Prophetable Thoughts--- James on Isaiah
Monday July 13, 2009
Dr. James Howell, senior minister at Myers Park UMC in Charlotte N.C. has some excellent teaching on the prophets which is on UTube. I will be sharing some of it with you here in the next several weeks. See what...
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About Ben Witherington on the Bible and Culture
Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies.
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I'm actually in the middle of reading through Isaiah right now. Interesting, thanks!
I'm having trouble hearing the YouTube video because there is some New Age music playing in the background of the blog page. I can't find a place to turn it off.
Bart:
You shouldn't be entering the blog through my website, but through the blog address itself. As for the Pat Metheny music which is hardly new age, its jazz fusion, you can nonetheless turn it off in the upper right hand corner of the front page of my website.
Blessings,
Ben
I notice that Dr. Howell skates pretty quickly over the observation that Isaiah's 'disciples' continued to add to his work as happened to be appropriate in later times, alluding to the Isaiah 1,2,3 question. In spite of all the erudition and truly impressive intellect which has been brought to bear in the critical analysis of the Old Testament (far exceeding my own), I take even a consensus of scholars with a grain of salt. I have read too much of the brilliant and intricate deconstruction of Homer and its hypothesized "process of composition" by Victorian academics, all of which was shown to be meaningless by Milman Parry's analysis in terms of oral tradition. So I feel free to imagine that one Isaiah could have been a prophet for all centuries, including the post-Exilic and Incarnational eras. If the book of Isaiah was composed by a committee, so to speak, stretching over generations, it ranks in literary genius far above all the other committees of human history.
Hi Douglas:
I understand some of your reservations, but I will say this. Is. 40ff. reflects a very different style than the earlier part of Isaiah, and indeed a very different situation. Isaiah of King Uzziah fame would have had to live longer than Methusalah to be commenting on Cyrus the Persian on the basis of personal knowledge, not merely inspired forethought.
Blessings,
BW3
Hi Ben,
Yes, of course I understand that there is a natural division in the text (obvious even to one as ignorant as I am)and Second Isaiah addresses different concerns in a different time frame, so that one would have to concoct a very magical process indeed for all of it to come from the 8th century or thereabouts. One imagines that the early Isaiah would hardly know what to make of some of the prophetic effusions he had uttered in such a case. But on the other hand, the New Testament authors clearly understood Isaiah (1 or 2 or both?) to be foreshadowing (at the very least) the sacrifice and redemption on the cross, something even more remote in time (and in concept) to Israel in captivity than the period from Uzziah to Ezra. Moreover, the inspiration all comes from the same God, and there seems to be a strange unity across time in the whole of Isaiah which gives it its power. The eternal God sees all the centuries before him at once, and perhaps Father, Word and Spirit spoke a single utterance to several eras at once, an announcement of judgment and redemption which appears in different times in different ways. That may be some excessively fanciful prose, but we need an antidote from time to time against the disenchanting habit of scholars of thinking they have put Revelation into neat and carefully labeled boxes. A little playfulness helps us remember that the inspired text is a potent embodiment of the giver and redeemer of life, as well as an intellectual puzzle. The Spirit lives among the Letters, and mocks us if our focus narrows too tightly to see it. I don't mean this as a criticism of anyone or anything in particular. I'm just being a jester among the sages.
Ben,
I discovered that, if I wait a few minutes, the Pat Metheny tune soon ends and I can hear Dr. Howell clearly.
There was a link on your website labeled "blog," so I clicked it and it brought me to blog.beliefnet.com/bibleandculture
Is that not the proper blog address? Does the audio follow my movement from the home page?
When enthusiasts use the term Jazz Fusion I'm never quite sure what that means except that they're probably not referring to the jazz I grew up with and once played. I hope Mr. Metheny would not be offended to discover that I inadvertently dissed his track by naming it New Age.
I'm looking forward to more "prophetable thoughts" from (the) Isaiah(s).
Bart
I his book 'The Literary Structure of the Old Testament', David A. Dorsey shows that the entire book of Isaiah is chiastic, which makes it unlikely (though not impossible) for the book's origin to be divided in authorship or history.
Hi Mike:
There are three problems with the chiasm theory: 1) Isaiah lived in an oral culture where only 10% could read texts, and any way only scribes and the wealthy could afford and had such texts. Chiasm in a text as big as Isaiah would have to be seen, not heard; 2) the text of the larger prophets was read out in sections, not all at once in the Temple or synagogue; and 3) anyway Isaiah is much too long, even if someone did read it orally all at once, for someone to remember the beginning of the text's form days later. Furthermore, the person who did compile the end of Isaiah could just as well have read Isaiah 1 and then created a chaism as Isaiah himself.
Blessings,
BW3
Just another brief intrusion from the simple jester: I agree with Ben that arguments from chiasm are weak, since structure can easily be imposed in a final redaction, and it is reasonable that the author would feel justified in doing so. The Gospel of Mark is an example of such structure in a long text (straining to recall a lecture from long ago) even though it is at some point a collection of accounts of many witnesses. But if we have any sort of high view of inspiration, in the end it's all God's word. That's why I've never liked resorting to formulas like "inerrant in the original autographs". I have the quirky opinion that we have right now exactly the Bible God intends us to have -- multiple varying manuscripts, copying errors, apparently diverging accounts by different authors, feuding translators and all. It helps us remember that we're listening to hear the Living God in the words, honoring the Word more than the text. (I hope my unscholarly cracker-barrel pontifications aren't too annoying.)
Douglas:
If I understand your position, you would therefore have no use for Textual Criticism, that is the art and science of determining what the original reading of a passage was. To be logically consistent, then, would you even care about how accurate the bible translation is that you or your neighbor may be reading?
There are real challenges in Textual Criticism, it is true. But your position would seem to just throw in the towel.
Ray
Dr. Witherington, this is off topic but have you commented elsewhere on the movie, "The God Who Isn't There?"
Blessings,
Jay Hutchens
Hi Ray,
No, I don't mean to reject Textual Criticism at all. This realm of scholarship is part of the exercise of human reason, which *among other things* informs our understanding of reality. All I am saying is that when textual criticism has done its work, all we can say is, "These are the results of textual criticism". We cannot say, "This is the ultimate nature of the true meaning of the text." We must go where reason takes us, but then we have to take reason itself with a grain of salt, as one human faculty among many, one might almost say one human quirk among many.
I know a little about the philosophy of physics and mathematics, and I can tell you that even in those hard sciences, the paths of reason end up eventually in untraceable swamps of confusion, and one has to be content in the end with a little pragmatic instrumentalism: "this works, so to that extent it must be in some sense true."
Textual criticism must be pursued because we can't help but to pursue it, and we must then address the consequences. But I don't think anyone ever came to believe the Gospel because they have learned that the latest scholarship gives it a high probability of being true. That is why Kierkegaard had to pronounce sentence upon it (with brutal hyperbole) in saying, "Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible." [from Journals and Papers, cf. http://www.plough.com/ebooks/Provocations.html ] Faith is too important to leave to the scholars.
Let us have scholarship by all means! Let us learn all we can of the history and philology of Biblical times and language. Paul is a much more interesting figure when we have learned more about his world. Early Israel comes into sharper focus when we know something of the chaotic transition from bronze to iron ages. The subtleties of Greek and Hebrew idioms sometimes make apparently vague statements vivid and concrete when we understand them better. But let us also have a little "Fear and Trembling", knowing that our own cleverness can deceive us. Above all, we should not have any delusions about being able to "prune" the canonical books down to size with modern insight. We do much better to let them prune us.
To continue with Kierkegaard's paragraph: "Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."
I don't think this is throwing in the towel. It is just a different view of priorities and the hierarchies of wisdom.
Hi Jay:
I have dealt with the Zeitgeist movie on my blog and didn't see any need at all to deal with the God who Isn't there its such a poor piece of work, reflecting no real historical scholarship worth mentioning.
Blessings,
BW3
Ben,
Off topic, but important, I think. With all the fear and trepidation expressed about your move to BeliefNet, I have had no problems with the site or keeping up with you, whatsoever.
Bill
I enjoyed this particular video over Isaiah, thank you Dr. Witherington.
Dr. Witherington, I agree with you completely about the film. It is sad to see it being so heavily advertised in DVD form on the NYT website.
More to the point - have you responded in your scholarly literature to the work of Robert Price. I've read your commentaries and know well (and agree with) your arguments on the historicity of the gospels. I don't understand how obviously well-informed scholars like Price miss the socio-rhetorical make-up of the gospels.
Blessings,
Jay Hutchens
Dr. Witherington, I found what I was looking for here...
http://blog.beliefnet.com/bibleandculture/2008/03/earl-dohertys-the-jesus-puzzle----an-exercise-in-mythmaking.html
Thanks again for your work. As a pastor wanting to tell God's good news relevantly as well as respond in an informed way to culture's "critiques" of Christianity, I find your work invaluable.
Blessings,
Jay Hutchens
Lead Pastor
Promise Church
Jackson, TN
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