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Re: question
Dear Avi (what is the short form you use?)
It has to be brief - late afternoon and I am heeding for home:
Dear Niels,
I can't continue this conversation on ioudaios since I am not a
correspondent there, but let me make some brief commendts.
1) Thank you for your clarifications.
2) It is obvious and universally accepted that the canonical book of
Isaiah reached its extant form after the time of third Isaiah, whenever
that may have been. This does not mean, by any stretch of the
imagination that the prophecies in the first 39 chapters are all from
third isaiah. It does not even mean that any substantial art of them
derive from the anonymous post-exilic voice. I doubt taht a majority of
scholars would go so far as Otto Kaiser to giving Isaiah ben Amotz only a
verse or two here or there.
It is obvious that the point of departure will be decisive for the
answer to the question. According to NPL and Tom Thompson and a bunch
of other cronies, we have no idea of whether anything attributed by
the editor of the book of Isaiah really goes back to this person.
Apart from that, and from the discusion about Shear Jashub, Isa 4 may
after all be a late addition to Proto-Isaiah. You hardly have to side
with Kaiser Otto for that.
3) Good thing you mention Nehemiah's Denkschrift, agreeably a document of
post-exilic date. BUt consider Isaiah's so called Denkschrift. Does it
not mention she'ar yashuv? If you grant that this passage is "authentic"
ie 8th century (and you probably don't
That's right!
), and not a post-exilic fabrication
why always a fabrication? Why this derogatory term. It's part of the
book of Isaiah, and derives its value from that fact. As if only
pre-exilic words which could probably be traced back to Isaiah had
any value.
It's our sense of history which creates the idea of fabrication.
then the idea of the remnant is indeed an eighth century concept so there
is no reason to point to chapter 4 as reflecting some late idea, and more
difficult to associate it with any post-exilic sectarian thinking.
4) The earliest hint of something which might refer to an evolving sect
within the Israelite/ Judaen/ Jewish community seems to me to be in
Malachi where he speaks about God making a segulah (bayom asher ani oseh
segullah), obviously applying to a part of extant Israel a term known
from the Sinai revelation as descriptive of God's selection of the entire
nation.
Victor Avigdor Hurowitz
I would say-according to the usual view ...
The interesting point is that the idea of Israelite society in the OT
may not be a reflection of any old idea about a real society; but it
is rather a reflection of the past. I shall try to deal with this in
a more extensive form in my forthcoming Westminster Volume on the
Ancient Israelies in History and Tradition (in Doug Knight's series
Literature of Ancient Israel).
My first entry into prophetic studies was, by the way, in the
Blenkinsopp festschrift four years ago.
NPL
NB: and private: I hadn't deleted this, only stored it away in a
different place.
Niels Peter Lemche
Dep. Biblical Studies
University of Copenhagen
Phone: 45 49 13 81 24
Fax: 45 49 13 81 28
e-mail: npl@teol.ku.dk