Thanks for that Leolaia.
In short, then, all the bit at the beginning of the Isaiah II book is pure toss and another example of the WTS trying to confuse people in to believing what they tell them to believe.
OK, so what's the deal with the Cyrus prophecy?
by Amha·aret 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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inkling
Leolaia:
First off, thanks so much for your insight. I was just yesterday wondering about this very subject.
Here is my question though...
Why? Why would this Deutero-Isaiah person write a prophecy after the fact? Clearly he wasn't fooling anyone
at the time, right? I mean, at some point this additions appeared in the text within the living memory of a reader
who has read the old version of Isaiah, and knows that there was never anything in the book about Cyrus until
well AFTER Cyrus had done his thing.So who was his audience, and why were they not bothered by the fact that the "prophecy" they were reading was
fictitious?[inkling]
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inkling
This suggests a date in the latter part of Nabonidus' reign, when Cyrus (who had already conquered Media) posed a significant threat to the continued existence of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom.
Oh, wait... so it WAS written before the destruction of Babylon, just not far enough before to be impressive?
Like, it was a pretty good, but safe, guess?
[inkling] <--- is confused
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Surfrusty
I don't have time for an exhaustive response to the theories of multiple writers of the book Isaiah but here are some things you might want to consider:
1. This question was never raised until the 19th century as a result of naturalistic reasonings that deny even the possiblity of predictive prophecy. Most of the arguments stated have that presuppostion at their root and are a result of a anti-supernaturalism bent on disproving that a "second" Isaiah wrote these prophecies after the fact. Dr. Oswald Allis wrote: “In text-books that represent the “critical” or “higher-critical” viewpoint it is regarded as a matter of prime importance to explain the supernatural, which often means to explain it away, and to deal with the Bible in such a way that the supernatural will really cease to be supernatural.”
2. Josephus was apparently unaware of any division.
3. The apostle Paul quotes from both of the supposed "portions" and attributes both to Isaiah.
4. If you want to find differences in writing style you can. A different subject, theme, purpose or time of writing could cause the variation in style of even the same author. There was definietly a change in theme after the 39th chapter. Does that change in theme require that it be attributed to another author in and of itself? In addition, one can find unique similarities in writing styles throughout the book of Isaiah. These similarities would be quite apparent to anyone investigating if their motives were unbiased. Unfortunately the critical analyse that has produced these objections to a single author concept have been anything but unbiased.
5. There are other prohecies in the OT and NT that are written as if they had already been fulfilled. The book of Revelation is a perfect example of this.
I personally feel that most of these arguments are wishful thinking on the part of people that have lost their faith and now desperately latch on to anything that will assuage their conscience and self-doubt.
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inkling
Most of the arguments stated have that presuppostion at their root and are a result of a anti-supernaturalism bent on disproving that a
"second" Isaiah wrote these prophecies after the fact.Well... yeah.
If I was going to write a exhaustive historical report on, say, Harry Houdini, should I start from the
assumption that magic is REAL, and he was, in fact, a wizard?Just because humans have only recently woken up from hundreds of thousands of years of superstitious gullibility,
is that reason to think that magic used to happen ALL THE TIME, and then (weirdly enough around the time of formation
of the scientific method) suddenly STOPPED happening all the time?Does the fact that the Celt's have books describing the anthropomorphic nature and actions of trees mean
that Irish botanists today are fanatically trying to "explain away" the Druid's story of how trees work, becuase
they have "lost thier faith" in Celtic mythology?Why should modern historians assume that the best explaination is supernatural
if an entirly natural explaination also fits all the know facts just as well?Ockhams razor anyone?
[inkling]
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Surfrusty
Inkling, thank you for your post. Maybe I should have been clearer. I'm not saying anything should be assumed. In the analysis of any issue all of the evidence should be reviewed and then a conclusion should be based on the preponderance of the evidence. I take issue with the analysis of Isaiah that has as its premise that predictive prophecy is impossible and thus only evidence that supports that premise is accepted or acknowledged. It's the old "miracles are false because they are miracles" argument. My mentioning of the 19th century start to the critical view of Isaiah was just to highlight the historical context of these arguments. These arguments were born at the height of the "higher criticism" movement, when it was very much en vogue to do nothing but cast doubt on the Bible. Their views were anything but unbiased but very openly had the purpose make known that "God is Dead".
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inkling
It's the old "miracles are false because they are miracles" argument.
Ok, fair enough... I prefer the:
"Miracles are false because there are non-miraculous explanations that fit
as well or better, and also seem to be in harmony with the way the universe
seems to work"argument.
I cannot say, yet, that the non-miraculous explanations of Isaiah explain the facts
to that level of satisfaction, but I also admit that I am very new to this subject other
than years of highly questionable WT logic.Therefore, I tend to mistrust my feelings on the matter.
I still wait eagerly to hear WHY the "2nd Isaiah" would write what he did, and why
everyone seemed to accept it as truth at the time and for many years after.[inkling]
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Amha·aret
Surfrusty:
Do you believe it was written as far in advance as the WTS make out? The thing is I don't know when the "prophecy" was written or how accurate it was. Thus my original quesion.
What I know for sure is that the WTS have been grossly dishonest about many matters, including historical ones, so I have no reason to blindly trust them as I had done for the previous 20+ years. I also know that their dishonesty has tainted my view of the bible so I find it interesting to talk to believers and find out what makes them believe. Is it because of or in spite of the evidence? I'd love to know where you come in on this.
Looking forward to your reply,
Am
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Surfrusty
I do believe it was written in advance of the fullfillment by Isaiah himself. How many years inadvance is harder to nail down. Isa. 1:1 says that Isaiah profecied during the rule of Uzziah which was apparently in the early to middle of the eighth century and through the rule of Hezekiah. Jewish history claims Isaiah was killed by Manasseh (his rule began in the early seventh century). When during that time period Isaiah wrote the prophecy, I honestly don't know. I guess I need to investigate that more. But whether it was early or later in that time period it still well before.
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Leolaia
I'm not saying anything should be assumed. In the analysis of any issue all of the evidence should be reviewed and then a conclusion should be based on the preponderance of the evidence. I take issue with the analysis of Isaiah that has as its premise that predictive prophecy is impossible and thus only evidence that supports that premise is accepted or acknowledged.
I do not agree with this reasoning. Let me turn your argument around. One's general belief in the existence of "supernatural" prophecy does not by itself assure the authorship of any particular work, or that a work has not received accretions through transmission/redaction. A Christian believer would certainly accept the prophetic claims within his/her own canon. But what about works outside the canon that make prophetic claims? The antediluvian patriarch Enoch makes amazingly accurate prophetic references to the exile and the post-exilic period in 1 Enoch. The exact same methodology of higher criticism that has proposed the sixth-century BC authorship of Deutero-Isaiah has also determined that 1 Enoch was written in the third and second centuries BC. It is certainly false that this assessment is rooted in a rejection of the belief that supernatural prophecy is possible. The literary, linguistic, stylistic, theological, and contextual evidence quite securely points to the time when the book was written. The same is true with the Book of Mormon. Mormons accept the existence of supernatural prophecy and they also accept that this book makes accurate predictions of Christopher Columbus, the settling of the Americas, and the American Revolution. A non-Mormon Christian who equally believes in predictive prophecy may nonetheless assess the literary and contextual evidence and determine that this particular work was not written in pre-Columbian America at all. Meanwhile, a person who rejects a belief in the predictive power of prophecy may make the same assessment upon reviewing the evidence. The difference is that a Mormon already has an assumption, a received tradition, that the Book of Mormon was authored in the pre-Columbian age. The methodology of higher criticism reviews the evidence for any specific work and bases conclusions on the preponderance of the evidence -- without regard to the received tradition of the book's authorship or integrity. This is the case whether the works being assessed are biblical books, apocryphal works, Greco-Roman classical works, Shakespeare, or what not. It is from a particular faith position or acceptance of received tradition (or taking a book's claimed authorship at face value) that one presupposes a priori that a work already has a particular authorship, date, or provenance regardless of what the literary evidence indicates.
BTW, it is not the case that the recogition of accretions in Isaiah is purely due to the recent efforts of higher critics with an "anti-supernaturalist" agenda. In the twelfth century AD, the Jewish exegete Ibn Ezra already expressed his doubts that the portions of Isaiah presently attributed to Deutero-Isaiah were authored by the eighth-century BC prophet, comparing it to cases in 2 Samuel and 1-2 Chronicles where later authors probably added information dating after the lifetimes of Samuel and Ezra, respectively, and Ibn Ezra most certainly was a believer in predictive prophecy. His reference to 1 Chronicles 3:19-24 makes a nice parallel to the reference of Cyrus in Deutero-Isaiah; the generations of descendents of Zerubbabel are named individuals, presumably named before any of them were born. But these individuals were not predicted per se -- rather they are listed in just the same fashion as anyone else in the geneologies. So it is not quite true that the "question was never raised until the 19th century". Of course, most people accepted the traditional ascription at face value and did not look at the literary evidence more objectively until literary approaches were developed. It is the same case in classical scholarship. Today, scholars recognize that accretions to ancient works were a fact of life and posit authors such as Pseudo-Apollodorus, Pseudo-Dioscorides, Pseudo-Galenus, Pseudo-Herodianus, Pseudo-Hippocrates, Pseudo-Lucianus, Pseudo-Plutarchus, etc. In Christian literature, we have the nice example of Pseudo-Ignatius -- who interpolated the corpus of Ignatian epistles in the third century AD. But earlier scholars and classicists presumed the unity or traditional ascription of these works. So it is a rather weak datum in assessing the literary evidence that, say, Josephus was unaware of the division between portions of Isaiah.
A different subject, theme, purpose or time of writing could cause the variation in style of even the same author. There was definietly a change in theme after the 39th chapter. Does that change in theme require that it be attributed to another author in and of itself?
My quote from Driver above already addressed this point -- the change in theme is not sufficient to explain the very marked differences in language, grammar, phraseology, vocabulary, etc. This is the exact same kind of stylistic evidence that, for example, points to multiple authorship in the Ignatian corpus -- I can give a list of features that securely distinguish the authors and accompany other differences (such as in theology) that also distinguish the authors. Of course, there will be some features in common because the Pseudo-Ignatius tried to imitate the style of the author whose work he was interpolating. It is quite similar in the case of Deutero-Isaiah. The change in theme is rather expected in the change of authorship and accompanies the change in style, theology, etc.