hope for the restoration of all of creation, a promise of justice and hope that we as Christians see fulfilled in Christ.
Notes:
/1/ The original Hebrew text had no vowels. The name is thus represented in the Hebrew text as יהוה (YHWH). Yahweh or Yehovah are therefore extrapolations of what the name might have sounded like, though today scholars think Yahweh was the likely pronunciation. Many Jews consider the name too holy to pronounce aloud and substitute other words such as Adonai (my Lord) or HaShem (The Name).
/2/ Aramaic was the common Hebrew-related tongue in First Century Palestine. Aramaic was almost certainly the language spoken by Jesus and his immediate disciples. Some scholars suggest that some of the sayings of Jesus in what became the canonical Gospels were first written in Aramaic and subsequently translated into Koine Greek.