By Rev. Wm. H. Cobb, Uxbridge, Mass.
Taken from THE HEBREW STUDENT Volume 2 Issue 3.
A glance at the present state of
the disputed question will
prepare us to go into the merits of it.
The great majority of American
Christians have taken little
interest until recently in the theories
of so-called historical
criticism. Thus it has come to pass in the case before
us that at least nine-tenths of
our intelligent church members assume
without question that the whole
book of Isaiah came from the pen of the
son of Amoz ; while most of
those who comprise the remaining tenth
regard doubt upon this point as
merely one of the vagaries of German
neology. On the other hand, in
Germany itself, few respectable
scholars remain who have not
yielded more or less to the prevailing tendency to
cut the book into sections
varying in date and authorship.
Ewald, in his great work on the
prophets, imputes to those who
deny the Babylonian authorship of the
last twenty-seven chapters,
“motives altogether reprehensible.” So
Weber, as quoted by Delitzsch,
regards the traditional view as
manifesting “a devilish
self-hardening against the scientific conscience.” Despite
the grim humor of this last
expression
it was doubtless written mainly
in earnest. Delitzsch himself,
with more caution than candor, allows his
arguments for tlie integrity of
Isaiah to stand, in the successive
editions of his commentary,
though one need look no further than the
articles lately published in
this journal to find him quoting from the “Babylonian
Isaiah.” Much more conservative
is Nägelsbach, author of the
commentary in the Lange series ;
yet even he admits several interpolations.
One is hardly surprised that
Kuenen, in searching out a
reliable basis for his “History of Israel”
should profess to “know for certain” that the
last twenty-seven chapters of
Isaiah belong to the second half of the 6th
century B. C. Yet there are
signs that this firm foundation is yielding, by
concessions from within, as well
as attacks from without. The most
recent, perhaps the most
important, commentary comes from England; that
of Rev. T. K. Cheyne (2nd ed. 1882), whose work is highly
commended by Robertson Smith.
A previous volume of his, “The Book
of Isaiah Chronologically
Considered” appeared in 1871. At that time
Mr. Cheyne went all lengths with Ewald; at present, he gives up
important ground, so far as
concerns the local origin of the prophecies
of Isaiah. About three-fourths
of the book he now believes to have been
written in Palestine. But far
from maintaining the unity of Isaiah, he
tends in the contrary direction,
holding that the sixty-six chapters
consist of more than a dozen
fragments, written by perhaps ten different
authors, at periods varying from
the middle of the eighth to the middle of
the fifth century. Not more
than twenty- seven chapters, he thinks, can
be ascribed to Isaiah with much
probability. Here is confusion worse
confounded. The sober student is
fair to ask on what grounds these
astonishing dissections are
made. The frank answer of many Continental
critics would be: “There is no
such thing as predictive prophecy ;
since the so-called Isaiah
foretells deliverance under Cyrus from the
Babylonian captivity, he must
have lived about the time of Cyrus.”
This position has been
fearlessly avowed by Gresenius,
Knobel, Ilitzig, Ewald, Wellhausen, and others.
The majority of students in this
country will deem it an unwarranted
theological prejudice, and
simply oppose to it the authority of our Master and
Lord (e. g. in Luke xxiv. 27).
To do Mr. Cheyne justice he does not hold,
in this respect, with the
destructive school. When we inquire for the
further reasons of the view we
are examining, they reduce themselves
to alleged incompatibilities, in
point of style and diction, between the
sections of the. prophecy.
Questions of style are exceedingly complex,
involving so much of the
personal element as to be practically
indeterminate. The argument
from diction, however, deserves a more
important place in this
controversy than has usually been assigned to it.
Defenders of the unity of Isaiah
have aimed to show that the formidable
lists of peculiarities in
phraseology brought forward on the other side are
not sufficient to prove
diversity of authorship. For the most part, they
have not been bold enough to
assume that if Isaiah wrote the book as a
whole there must be a multitude
of unconscious threads of coincidence in
point of language binding the
entire work together, and to stake
their case upon observed facts
of this nature. Dr. Nägelsbach, however, has
given at the close of his
commentary a laborious collection of
materials embracing the entire
vocabulary of the suspected portions, with their
occurrences in the undisputed
chapters also, but he gives no summary of
results. He expresses his
belief, it is true, that the unity of
authorship is thereby confirmed
; still, he speaks so hesitatingly as not to carry
conviction. The value of the
list, moreover, is seriously lessened by
the many errors running through
it, so that an entire revision would be
necessary to make it
trustworthy. My own work in this department was
begun and completed in total
ignorance of Nägelsbach’s researches.
Referring for details to the
Bibliotheca Sacra for April and October 1881, and
for January 1882, I will simply
indicate the plan pursued. By a
series of careful enumerations,
there was ascertained the whole number of
words in the Hebrew vocabulary’,
then the number in each main division
of Isaiah, in the entire book,
in the earlier prophets, the later
prophets, and the prophets as a
whole; also the commonest and the rarest
words in the so called later
Isaiah, with a few other particulars. It was
thence proved that the
vocabulary of Isaiah B presents striking
affinities with that of the
earlier prophets (especially Isaiah A) and
striking diversities from that
of the later prophets. This appeared both from
the number of coincident words
and from their character. For
instance, while 848 of B’s words
are found in A, only 735 occur m the
exile-prophet Ezekiel, though
his prophecy is about twice as long as A’s.
Again, there are eight words
found in both parts of Isaiah and nowhere
else, but only one word peculiar
to Isaiah B and the period of the exile.
The books of the Old Testament I
arranged in groups according to
two systems of classification,
and the vocabulary of Israeli B
(excepting proper names, and
words so common as to be indecisive) was taken
up word by word, the number of
occurrences of each word in all the
classes was recorded, and the
occurrences in Isaiah were cited by chapter
and verse. From this “Hebrew
Index” tables were deduced, proceeding
from the more rare to the more
frequent words, and showing by each
particular grouping that the
language of B belongs in the class which
includes A and can readily be
excluded from Ezekiel's class.
A concluding article is given in
the Bibliotheca Sacra for July
1882, carrying out with great detail
an examination of the local
color of Isaiah B as compared with that of
Isaiah A on the one hand and the
late prophets on the other. It will be
seen that this argument advances
a stage from the mere grouping of words
to the comparison of ideas.
Beginning with inorganic nature, I have
gone through the vegetable,
animal and human kingdoms, noting
agreements and disagreements,
and finding that, whoever wrote the last
twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah,
it cannot be fairly denied that his environment
was very like that of the
genuine Isaiah and very unlike the scenery of
Babylon. As it would be
manifestly improper to judge a house from a
brick, I will give no
illustrations from this portion of the article.
But the evidence examined next,
that drawn from the names of God, does not
lose its force when stated in
brief. It appears from induction (as might
have been judged a priori) that
most of the earlier prophets use
these divine titles with great
freedom, while in later times there seemed to
be a special sacredness attached
to two or three names, which caused a loss
of spontaneity. Thus Ezekiel
almost always employs “Jehovah” or
“Adonai Jehovah.” But both parts
of Isaiah blend with these a rich
variety of ether terms in such a
way as to be characteristic of the earlier projects and to several also a
minute and evidently undesigned
correspondence of part with
part. The particular terms they
employ have sometimes a special
weight in the argument. Thus
“the Holy One of Israel,”
occurring 14 times in each part,
is found nowhere else among the
prophets,
except twice in the last
chapters of Jeremiah, which seem to
presuppose Isaiah’s predictions
against Babylon. Again, the Divine title “King,”
the idea at the root of the
theocracy, is frequently met with both in
writers before and after the
exile; its absence from the undisputed prophecies
of that period is certainly a
natural circumstance ; yet it is found in
both parts of Isaiah. Equally
natural is the fact that the writers of the
exile abstain from that title of
God so common among the prophets—“Jehovah
Sabaoth.” The victorious leader of Israel’s “hosts,” the God of
her “armies” was not likely to
be invoked by that name when those
forces were defeated and
humbled. Yet “Jehovah Sabaoth” occurs six
times in Isaiah B, as well as
often in Isaiah A.
I close with a specimen or two
of the inferences which may be
drawn from the rare words common to
both parts. There are two Hebrew nouns from the root “to be
white,” meaning white linen.
The advantages of the line of
argument I have pursued is that
it is independent of doctrinal
assumptions either Christian or
anti-Christian. The facts pertaining to the
language of our present book of
Isaiah seem to indicate clearly that the
sixty-six chapters are rightly
ascribed to a single age and a single author.
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