"How Beautiful Upon the Mountains": Some Thoughts on OT Lesson 39

Isaiah 50-53

In 1979, a biblical scholar named John Eaton published a work entitled Festal Drama in Deutero-Isaiah. Eaton, following the work of Ivan Engnell and others, saw in the “Servant Songs” and other themes of chapters 40-55, 60-62 of Isaiah allusions to the themes of the Ancient Israelite New Year Festival (which I’ve so often mentioned on this blog). He argued that these passages formed a “prophetic re-modelling” of the pre-exilic temple rituals performed during the festival.  Essentially, these chapters apply the themes of the festival, which were repeated annually, to actual historical events.

In order for us to recognize these “festal” themes in the book of Isaiah, it is necessary to be familiar with the motifs that are associated with the hypothetical New Year festival. While I can’t go into them fully here, I will share a brief outline. The basic idea behind the festival is that it is a time for the celebration of the divine kingship of Yahweh, and includes a dramatic representation of Yahweh’s victory over the Chaotic Sea and/or Dragon, his ascension to his Temple and enthronement there, his judgment of the nations, and inauguration of his reign of peace as king over the whole earth. According to Eaton’s theory, the festival also included parallel rituals involving the Davidic king, which included his (mock) battle against evil nations (sometimes depicted as chaotic waters or terrible beasts), his suffering and (near) death at the hands of these enemies, his redemption/resurrection by God’s aid, his victory over all enemies, triumphal procession and enthronement.  These descriptions are based on scholars’ interpretations of the Psalms, with comparisons to what we know of the New Year/Enthronement festivals of other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. If you’ll bear with me, I’ll provide here some of the further proposed details of the festival, as proposed by Eaton:

What Did the Authors of Isaiah 40-55 Really Know About Babylon: Dr Lena Sophia Tiemeyer

Yesterday I had the privilege of hearing from Dr Lena Sophia Tiemeyer, Lecturer in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at the University of Aberdeen, as she presented a paper at our weekly Biblical Studies seminar.  Her study was entitled “What Did the Authors of Isaiah 40-55 Really Know About Babylon?” The timing of this presentation, for the purposes of this blog, is impeccable — if you happened to read it, I just briefly discussed, in my last post, some of the scholarly debates regarding the authorship of these chapters of the Book of Isaiah.  One of the major assumptions of this theory of “Deutero-Isaiah” is that the author(s) of this section were in Babylon. The references to Cyrus, Babylonian gods and religious practices, Akkadian loan words, etc., that are found in these chapters have lead scholars to conclude that this section must have been written during the Babylonian Exile by the Jewish community that was in Babylon. Dr. Tiemeyer’s purpose with this presentation was to show that the “evidence” for this assumption is not strong — leading her to conclude that these chapters of Isaiah were more likely written in Palestine, and not Babylon.  The implications of this study are important and suggest, as Tiemeyer herself noted, a possibility that there is more unity to the Book of Isaiah than scholars have assumed.

"Beside Me There is No Saviour": Old Testament Lesson 38

Isaiah 40-49

Sorry for the dearth of posts recently — the semester at St Andrews has now started up and I have found myself overwhelmed trying to set a new schedule and routine for myself.  Among the various things I’m doing this semester, I am very excited about sitting in on Jim Davila’s Book of Daniel course, which has been highly stimulating so far, and we haven’t really gotten into the good stuff yet!  I hope to post my notes from the class (what notes I take) here on the blog, perhaps closer to the time we are to be looking at Daniel in the Sunday School curriculum.

As I’ve been unusually busy for the past week or two (listening to General Conference was a nice change of pace), I haven’t been able to do as much as I’ve wanted with this SS lesson from Isaiah. I hope to share some few thoughts that are of some use.

Isaiah 40

Chapter 40 of Isaiah begins a section of the book (chapters 40-55) labeled by scholars as “Deutero-Isaiah” or “Second Isaiah” because, according to popular theory, this section was not written by the original prophet Isaiah, but by an author that wrote during the Babylonian captivity.  Although there are a number of reasonable arguments for this perspective (see some of them here on Wikipedia), we can perhaps assume that one of the main reasons behind this designation is the fact that so many modern biblical scholars do not accept a traditional faith-based view of prophecy — that prophets could accurately predict (see in vision) future events.  Of course this point of view does not sit well with most Latter-day Saints, whose theology takes this traditional view for granted.  Furthermore, the Book of Mormon cites chapters from “Deutero-Isaiah” with the assumption that this were written by the original Isaiah, or at least that they were written before the time Lehi left Jerusalem, which was before the Babylonian Exile.  I’m afraid I’m not going to have time to go into this topic further, but I encourage you to look at the following articles, both of which give possible solutions to this apparent discrepancy.

Marc Schindler, “Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon”: http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/Deutero-Isaiah_in_the_Book_of_Mormon.html

Keven Christensen, “Open Questions and Suggestions Regarding Isaiah in the Book of Mormon”: http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/papers/?paperID=6&chapterID=53

On to the content of the Ch. 40…

As inferred by the title of this lesson, we can expect to see in these chapters many passages that can be interpreted as being Messianic — descriptive of the expected  life and mission of Jesus Christ. They also emphasize the idea that Israel saw Yahweh as their Redeemer and incomparable Savior.

If you are a fan of Handel’s timeless work, The Messiah, several of the verses here will be familiar to you. I have taken the liberty of posting a YouTube video here of Jerry Hadley singing “Comfort Ye My People” and “Every Valley” — it is very inspiring.