 We're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, click at NakedBiblePodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on New Start Here at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 217, Authorship and Date of the Book of Isaiah. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar. Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike. Welcome back. We made it. Oh, it is so good to be back. I just... Again and again, I'm just so glad to be back. There's nothing like your own bed, but no, the Israel trip was absolutely amazing. I already missed all the people. Yeah, that's true. We met on there, give a quick shout out to Phillip Keith, actually our first Keith on the bus. Still backpacking right now. Yeah, he's backpacking right now on his own through Israel. So that's amazing and shout out to Rhonda. We made lots of good friends there and Phillip and Rhonda. It was fun. It was really fun. And then Danny, of course. So real quick, Mike, we recorded you. Thank goodness for the help of Danny from West Virginia, a big 12 guy. I gotta give him a shout out. We're going to take a video of all the people that recorded you talking in these locations. And my hope is to put together a well put video of you speaking at these different locations and put it up on YouTube eventually. So just know hopefully that'll come out. And we could not have done that without the help of everybody there and especially Danny. So I just want to give them a big shout out. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like I put in my post that the best part is always meeting people and hearing their stories. And their stories naturally include, you know, why in the world are you here? You know, how'd you come across the podcast and, you know, the books and all that stuff. So it's fun to hear that. But just the personalities are a lot of fun. Can you give everybody a tit and go just a quick run down of what we did? Some of the things we saw. Yeah, we went to, we were in Nazareth for a couple of evenings and we did the things in Nazareth. They have a Nazareth village there. For instance, you know, where they have people in character and you go around and you talk about what life would have been like in the first century. We went to a couple disputed areas, you know, that disputed area refers to the fact that the Palestinian authority in the state of Israel, you know, argue about, you know, who should have jurisdiction over that. Peace of turf. Bethel is in a disputed area. We went to Shiloh. That's another one in a disputed area. So I'd say about half the places that we went, I had not been to 30, 32 years ago. So it's kind of nice to get into some of these places. Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, those are kind of staples, you know, for any tour. But I just personally like to see a Galilee stuff just to take a little, little ride out on the Sea of Galilee is always great. And that was a, that was kind of a planned, you know, worship time as well, which I thought was was really, you know, uplifting. It was a blessing. We went to the Golan, which had been there briefly before again, 32 years ago. That was where we actually heard the fighter jet overhead during lunchtime. We didn't really know what was going on until the next day that we found out that, you know, they had they had bombed, you know, taken out some sites. It's just another day in Israel, you know, it's like, you know, I can imagine the kids getting up in the morning and, and, you know, hearing news about something happened with the army and the parents saying, yeah, that's all right. You know, we bombed our enemies again, but you still got to go to school, you know, just like a snow day is over here. I'm speaking for myself here. I don't think we were ever, you know, in a situation that would have given us any, you know, worry or consternation didn't feel that at all. It was just sort of business as usual. And, you know, we, we wound up in the street party for the moving of the embassy and the anniversary date. In our case, it was just kind of kind of happened. It wasn't on the schedule to wind up in the street party, but we did. We did a video of that online to just, you know, it every day was packed. It was full, you know, of things to see, you know, and again, just the people sort of make the difference, you know, the groups that you meet and, you know, go around to listen that with and, you know, have dinner with have lunch with, you know, for me that that's always the highlight, part, you know, because I have my head in this stuff a lot. And again, I had been there once before. So who you're with really makes a lot of difference, at least for me. So it was, it was good. I mean, it was good, even despite the fact that there were places that we couldn't get to. You know, you can't go to Bethlehem anymore. You can't go to Jericho because the thing and those are areas that are under Palestinian authority and whatnot. But we did get to go the Mount of Olives, which was kind of nice. But what that was not was actually removed from the itinerary once we got there because they were it's high ground over the old city. And so they were afraid of that there might be a presence up there trying to disrupt, you know, the proceedings, you know, the celebration. And so they had that area blocked off, but we, they lifted that day after and we got to go. So it was just a good time. It was interesting, good time. And I would certainly, you know, highly recommend if you've ever gone over to Israel, you should go over. Just be prepared for full days, long days, lots of walking. It was pretty exhausting. It was always had something and always move in. But I find it was pretty interesting that you just walking among the ruins. I mean, it's just you've got clay pottery from the Roman Empire scattered just literally on the ground under your feet. You're just walking around it. Nothing's really quarantine off. I mean, it's just crazy that everywhere you turned, every rock you walked on is ancient. It was really, I was going to say, you mentioned pottery. It was really strange. You know, one of the places that I hadn't been before was the Valley of Elah, which is where David killed Goliath. And there's pottery laying all over the place up there. Yeah. I mean, it's almost everywhere you walk. There's a little piece of pottery. It's like, what's up with that? That really surprised me that that hasn't been sort of combed through. But there it is, you know, just everywhere. I mean, everywhere you looked, there's so much history. It's just mind blowing. It's hard to wrap your mind around it when you're physically there. And just the lushness of it, our guide, he loved the agriculture piece of Israel. So we got a lot of information about all of that, which is interesting because I was expecting more of a desert. I know in south it is, but north and I didn't realize how lush and green and rolling hills it was. It was very pretty. Yeah. Yeah, it was. It was. And that's, and that's the contrast the north to the south. Definitely. I guess for me, the highlight, you know, a highlight would have been Mount Hermon. I had never been to Banias before. You know, the grotto of pan upon this rock, you know, the gates of hell scene. So I, this was the first time that I'd been there. But yeah, it's, it's kind of, I mean, it is staggering, you know, to be at these places. And, you know, sure, there's, there's, you know, some, some kind of commercial sorts of things going on. And there are places where, well, is this the authentic spot or not? But there are plenty of places that, yep, this is it. You know, this, this is the place where this happened. This is the place where so and so live like Peter's house at Capernaum. There it is, you know. And so if you get a chance to go, you really should go at least once. But again, be prepared, be prepared. It's the days are full and it can be exhausting, but it's worth the experience at least once in your life. Yeah. And again, I cannot stress how much fun it was to get to know some of these people. I could give Susan a shout out in Alaska because I got to give her Alaskan crew a shout out and Dwayne, and Monica, and, and Arizona, and, you know, just all the people, you know, several mics. Yeah, several mics. Everybody once they realized who I was, it was funny. Like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how big you were. You don't, you know, you don't match your voice. So happy. Well, we were more than, we were more than halfway through. And one evening I, you know, I asked him first, you know, obviously, but Fern and Audrey and Beth were in this trip. And so I asked them, hey, you know, has anybody sort of heard you guys talk and then sort of done the math like, oh, your voice sounds familiar. Are you, you know, a firm from the, these podcast episodes. And they said a couple people had, but, you know, we, we let people know that again a little over halfway through the trip during an evening session. And I think people really, you know, most people were surprised by that, you know, had heard it. But that was just an added element, you know, to get to, to meet people who are sort of like, you know, personalities now on the podcast. And people were not expecting that. And then for us, you know, it's just, you know, listeners, you know, people I get email from people who've sent me things. And, you know, then you get to actually meet them. So that, again, to me, I'm not being patronizing here. To me, that is the best part of trips like this or even events, you know, that we would, we would do throughout the year far and away. That's the best part for me. Yeah, absolutely. Me as well. And we're going to have another opportunity to meet our listeners. Because we're going to have our first annual negative Bible conference in August in Dallas, Texas. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping listeners have read my, you know, some of what I put on the website about this again, I, I have no trouble being blunt here. This is the conference event to go to if you care about biblical content. If you follow this podcast if you if you like, you know, the things that I write that this is the kind of kind of conference you're going to enjoy and frankly that that everybody really needs anybody who's interested in biblical stuff. You know, Poo Poo anybody else's conference, you know, unnecessarily or anything like that. But like I put on the website, you know, you're not going to get to hear amateur enthusiasts, you know, who love scripture spent a lot of time studying it, you know, but they're they're lay people they're not specialists but they're tenacious researchers and that's all good. But these are real scholars in one place. And I've had picked these people because they care about communicating content to people outside the Academy. They're they're in stride with what we're trying to do here. Their content is good. Some of them are leading scholars in their fields. I mean, a well known among their own peer group, they're all, you know, bona fide scholars published under peer review. This is not, again, I don't want to be harsh or it's going to sound harsh, but that's not my intention. But this is not amateur hour. This is the real deal. I mean, for for me as a scholar and and you know, even, you know, train out we've gone to SBL, AAR, ETS, you know, for three or four years now. And Trey is is, you know, sort of now the lay person who gets to look at what scholars kind of do every year and we're used to it. You know, I've been going to academic conferences since the early 90s. But a lot of people in this audience, these are the people that that I just talk about or I reference their books. Well, we're trying to bring them to you. And again, we're handpicking these people because of the stuff that they're into. We know will will be of high interest to people who attend, and because they want to do it. I mean, they want to communicate outside the Academy. So that's not the norm within the Academy. But we know the people out there who, you know, want to try to do want to try to contribute to what we're doing here and they are the top of the line in their field. You got to go here and you got to experience it. This is a this is not your your average Bible conference. It's not preachy. It's nothing like that. This is solid content. And you get to meet these people and ask them questions. And, you know, what can I say, you know, we're just trying to do more of the kind of thing we do in the podcast in this event. And so please please register. Seating is limited. You're going to hear us talk about this from here to August. And we're serious about it. Seating is limited. So we hope to see you there. Make it an event, you know, a good event to the summer. It's just going to be a good time. Yes. And I can't stress, please, if you want more of this type of events, then you need to come out and support these. And this event so we can do more of them because that's what we're about. And you can go register at nakedbibleconference.com. You can go on there, see the speakers, the schedule. It's going to again, again, it's going to be August 18th. That's all day Saturday starting at eight in the morning. All the way to probably seven or eight at night. So it's going to be an all day event. All of the scholars will be accessible. So if you want to get their books signed, take pictures or just mingle and network with local people, you can feel free to do that. Hopefully that's what this event will start. I should add one more thing that the people that I've asked to participate in this first conference, all of them are new in terms of the podcast audience. None of them have been on the podcast or that that's going to change because in the next few weeks we're going to have two of them. We're going to do interviews with two of them, but they have not been on the podcast before. So I wanted me in the future, you know, we'll have Dave Burnett. Dave might even show up to this. I don't know, but we'll have Dave, we'll have Ron Johnson, you know, we'll have some of the people we already had on. But the again, I'm trying to find anybody that I that I can to widen the appeal, the content appeal to people who listen to the podcast regularly. So these are all, you know, newcomers to you as as listeners. And again, you know, we're going to have a couple of them on anyway, right before the conference, but this is intentional. You know, we're trying to to ferret out scholars who, you know, want to do this kind of thing, appreciate what we're trying to do with the podcast and have real, you know, high level material but can communicate it as well. And this conference is not going to be live streamed. And I can't promise that there will be video of it. We're working on it and everything, but I am not going to promise anything. So if you really want to come and get your hands on these papers and hear these scholars first hand, I really encourage you to register at nakedbibleconference.com. So you won't miss out because again, we only have 300 seats. It is limited. These seats are super comfortable, Mike. I rather than I saw a picture. We got to keep people awake. I know. Well, rather, you know, I'm all about being comfortable. You know, I go to these conferences and they got these tiny little chairs and they're hard. You're sitting there all day long listening to these scholars. I mean, you got to pump yourself full of caffeine. You got to sit there on these uncomfortable chairs and that's just not how I roll, Mike. We may have to run an electrical current in some of the seats, man. So they're cushy. The Obney Hotel has a classroom called the Texas Learning Center and it's these it's got, you know, these nice big plush. I don't know if they're leather or not, but these big oversized cushiony chairs with tables in front of you, you know, in a stadium seating style. So it's really nice. It's going to be really comfortable. Plenty of room to bring paper notebooks, take notes, Peter, whatever you want. So, you know, plenty of room to stretch out, which, you know, Mike, unlike the plans. Let's not encourage this is much better than the flights to and from Israel. Let me tell you, but I know, I know I managed to get back. All right. So I'm telling you, this conference is going to be super comfortable. So nakedbibleconference.com, please register and don't wait. Hopefully we'll have some more things to talk about as the summer goes on as the date approaches. But until then, I mean, that's pretty much it. We hope to see everybody there. Please bring your books for Mike to sign and your cameras to take pictures and your questions. Most of all, because there's going to be a two hour Q&A session with all of the scholars. So please, please, please bring your questions. And hopefully it's just going to be a great learning experience for everybody. And I'm going to be last note here. I'm going to be blogging about each of the speakers and their topics. So again, you'll begin to see those things appear and reappear on my website and Facebook and whatnot. So when you see one of those, give it a read through. That'll give you some context and probably generate some questions already. So what Trey is telling you, that's good advice, you know, be thinking about the topics, come with questions and ask the scholars. All right, Mike. Well, Switching Gears today is all about the book of Isaiah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Something long fought about and fought over. So I've gotten a number of emails about this topic. A few things have sort of surfaced in Q&A that kind of touches on the periphery of some of this. I think we've had questions about Daniel and maybe Joe. We're going to cover some of those books in other episodes, but this one's related. I've gotten, again, a couple emails about something about the authorship and date of Isaiah. So I figured, you know, that's the one we're going to start with and we'll pick up the others as we proceed through the summer. But by virtue of kind of jumping into this with an overview, I want to overview the two sides of this question. When was Isaiah written and who wrote it? Is it one author, the prophet that we know as Isaiah, or more than one author, the prophet plus some other people at different times? So that's sort of the fundamental topic. And you say, well, you know, why does it matter? Who cares? Well, you keep listening and you'll realize, you know, why this has been a fight and a debate. And then, you know, we'll wind up and I'll sort of give my two cents on the topic as well. To start off here, we have to realize that, you know, Isaiah, in the Scripture itself, Isaiah has never actually said to have written the whole book either. That's never said in the book of Isaiah. There are a few passages, really just a handful, where he writes anything. Isaiah 8-1, for instance. The Lord said to me, take a large tablet, write on it in common characters belonging to Mahershalal Hashbaz, you know, this name. So it's a reference to Isaiah writing something. Isaiah 30, verse 8. And now go write it before them on a tablet and scribe it in a book. It may it be for the time to come as a witness forever. And so, you know, again, that has its context. There's something being referred to there specifically and written down. But even that verse doesn't say, doesn't really credit the whole book with or to Isaiah. Unlike some other biblical books where that idea is telegraphed a bit more clearly, where there's some authorship attribution kind of at the beginning. It's not not so much the case, you know, with with Isaiah, which is, you know, sort of fed into this whole controversy. Now, again, by way of the sort of elevator explanation, you know, the real shorthand explanation of both sides of this, here it is. The traditional view, one that you probably have heard of at some point in biblical study, the Inchurch or on your own. The traditional view is that the entirety of Isaiah, all 66 chapters, was written by the 8th century prophet Isaiah. Now, Isaiah's own lifetime date in his own chronology is secure by virtue of his contact with specific kings. You have mentions of Uzziah, Ahaz, Hezekiah. And so it's easy to situate Isaiah and therefore the book, you know, in the traditional view that he's the author of the entire thing. It's easy to situate that in the late 8th century BC, which would be the lower 700 BC numbers, on into the early 7th century BC, that would be the upper 600 numbers, like 690 BC is the early 7th century BC. So somewhere in that date range, late 8th century to early 7th century BC is when Isaiah lived. And that would put the entire book in that period and therefore a century before the exile of the southern kingdom of Judah. Right? Simple enough. Now, the other side of this, the modern, you know, what we'll call the modern critical consensus. This is where virtually, well, it is virtually where all critical scholars are critical being defined as scholars who are non-confessional. I mean, they're not evangelicals. They don't have a particular faith commitment, or they don't have a particular attachment to the idea of inspiration. That's what I mean by critical. I don't want to say that conservative, theologically-minded, confessional scholars aren't critical thinkers. That isn't the point at all. But critical being used in terms of higher critical methodology, which is typically associated with a non-confessional, non-evangelical, non-theological context. So modern critical consensus is that the book of Isaiah can be nicely broken into three sections, each of which had its own author. So there are like three Isaias. That's why you get language like First Isaiah, Second Isaiah, also known as Dutero Isaiah, and Third Isaiah, Trito Isaiah. You'll read it in different books. So the breakdown is the first 39 chapters, Isaiah 1 through 39, would be First Isaiah. Again, that would be the prophet as we know him. And again, we just talked about his dates. So first 39 chapters would be associated with the prophet Isaiah. And then from that point on, chapters 40 through 55, and then chapters 56 through 66, that would be Second and Third Isaiah. You got two more books, two more sections. The latter two of those sections, chapters 40 through 55 and 56 through 66, are dated to the time of the exile or the end of the exile, even after the exile. So right away you have a significant chronological difference, and you have a pretty clear authorial difference in the modern critical view. So that's in a nutshell what the two views are. For our purposes, I'm going to refer to them as the single author view, One Isaiah, the prophet himself, versus multiple authorship. So single versus multiple authorship, those are the two fundamental views. I should point out before we get into how each of those views is sort of argued or why each of those views is taken. We have to realize that the multiple authorship view is not merely a modern idea. That's contrary to what some fundamentalists or very conservative evangelicals want to say or want to lead you to believe. It's actually an old view. For instance, the Baba Batra, one of the tractates of the Talmud, which dates to around 200 AD, notes that quote, Hezekiah and his colleagues wrote Isaiah, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Kohelet. It's another name for Ecclesiastes. So even as old as the Talmud, you have multiple authors or multiple hands being considered responsible for the book that we know as Isaiah. So it's not a recent view. It's not like this has never been heard of until the 19th century, sort of the heyday of higher criticism. That just isn't true. And a lot of times the single authorship view will want to sort of color its opponent, the other side, as being a modern invention. And that's just really not the case. Denial of single authorship was around in the medieval period as well. You see it referred to. By that time, it was considered a heresy within the Jewish community, even though the Talmud suggests it. So it's kind of weird, but that's just the way it is. So how is each view argued? I'm going to start with the traditional view, single authorship. How is this primarily defended? Now this is going to be sort of a positive and negative thing. There's going to be ways that this is articulated and defended. And there's also going to be sort of at the same time arguments against any other idea, namely more than one author. So first of all, the first defense of the traditional view is that New Testament writers frequently quote from chapters in all of the sections of Isaiah, all the presumed sections of Isaiah. And they connect what they quote to the prophet Isaiah himself. Now, there's a list of these that I could go through. I'm not going to go through the whole list here, but just by way of some examples, for instance, the ones that really matter for our discussion would be anything after chapter 39, because when you hit that chapter 39, chapter 40 breaking point, that hinge point from chapter 40 onward, that's what the multiple authorship view considers non-Isaiah, that it's not the prophet himself, it's some later person, later date, later person. So if you look at Matthew 3.3, we read, And for this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his past straight. That's a quote by Matthew of Isaiah 40, verses three through five. And again, look at the formulaic language. This is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah. So it really sounds like Matthew is quoting Isaiah 40, and he's considering the author to be Isaiah. We have the same thing in Mark 1.3 quotes the same passage, Matthew 12, 18 through 21. We have a quotation there from Isaiah 42. It is again attributed to Isaiah, Romans 10 and 16. But they have not all obeyed the gospel for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? That's a quotation by Isaiah 53 verse one, Matthew 8.17. He also fulfilled was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. That's a quote of Isaiah 53 verse four, so on and so forth. So you've got basically, oh, half a dozen passages. You know, the more famous one is Jesus Sermon at Nazareth. Luke chapter four, he quotes Isaiah 61. Paul quotes Isaiah 65 somewhere else. You've got about half a dozen passages that come from Isaiah 40 onward. Again, these two, or again, for our purposes, the section of Isaiah, Isaiah 40 through 66, that is purported to come from different hands other than the prophet himself and at a date that, you know, is long after Isaiah's own lifetime. So the first argument is, hey, New Testament writers thought that this was all Isaiah. So that's again kind of the initial argument to defend the traditional view, the single author view. Number two, second, there's also the charge by single author proponents that multiple authorship undermines predictive prophecy or that the multiple authorship approach was invented specifically to deny predictive prophecy. And for example, the big example is Cyrus. So we have Isaiah 44-8 and Isaiah 45 verse one specifically mentioned Cyrus. You know, he's the king of Persia. Cyrus, of course, allowed the Jews to return from exile in, you know, right around 539, 538 BC. So if you're a multiple authorship person, you're attributing that content, that those references to Cyrus as being something that the original prophet Isaiah never wrote, but somebody later, living later, living at the end of the exile or after the exile, but that's when those two verses, Isaiah 44-8, Isaiah 45-1, that's when those two verses that mentioned Cyrus got written. And there are people who look at that and say, well, if you're going to say that, then that takes away the notion that Isaiah living in the eighth century predicted the coming of Cyrus. And so the idea is that undermines predictive prophecy. If you attribute all this to a later author, it allows you to deny that Isaiah predicted the future. And then that idea or that conclusion, I should say, gets extended to Isaiah 53. And so proponents of single authorship charge that any other view, any other view other than single authorship disallows Isaiah, the ability, the reality of having predicted the future, including the prediction of the suffering servant, the suffering Messiah. So you can see that this would be sort of a powerful rhetorical argument in favor of single authorship, or at least this is how it's presented. Third argument, third way single authorship is defended, is the great Isaiah scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The great Isaiah scroll contains all 66 chapters. And so the argument goes, well, look, here you got the oldest manuscript of the book of Isaiah, and all 66 chapters are there. And there's like no breaks in the chapters. There's no divisions in the books. There's no indication by the scribe that here's where one book ends, and here's where another began, and we just sort of put them together. If there's a 66 chapter flow, you know, just like there, you would expect it with single authorship. So that's the third argument. The fourth and last argument to defend the traditional view is that there are pre-exilic elements, pre-exilic things, pre-exilic references, stuff that happens before the exile, that it can actually be found in the allegedly later section in Isaiah 40 through 66. So you get these later, the later stuff, again, that's supposed to be written, you know, well after Isaiah's lifetime, after the exile. But there will be stuff in there that refers to things, conditions that were true before the exile. For instance, the references to idolatry. Idolatry was wiped out of the Israelite experience after the exile. They were cured of their idolatry because the idolatry was why they went into exile. And so it's a very well-known historical fact that, you know, once the Jews returned from Babylon after the exile in Babylon, they're not doing idolatry anymore. In fact, they're just going like crazy in the other direction. You know, the Torah actually becomes sort of an object of worship at this point. And, you know, because the law is the thing that protects us, you know, following the law and having fence laws and just really being tenacious about the Torah, that's going to keep us from idolatry. Because idolatry is the last thing in the world we're interested in doing because we all know what happened. We experience what happened. And our ancestors did because of it. Well, you get references to idolatry, the practice of idolatry in Isaiah 40 through 66. And so the single author view says, well, how can that be? I mean, that's proof that those chapters, 40 through 66, have a pre-exilic writer because he's still talking about idolatry. So in summary, that's how the single authorship view is articulated and defended. Those are sort of the underpinnings of the view. Primary arguments for multiple authors. Again, two or three Isaias, so to speak. The first argument made to articulate that view is that the historical outlook of the book of Isaiah differs fairly deratically between chapters 1 through 39 and chapters 40 through 66. The historical setting of Isaiah 1 through 39 is primarily the 8th century BC. The big bad enemy is Assyria. Because in the 700s, they were a threat. The northern 10 tribes, the northern kingdom, are going to get conquered by Assyria. You have these episodes with Sennacherib and all this kind of stuff going on. Assyria is the focus. Well, those are 8th century BC conditions. After chapter 40, you don't hear anything about Assyria. It's Cyrus and the Persians or references to Babylon. So it just doesn't look like the same setting for the content. And the multiple author view says, well, of course it's not because after chapter 40, Isaiah 40 through 66 was written at a later time. It's written beyond the Assyrian period into the Babylonian and the Persian period, the exile and then after the exile. This is why the scenery, so to speak, the setting of the material is so different than the first 39 chapters. Different author, different time. Number two, there are different themes, therefore, and subject matter between chapters 1 through 39 and 40 through 66. The chapters 1 through 39 have Assyria in view as the dominant power and the subject of judgment. When there's judgment language going on, you're going to have two targets in Isaiah 1 through 39. It's going to be Israel and the northern kingdom. Then they're going to serve as a warning to the southern kingdom and Assyria. Now, there's two sort of outliers here that we're going to return to briefly. Isaiah 13 and 14 is about Babylon, though. It's kind of interesting. Babylon was not a power, though, in the 8th century. Multiple authorship view would have an explanation. We'll get to what their explanation is for why Isaiah 13 and 14 are where they are, because it doesn't make any sense to have them as a bad guy in the 8th century because they were a podunk city. They were not a threat. Assyria was dominant in the ancient Near East. Babylon would have been a speck on the map, just really not even in the picture. Historically, we know this is the case. They're going to say it's just a different focus. It's only after 39, when you get chapters 40 through 66, that Babylon becomes more in view than the Persians. Then you have deliverance of Judah by the Persians. You have these mentions of Cyrus. The judgment language, again, is directed toward Babylon. You have this language of deliverance. Your captivity is over. Isaiah 40. You have that kind of language happen through chapters 40 through 66, but you don't get it in the first 39 chapters. Thematically, there's difference. Third, third defense of multiple authorship, or at least third indication, according to this view. This is, I think, a pretty substantial one. There are references to Judah, the kingdom of Judah, as desolated and Jerusalem as desolated, and the temple as destroyed in the second half of the book. Well, that would seemingly have to indicate that the second half of the book is later than the first half, because in the first half of the book in the 8th century, when Isaiah is alive, Jerusalem isn't destroyed. The temple isn't destroyed. But yet you've got, I'll just read you a few. Isaiah 44, 26. Who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, quote, she shall be inhabited, and of the cities of Judah they shall be built, and I will raise up their ruins. Isaiah 58, 12. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt, and you shall raise up the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repair of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. Isaiah 61, 4. They shall build up the ancient ruins. They shall raise up the former devastations. They shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. Isaiah 63, 18. Your holy people held possession for a little while. Our adversaries have trampled down your sanctuary. Isaiah 64, 10. Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wilderness. Jerusalem is a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned with fire. And all our pleasant places have become ruins. Now that's a picture of a destroyed Jerusalem and a destroyed temple. That was not the case in the 8th century. It just wasn't. Even by the biblical account. And so people will look at these passages and say, well, in what we read there, these aren't predictions of conditions to come. These are present realities that the readers of these chapters in Isaiah, from chapter 44, excuse me, on through 64, the stuff I just read. This second part of the book, this is their reality. Jerusalem's destroyed. The temple's destroyed. This is post-exilic material. And again, they're not worded. I just read them to you. They're not worded as prophecies. It doesn't say this is going to happen. It's described actually as what you see here is going to get reversed. They're going to get rebuilt and that kind of thing. So it's cast as a present condition. And so the argument is made that there's just no way an 8th century guy could have written that. So those are the three arguments again for single authorship and then multiple authorship. So we've sort of got the lay of the land now between the two views. Now, how do we evaluate this? And that's another way of asking how does each view respond to the other view? Now, my focus here is really going to be how evangelicals talk about this. And the reason for that is critics who are hostile or apathetic to the internal integrity of Scripture or a particular doctrine of inspiration. They're just going to say, well, the author of this or that passage just made mistakes. It's simple for them. For those who have a high view of Scripture, how do they talk about this? Because you have evangelicals who predominantly take the traditional view, but you still have evangelicals and I know some of these people personally who take the multiple authorship view of Isaiah. But they're evangelicals. They're followers of Jesus Christ. They're believers and they believe in inspiration. They have a high view of Scripture, but nevertheless they take the multiple authorship view against the traditional view. So how do the people who have a high view of Scripture and who are on both sides of this, how do they respond to each other? That's what we want to focus on here. So those evangelicals with a high view of Scripture who defend multiple authorship, we're going to start with the multiple authorship, how they would respond to the single authorship. Those people who have a high view of Scripture who defend multiple authorship would approach the arguments for a single authorship, something like this. Here's how they would respond. In the first regard, on the matter of New Testament citations of all parts of Isaiah as stuff Isaiah said, they would say, well, you know, other Old Testament books are cited by the name of a person, a book that is named after a person, when no claim is made in that book that the person actually wrote the book. In other words, use of the name, Isaiah in this case, may just indicate reference of the book as it exists and not the person himself. And it makes no claim on authorship. It's just a citation of the book by title. I mean, we do this just to put it in present day. We talk about, well, Samuel says, you know, first or second Samuel, well, the books of first and second Samuel never claimed that Samuel wrote them. But we still refer to the book by that name. But when we do that, we're using the title of the book as a reference point. We're not making a claim on authorship. So again, those who hold multiple authorship would say, look, this is how we need to understand New Testament citations from all parts of Isaiah. It's not that the New Testament writers are asserting any particular view of authorship. They're just referring to the book as it stands. You get this, you know, I guess it's illustrative this way. In Matthew 2415, for instance, so when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place, so on and so forth. Well, Jesus is there referring to the book of Daniel. And again, the book of Daniel, there's no claim in the book of Daniel that Daniel wrote it. So here Jesus is referring to the book. Everybody knows what he's talking about when he says Daniel, the prophet. Well, that's the book that bears Daniel's name. And so the argument is, well, we need to look at the citations of Isaiah in these later parts as the same kind of thing. So that multiple authorship, even if Isaiah didn't actually write that, that content that's being quoted is in the book named after Isaiah. And that's why you get the citation language that you do. You know, we could also throw in, you know, citations in the New Testament of the Torah, you know, the law of Moses. I mean, there, you know, I've mentioned this before, and we actually had a recent one of these in a Q&A. There are parts of the Torah that I think are pretty clear that Moses didn't write that. I mean, the easy one is his own death, Deuteronomy 34, but we had Deuteronomy 32, 17 come up in a Q&A recently. They sacrificed, you know, Israel sacrificed to demons, you know, that were not God, you know, not the true God, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come along recently. Well, you read Deuteronomy 32, it's kind of a rehearsal of Israel's, you know, history. And when did the Israelites go after other gods? You know, that's really a condition that post-dates the conquest. You know, it really starts with the failure of the conquest. You know, at the end of Book of Joshua, the beginning of the Book of Judges, it's very clear that Israel's start, you know, they failed to complete the conquest and they start going after other gods and you've got this problem with idolatry, then that works its way through Samuel and kings when people are just sacrificing everywhere. And that can be legit because there's no temple yet but once, you know, Solomon builds the temple and then the kingdom splits, those high places keep being used and they get used for idolatry instead of worshiping at Jerusalem and it becomes an abominable, these are all conditions well after the time of Moses. And so Deuteronomy 32, 17 seems to fairly clearly see something that wasn't the present condition when Moses was still alive. But nevertheless, it's in the Torah, it's Deuteronomy 32. You've got Deuteronomy 16 would be another example where the rules for the Passover change in Exodus, the rules for the Passover, you observe this in your house. In Deuteronomy 16, that's not the case. You're forbidden from observing Passover in your house. Why? Because you should observe Passover in the place where the Lord has chosen to set His name, the temple. We don't have a temple yet in Moses' day. Again, Deuteronomy 16 clearly seems to reflect a time when we have a central sanctuary and that's why Passover rules change because now we have a spot, we have a temple, we have this place that God told us this is where you worship. That wasn't the condition back in the days of Moses. So you have things like this. Those are real quick examples. There are a number of these kinds of things in the Torah but it's still legitimate to call the Torah the law of Moses because again, it's associated with Moses. He's the main character. He's the central figure in the story. Again, my own view of the Torah authorship is that there's a mosaic core that Moses indeed is responsible for and that gets accrued to over the course of time. Other writers link back into mosaic legislation and we have the formation of what we know as the Torah. It gets finally completed after Moses' lifetime but yet it's still, he's still associated with it of the story because he is the central figure at this point in Israel's history. So views of those who hold to multiple authorship for Isaiah say, look, this is how we need to think about these New Testament citations. People are citing books by the name or by the association that was common to them. A buyer in his encountering Isaiah textbook puts it this way. He says, these quotations indicate that people at this time view these words as authoritative scriptures spoken by the prophet Isaiah, but none of the quotations give much insight into the process of the composition of Isaiah's large book and that would be representative of how the multiple author view would handle these citations. Secondly, as to the defense of the, again the traditional view, we're talking about how those evangelicals, those people with a high view of Scripture who hold to multiple authorship, how do they answer the arguments for the traditional single authorship views? So secondly, the single authorship view defended itself in this matter of predictive prophecy. They would try to cast later authors, later hands, later authorial personalities in Isaiah 40 through 66 that if you believe that, then that undermines predictive prophecy. So those who defend multiple authorship, especially if they're evangelical, I mean they actually have something to say about that because they're not going to be disbelievers in predictive prophecy. So how do they respond to this? Well, they would ask a question like, does assigning the reference to Cyrus, do these references to Cyrus in Isaiah 44-8 and 45-1, are they really predictions? They would ask, do they sound like predictions? And I'm going to read you the passage. I'm going to start in Isaiah 44-24 and read through Isaiah 45-4. We'll hit both of the references to Cyrus here. Just listen, do these sound like predictions or does the text just read very naturally as a present set of conditions? Not predictions, but a present set of conditions. So Isaiah 44-24, thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb, I am the Lord who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish, who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, she shall be inhabited. That's Isaiah 44-26. Now in the 8th century, again I'm breaking in here, in the 8th century, Jerusalem's already inhabited. So again, how can this be a prediction of desolation? It seems to presume desolation, which would be a later time. Going back, I'll start at verse 26 again, who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, she shall be inhabited. And of the cities of Judah, they shall be built. Again, this is Mike breaking in. In the 8th century, Judah wasn't in ruins. Does this sound like a distant prediction or a current state of affairs? So those who hold multiple authorship are going to say, well this reference to Cyrus that's coming in two verses, is set in a time when Jerusalem is destroyed and Judah is destroyed. These things aren't predicted, they just are. And so the references to Cyrus aren't predictions of Cyrus, they're mentions of Cyrus being on the scene, being God's agent of deliverance. So let's go to verse 27, who says to the deep, be dry, I will dry up your rivers, who says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and he shall fulfill all my purpose, saying of Jerusalem, she shall be built. And of the temple, your foundations shall be laid. Now Mike breaking in again, does that verse sound like a prediction? How? How does it sound like a prediction? In the 8th century, Jerusalem was intact. The temple was intact. This sounds like a current state of affairs where the prophetic voice declares that Cyrus, the king of Persia, is going to be God's agent of deliverance. In this setting, he's going to deliver Judah where they are and where they are is a heap big trouble because Judah is destroyed, the temple is destroyed. God has raised up Cyrus now to do something about this current existing problem. So they would say that these aren't predictions. They reflect a current state of reality, which is in the 6th century, 530s, 539, 538 BC, well after the original author Isaiah lived. Now if we keep reading, now we hit Isaiah 45. 4428 is the last verse of chapter 44. Now we go right into chapter 45. Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings. To open doors before him that gates may not be closed, I will go before you and level the exalted places. I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, the hordes and secret places that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name. For the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel might chosen, though you do not know me. And that's the end of verse 4. Again, all of this can easily be read like a current state of affairs with the prophetic voice declaring Cyrus is going to be God's tool to deliver a desolated Judah and a destroyed temple. Cyrus is going to be the beginning of a reversal. So the question is, again, or the comeback of the multiple authorship position is, look, none of this reads like a prediction. It reads like a current state of affairs. So we're not undermining predictive prophecy. There are no predictions here. Now, what's interesting to me, and evangelicals that I know who take this view would say, look, Isaiah 53 really is a non-factor here because even if the material is written after the exile, Jesus, as the fulfillment of Isaiah 53, is 500 years later. It can't possibly, having Isaiah 53 written in the 530s BC, how can that possibly undermine predictive prophecy? Because we know how that prophecy, how that chapter gets fulfilled 500 years later. So evangelicals who would take the multiple authorship view would say, well, we're over here in the corner waving our hand. We still believe in predictive prophecy. Isaiah 53, Jesus, it's 500 years ahead of its time. We just don't think that these references to Cyrus and Isaiah 40 through 66, we don't think that's predictive prophecy. But Isaiah 53 being played out on the cross, well, that's certainly predictive prophecy. So our view of authorship has nothing to do with denying predictive prophecy. That is just a pejorative argument that has no foundation. And that's how the multiple author person, the evangelical, the one who cares about, again, the integrity of scripture, that's how they would respond. Third, with respect to the matter of the great Isaiah scroll, the multiple authorship crowd would say, who cares? That a copy of Isaiah includes all 66 chapters, doesn't say anything about how the original book came together. You'd expect copies of Old Testament books to be, well, copies of Old Testament books, not stages in production. Our Bibles have all 66 chapters. Every copy of the Maseridic text has 66 chapters. Every copy of the Septuagint, the Hebrew text that was used to produce the Septuagint, that had 66 chapters. None of that answers any question about how the original book came together. So the great Isaiah scroll is like, who cares? It just doesn't, it's not relevant to the whole question. Fourth, on the matter of pre-exilic elements in the allegedly later sections of Isaiah 40 through 66, the multiple authorship view would say, well, you know, that pre-exilic stuff, like all that talk about idolatry in a section that was written when there was no idolatry, those are flashbacks or just sort of rhetorical stuff. And I have to be honest with you. I think this is the weakest component of the multiple authorship view and response because, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander here. You know, just like you can say, well, you know, these references to Cyrus aren't worded in predictive language. Well, a lot of the references to idolatry in chapters 40 through 66, they're not articulated like they're flashbacks either. I'll just give you a few examples. Isaiah 40 verse 19, an idol, a craftsman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts it for silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that he will not rot, that will not rot. He seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. You know, he's making fun of idols. 42 verse 8, I am the Lord. That is my name, my glory I give to no other nor my praise to carved idols. You know, they just don't sound like flashbacks. They sound like poking fun at an existing practice, poking fun at idolatry. They turn back. Isaiah 42 verse 17, they turn back and utterly put to shame who trust in carved idols, who say to metal images, you are our gods. They just don't read that way. And so I think this is the weakest link in the multiple authorship response to the traditional view. Now let's flip the coin again. How about evangelicals who defend single authorship? How do they approach the defense of multiple authorship that we just covered? So how do they do that? Well, on the matter of the historical outlook, you know, that the book's historical outlook differs in chapters 1 through 39 and chapters 40 through 66. Let's say something like, well, the prophet Isaiah lived during the height of the Assyrian crisis. So the Assyrian outlook is understandable, you know, in the first 39 chapters. But the prophet had a sense, or he was told by God, that Babylon would become the major player. And the key chapter here is Isaiah 39. This is the episode, again, note the chapters, Isaiah 39, still in the first section of the book. But it's right on the cusp. It's at that hinge point now going into chapter 40. Isaiah 39 is the episode where Hezekiah entertains envoys from Babylon and shows them a little bit too much. Specifically in Isaiah 39, 5 through 8, we read this. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Here are the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold, the days are coming. Days are coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up to this day shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good, for he thought there will be peace and security in my days. That's kind of a cheap, you know, cheap consolation there, Hezekiah, but it's going to be okay while I'm alive, you know, later on that's not so good, you know. But you have this sense, again, that Babylon is going to become the villain. And when you get to chapters 40 through 66, you have more Babylonian material, and of course then you have Persian material. And so those who defend the single authorship view would say, you know, okay, you guys, you multiple author guys, yeah, there's different themes, there's different stuff going on in the two parts, two major sections of the book. But that's kind of expected. It's kind of the flow of history. The material about Babylon is mostly later. They would say now, we know that you guys are going to say, what about Isaiah 13 and 14? That's Babylon, that's misplaced because the villain's a Syria, you know. Why would material about Babylon be here? This doesn't make any sense. So the single authorship view would say, look, those chapters were inserted, you know, they would say by Isaiah. I would say by a later editor, but we'll get to my view. They were inserted in the first half of Isaiah in the section that we now know as the oracles against the nations. And that's true. You have Babylon included with the rest of the nations. So even though it looks really premature to have Babylon kind of being the focus of, you know, prophetic rhetoric because they're just podunk, it would make sense to put it there because it's the oracles of the nation's section of the book. And they would say, this is why it makes sense. And having Babylonish material in the first part of the book of Isaiah is not anachronistic. It makes sense to put it there because it just goes with the other oracles against the nations. So that's how single authorship would take care of that, you know, that argument. Another argument, I'm going to take the second and third here together. If you recall, the multiple authorship view defended itself on two more arguments. They would say there were different themes in both sections of the book and then there are references to Judah as desolate and the temple is destroyed in the second half of the book. So how does a single author person respond to that, you know, to those two pegs? They would say something like, well, chapter 39 marks a transition from Assyrian to Babylon as the real worry. God is leading Isaiah to foresee the Babylonian threat and the exile and deliverance. If you're thinking, well, that just doesn't sound terribly substantial. I agree with you. I think this point, this part of the response is the weakest point of rebuttal from the traditional view. So I pointed out earlier what I thought was the weak point of the multiple authorship response. I think this is the weak point of the single author response to their opponent. Again, this just sounds weak because the language of much of this material, again, about the exile, about Babylon deliverance is not cast as a prediction. It's really not cast as something foreseen. It's really cast as a current situation. And so I think to appeal to the idea of foreshadowing, God's just dripping out this information to the original prophet Isaiah. That would be stronger if those kinds of things like the destruction of Judah, the destruction of the temple, if they were cast as impending realities, like they are in Ezekiel. We went through the whole book of Ezekiel. Constantly saying, hey, this is going to happen. This is going to happen in Jerusalem. This is going to happen in the temple. It's cast very clearly as an impending event. Here, this stuff in Isaiah is not. It's just there. We got to deal with this now. It's cast as a present circumstance. So I think this is a really weak rebuttal point for the traditional view. Now, in defense of the traditional view, it's gotten some traction in light of more recent and more recent defined as 20 years old, more recent linguistic treatments. Now I'm going to reference an article here by Mark Rooker entitled Dating Isaiah 40 through 66 Subtitle. What does the linguistic evidence say? This is from Westminster Theological Journal, 1996 volume. And I've inserted this article in the protected folder for newsletter subscribers. If you have a little bit of Hebrew and you're interested in what we're going to talk about from this point on, you'll be able to access this article by virtue of subscribing to the newsletter. So Rooker argues this way. He argues from what scholars call diachronic analysis. That is analysis of the textual data through time, diachronic through time over time. And what that means is that Hebrew is like any other language. It changes in its vocabulary and its grammatical features over the course of time. There are indisputably late Hebrew texts that have certain features in them, certain vocab words, certain grammatical forms that earlier Hebrew texts do not because the language changes. Now this is an issue for the Isaiah question. Now Rooker writes the following on pages 303 and 304. The diachronic study of language is based upon the finding universally acknowledged among linguists today that languages are subject to change over time. It would seem reasonable therefore to expect that the Hebrew language reflected in the Old Testament experienced change from its earliest appearance in the 2nd millennium BC. The diachronic analysis of biblical Hebrew was developed primarily through the work of Arno Kropot in his work on the syntax of chronicles early in the 20th century. Kropot carefully analyzed the language of the books of chronicles and compared his findings with the synoptic texts of Samuel and Kings. The language of the chronicles exhibited changes that were consistent with other books from the post-exilic period, especially Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Now what he means by this is you're all enough Bible students to realize that Samuel and Kings, that subject matter between the books of Samuel and the books of Kings is repeated, is recovered, covered again in the books of chronicles. So chronicles and the books of Samuel and Kings are synoptic. It's like the Old Testament version of the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. They cover a lot of the same territory often in the same order. So what this guy Kropot did was he compared the Hebrew text of both versions of various events in chronicles versus Samuel and Kings and he noticed that there were patterns of vocabulary, patterns of usage, patterns of grammatical forms that were in chronicles but not in Samuel and Kings even when the same material was being covered. Words changed, features changed, and that those changes, the stuff in chronicles aligned with books that we know were late, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. And so this helped him to create sort of a pattern typology of how biblical Hebrew changed over the course of centuries. Now in Rooker's article, he gives several examples of this and I'm going to pull his first one out here. He writes about there are two Hebrew words that get translated kingdom. That's how I'll set it up. Now here's his quote. To illustrate how diachronic analysis works, observe the occurrence and frequency of the two Hebrew words translated kingdom. One is Mamlaka and the other is Malkut. The first indication that there may be a historical relationship between the terms may be observed from the chronicler's preference. Now chronicles is the later stuff. The chronicler's preference for Malkut in texts where the parallel text of Samuel employed the other term Mamlaka and he gives examples. That's the end of the quote. So Ezra is in on this vocab word and says, you know it's kind of funny that even though they're describing the same thing, the chronicler will use one word and books of Samuel and the Kings would use another word. And they're like consistent with each other in their divergence. Rooker goes on, he says, later biblical writers and post biblical writers clearly preferred Malkut. Most notably in the book of Esther, in the nine references to kingdom, only Malkut is used. This trend continues in the Dead Sea Scrolls where Malkut occurs 14 times while the earlier Mamlaka occurs only once. In the writings of Mishnehik Hebrew, only Malkut is used. The usage and distribution of the terms illustrate how diachronic analysis operates. Now that's the end of Rooker again. In light of this phenomena, it's interesting to note, you know again you could just look this up because I did, it's interesting to note that the early term for kingdom, Mamlaka, occurs in both sections of Isaiah. So both Isaiah 1 through 39 and Isaiah 40 through 66 use the pre-exilic term, whereas the late term Malkut doesn't appear anywhere. And so Rooker sees this upon that and he goes into other examples to say, look there's linguistic evidence that the so-called later chapters of Isaiah 40 through 66, they bear the marks of pre-exilic Hebrew. One more example just to make the point, he zeros in on the name David, David. And this one is well known in biblical Hebrew scholarship. Rooker goes on to put forth four more instances of how the early term appearance, early term appearances in the second half of Isaiah reinforces single authorship. And with respect to David, he writes this, it has long been recognized that one characteristic feature of the orthography of the chronicler, orthography is just an academic word for spelling. It's long been recognized that one characteristic feature of the orthography of the chronicler, in contrast to the orthography of Samuel and King's, is the chronicler's insistence in writing David with Plinae spelling. Plinae is a word that means longer or full spelling. There's actually two ways that the Plinae version is longer than David. If you have a little Hebrew here, this would help, but I'm going to go on through with this anyway. The long version, the full version, the Plinae version is Dalit, Vav, Yod, Dalit, David, with four consonants. The short version is Dalit, Vav, Dalit. Then the scribe had to add a little bit of that other letter. The Yod there helps to mark the vowel. So you've got a four consonant spelling and a three consonant spelling. And what Rooker is saying here, the chronicler, the late stuff always spells it with four consonants. It's a consistent pattern. The longer spelling back to Rooker here, the Plinae, the longer spelling is completely absent from Samuel and occurs in King's on only three occasions. Thus, of the 671 cases of the occurrence of the name David in Samuel King's only three are written with the longer spelling. While the remainder are defective, the short form, by contrast in Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles is all late stuff. The name David occurs 271 times, all of which have the longer spelling, the Plinae spelling. He continues, the same trend of late biblical Hebrew toward the Plinae spelling, the longer spelling of the personal name David is evident in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This tendency can best be demonstrated by looking at occurrences of David in the biblical manuscripts of Samuel and Isaiah from Qumran, which are always Plinae, always longer or full spelling because Dead Sea Scrolls are about 300 to 200 BC. They're later, the scribes there are living in a later period of the biblical period, and so by the time those scribes lived and grew up and learned their art form, their science, their discipline as scribes, you always spell David with the four consonants, never with the three. That was just the way you were taught to do it. So texts that show up with, you know, have the four consonant spelling of David, David, that's a later text. It's just a sign post that everybody knows. And here's the kicker. Rooker writes, in Isaiah 40-66, the name David occurs only once in Isaiah 55-3 where we find the defective, the short spelling, the one that you would expect for pre-exilic writers. So this is what Rooker does in his article. He takes examples like these to show that in the allegedly late section, Isaiah 40-66, you actually have linguistic evidence that somebody living during the prophet's lifetime before the exile is writing that material because of these kinds of things, the spelling of David, the preference for one particular word for kingdom. And again, you can read Rooker's article if you want more information, but there's actually a linguistic argument to be made that bolsters that connects the first 39 chapters to Isaiah 40-66 and sort of situates them in a pre-exilic context. So the traditional view has gotten a little help from linguistic data. Now my take on all this, we'll wrap this up here, my take on all this is that the multiple authorship view, you know, someone who would just say, look there are three Isaias and never met each other. They're all responsible for their own section. There's no like cross fertilization here. There's no repurposing of you know, older content in the newer stuff. There are three distinct compositions, three distinct writers, three different periods. You know, sort of the multiple authorship view on steroids here. The multiple authorship view, even if you take that view, that does not require a denial of predictive prophecy. It just doesn't. Because when you get to Isaiah 53 if that's written in 500 BC, we'll just call it, after the exile. That's still 500 years before Jesus. So do not do not in your debates with people online or at home or whatever, like you're going to get into, you know, diachronic analysis here and the authorship of Isaiah, but you know, who knows you might. It is just wrong to caricature a person who believes in more than one Isaiah as a denier of predictive prophecy that that's just wrong headed. It's unfair. It's an unfair criticism. Second part of my take. I think single authorship has some significant problems. I think it's explanation for different subject matter between chapters 1 through 39 and 40 through 66. Especially the portrayals of Judah as desolated and the temple is destroyed. The single authorship view rebuttals to finding that stuff in the second half of the book I think is really weak. So single authorship has some significant problems in handling that data. Third, I would say there are strong and at least very suggestive linguistic data in favor of a pre-exilic hand in the second half of the book. So I think both views have validity. I mean, there's clear evidence of a later context and a later hand in the second half of the book namely, again, the destruction of the temple and destruction of Judah. That's good evidence for a later hand. But then you also have good evidence in that later stuff of a pre-exilic hand by virtue of this linguistic data. So I think both views have some legitimacy here. So my view is I would say that the book of Isaiah was substantially not completely, but substantially written in the late 8th or early 7th century BC by the prophet we know as Isaiah. And then Isaiah's material was later edited and or adapted to present circumstances by scribes as a means of showing the prophet's predictions were coming to fruition in the present time or would be in the near future. You know, folks, editing happens. Editing happens. It happens elsewhere and the book of Isaiah is no exception. Here on the podcast we've talked about a number of examples. I have videos online of me talking about inspiration and showing examples of this. I would say there are multiple hands in the book of Isaiah but I think it's going a bit too far to say that that requires multiple authors. I think the data as we have it the strengths of both sides as we have the argument made all of the data I think is best accommodated by the idea that Isaiah the prophet himself in the 8th century is responsible substantially for what's in this book and then later hands came along and repurposed the content as opposed to you have brand new guys being born and growing up and then writing a second and a third part to Isaiah independently. I think that goes too far. I think the typical critical consensus view sort of takes the ball and runs a little bit too far but there are points of the view that have legitimacy and the best way to account for that is an editorial model not a new composition model so that's where I differ. I differ with both the traditional view and the critical consensus view I think editorial activities the best way to take all the data into consideration and honestly the way inspiration is taught today and hence the way most pastors talk about inspiration or the way they've read about it really doesn't take editorial activity into consideration that's why people are troubled by discussion of this particular book and things like it like the Torah we're taught again that inspiration means a mind dump of information we're taught this paranormal view of inspiration where God just downloads information that the prophet and the writer really isn't a significant part of what's going on they're more or less a flesh puppet to just start waving the hand and the arm and out comes a biblical book without really any choices on the part of the writer and certainly without editorial activity I got news for you if that's your view of inspiration and there's a reasonable chance that somewhere along the line you've read that or been taught it abandon that view because the phenomenon of scripture itself the nuts and bolts stuff that you find in the text itself will not conform to that view it just doesn't reflect what you actually find in the text itself a close reading of the text we've had some examples here about well if this is written in the 8th century what's this talk about Jerusalem being destroyed well that's a prediction really does it sound like a prediction where's the predictive language it seems to me you're making it a prediction so that your view of the authorship Isaiah can stand you're just making it say that you're articulating things that way because you've been taught a certain view of inspiration that doesn't account for any kind of editorial activity so your argument is just sort of contrived at that point you view it as a necessity because of what you were taught about how scriptural books came to be and again this is the tip of a very large iceberg a close reading of the text especially if you can do it in Hebrew but even in English a close reading of the text often will produce things you'll see things that just don't conform to the flesh puppet view of inspiration so I would suggest to you the problem isn't the Bible the problem is the way you're thinking about the Bible so the Bible doesn't need to be adjusted and changed or said to be in error or whatever the problem is we need to think better about what we're actually encountering in the text that would help I mean honestly that would help so ultimately what is the takeaway the authorship and date of the book of Isaiah this is not a hill to die on there's a lot of overblown rhetoric again on both sides that shows simplistic exposure to the issue really to the phenomenon of the text and unfortunately it can amount to the defense of an unnecessary view of inspiration that stems from a faulty view of how the whole thing worked that the way we think about how we got Scripture needs to align with what we actually see in Scripture that might sound silly or like I'm intentionally saying kind of a dumb thing to draw your intention but I'm serious about it how you think about the inspiration of the Bible really needs to jive with what you find in the Bible and a lot of the traditional ways that we're taught to think about these things really creates disconnections between those two things so our lesson for the day is try to think more carefully about inspiration and if we do there are ways again to approach an issue like in this case the authorship of a book and the date of a book that don't have to end in either crazy rhetoric where we portray someone like they're a prophecy denier and it also doesn't have to end in pretending that outliers to our particular view don't exist because they do so we need again to be honest with the data and try to think better about it okay Mike well next week we're going to be tackling the book of Job yep yep another one of these that always seems to come up so you know we're picking them off one at a time again not hills to die on but in the case of Job anyway there are just some the problem there is drawing certain theological conclusions based on the assumption of the date of the book which again may or may not work very well at all all right well I'm looking forward to that and again had a ton of fun in Israel I want to again thank everybody that came out on that tour and hope to see every everybody again especially at our first naked Bible conference on August 18th that's a Saturday it's all day it's in Dallas Texas so please please please go to nakedbibleconference.com get your tickets and we look forward to seeing everybody there and with that I just want to thank everybody for listening to the naked Bible podcast thanks for listening to the naked Bible podcast to support this podcast visit www.nakedbibleblog.com to learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs go to www.ermsh.com