 Hi, I'm Mary Harrell for Tan Books. With a face and a voice that you'll probably recognize, our author today has been spreading and defending the gospel for decades around the world. And today we're talking with him not about apologetics per se, but about the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. The book today is commentary on the book of Isaiah, an in-depth look at the gospel of the Old Testament. Father Mitch Pacqua is a respected scripture scholar, author, popular EWTN and radio host, and the founder and president of Ignatius Productions. He serves as senior fellow of the Saint Paul Center for Biblical Theology and has authored over 20 books. Father is fluent in, this is not a typo, 12 languages. My goodness. Father, thanks so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Father, your title might surprise people. I think you call the book of Isaiah the gospel of the Old Testament. How can the book of Isaiah be compared to the gospels? There's, first of all, it's not my designation. The fathers of the church call it that. So I'm just going along with the old guys, the guys older than I am. And that the reason for it is twofold is that on one hand, the book of Isaiah is the second most quoted Old Testament book within the New Testament. That the, it is so clear that they were using Isaiah again and again and again. And secondly, it's called the gospel from the Old Testament because you have so many of the key doctrines of Christ predicted his virgin birth in Isaiah seven 14 and the saving quality of his death that his death is redemptive for sinners in as well as his resurrection in Isaiah 53. And then there are a number of other passages. For instance, the name Nazareth, we say Nazareth, but that's not quite correct. This is where in Hebrew, there are two Z sounds. Is that is one. The other is set and that's the one in the name and it comes from Isaiah chapter 11, verse one, where it says that a shoot will spring from the stump of Jesse and the people of Nazareth, which was a relatively new town at the time of Christ, it was started in the first century BC. They had named it after that passage in Isaiah. So when St. John says he will be called a Nazarene, he's referring to the prediction in Isaiah 11, verse one, that a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse, referring to the Messiah. So it's those kinds of elements that are mentioned again and again in the New Testament that we then say, OK, this is a content used by the Gospels, but it also presents the key elements of the Gospel. And that's why we that the father, that's why the fathers call it that. I'm just going along with them in the book of Isaiah, father. Like you said, we find the prophecy of Emanuel. We find all those titles of our Lord, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor. Did you ever just start humming handles Messiah as you were working on this book? Yes, I did. But my favorite part of it was all we like sheep have gone astray from Isaiah fifty three largely because that's my favorite part of the Messiah. That's a wonderful song. It is wonderful. Father, one thing that majorly sets your work this book apart from other biblical commentaries is that you take some of the work out of deciphering the book of Isaiah by putting the events in chronological order for your reader. How many years or centuries really or generations does the book of Isaiah span and how difficult was it to convert it into a more linear format? Well, the first question. Isaiah apparently begins his prophesying right around seven fifty. And the passage in Isaiah six, when he talks about King Messiah, that that's seven forty five. And then we see a number of other events going to seven one seven hundred or so, perhaps some references to the six nineties. That means that the first part of Isaiah, the person we know as Isaiah is in that fifty years. Now, when you go to the last part of it, it doesn't ever say after those passages, it never says that Isaiah wrote them. You know, he's not mentioned as the author. They're included, but they're very different styles. And the styles differ from one another. So that there are a number of passages from the five hundreds. And the last being Isaiah fifty six to sixty six. I date and I know that not everybody agrees with me, but I think I give good reasons for my dating this to approximately the year four seventy three. The reason I do that is the temple was already rebuilt. We know that that was rebuilt from between five twenty and five fifteen B.C. So but then there's that passage that our Lord cites as a way to explain his public ministry again, another part of the gospel. When our Lord quotes from Isaiah sixty, it says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. And he preaches that in Nazareth when he reads the scroll. He asked for the Isaiah scroll. He reads that passage and it includes the line to proclaim freedom to the poor, liberty to the poor and release and a year of favor. Those terms describe a Jubilee year that during the Jubilee year, that was a year of grace and a release of debt in particular, especially for the poor, their debt would be released. So the first Jubilee after the temple was rebuilt is for seventy three. The Jubilee occurred in the forty in the seventy third and the twenty third year of each century B.C. So I I think it's way too late to identify for twenty three. That's really late because by that point there was a major reform that had been brought to the country by Ezra and Nehemiah. But in the four seventies and four sixties, we see that the prophet Malachi is still complaining about a lack of reform, as is that section of Isaiah. Sixty fifty six to sixty six. And it seems to fit that time. And I think I can put it at right around the date for seventy three when when there was a Jubilee. You're talking about a two to three hundred year swing, really, in almost almost one hundred. So seven fifty to about four seventy three. So it's more like two hundred fifty years. Well, I would add to that is we should look at this perhaps. This is one of the models that a number of scholars suggest. There was an Isaiah school. Just as we see in later Judaism, certain rabbis like Hillel started a school that continued on with their disciples and their children. So Hillel had a I believe it was his son in law, Gamaliel, who was a teacher of Saint Paul and actually is mentioned in Acts of the Apostles as somebody who speaks in the Sanhedrin. And that that school continued on to Yohannem Ben-Zakai and other rabbis of that school. And that kind of tradition of passing on with a founder who would identify, by the way, they identified it as the house of Hillel, Beth Hillel. And so they would look to him as their founder and given key ideology while Isaiah seems to he had disciples. We know that it says so in Isaiah eight. And so as well as children. And so this is something that we would look to and say, all right, this is part of what we may be dealing with a school that continued on with different writers addressing different situations. So for instance, when you get to Isaiah 40 to 55, you see that Cyrus of Persia, Cyrus, the great, is the king who is on his way to conquer Babylon. And he does and in that passage, it predicts that he would set the people of Israel free, which actually the people of Judea, Judah, they're the only ones there. And in fact, he did in January of five thirty eight, he let them go free. And so, you know, it's one of the things you see is that these prophecies get put into the Bible because they happen. And so they put it in there. And and yet none of those passages, when you look at the text from 40 to 55, none of them mention Isaiah, but it's it's been included in the Isaiah scroll. And being a scroll, you can just glue on the next section. It's easy. Glustic. That's all it takes. Father, I've read this book, despite your immense scholarship behind it, immense that this book is for everyday Catholics. This is not for the Catholics that that have the doctorates and have masters in scripture studies like you do. But for Catholics that are just looking to understand the richness of their faith, why was it important for you to write a book for that demographic? I have set as a theme that I need to bring the hay down so the goats can get it. An old Alabama expression. And, you know, it's, you know, folks, you know, will say things about, well, the scholars say this, just put it down there. So folks can understand and, you know, to and this happened in graduate school that sometimes students would spend more of their energy reading what one scholar said against another scholar and which is, frankly, necessary to write a dissertation. I mean, my dissertation was saying, yeah, the guys who came before me were all wrong. That's what graduate students do. And, you know, what I want to do is make sure this is something regular folks can understand. That's because the book of Isaiah not only encapsulates so much of the gospel and not only is it quoted often in the New Testament. But it is part of our liturgy on a regular basis, especially at the key seasons, all the liturgical year when we are celebrating the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecies. So all through Advent, the daily readings in the Roman right are from the book of Isaiah. And for those who are priests and deacons, the readings in the office of readings in the Liturgy of the Hours is also from Isaiah. And that's true in the other rites as well. I pray the Maronite Liturgy of the Hours. And we also read all of Isaiah, you know, from the beginning of what the equivalent of Advent through to Epiphany. And in Holy Week, the church reads on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week, the three predictions of Christ, the servant of the Lord, the so-called suffering servant. And then on Good Friday, we read Isaiah 53, the passage that so clearly predicts the suffering death and redemptive suffering and redemptive death of Jesus Christ that by the year 85, Rabbi Yohannin Ben-Zakai had convinced the Jewish Sanhedrin, the Pharisee Sanhedrin, not to allow that passage to be read in the synagogue lectionary cycle. Because it was said it's because this will make the listeners think about the Christians. Wow. So I'll never forget. One of my Jewish students, she was an atheist who practiced witchcraft and she was in my class because she thought the Old Testament was safe. And so at any rate, when we got to Isaiah 53, I was explaining this and she came up to me afterwards and said, I've never heard that. When did you Christians put that in the Bible? And I tell her, we didn't put it there. You guys did. You just can't read it. So I baptized her later on. Oh, my gosh. She was Rabbi Yohannin Ben-Zakai was right. He was right. If you hear it, you cannot help but think of Jesus Christ. Father, mentioning that this is appropriate or mentioning that the book of Isaiah is so Advent is so thoroughly saturated with it, but Lent as well. How could your book be used as a really rich guide or meditation during Lent coming up? If someone wanted to take this book and say, I want this to be part of my Lenten practice, how would you recommend they read it in the light of that thinking of our Lord's passion coming up? You know, one of the things I would strongly recommend is that they bring this to their holy hour. You know, praying, you know, using this, the comments I give put the passage in context. And quite frankly, I wrote this book before the Blessed Sacrament. That's where I do my writing. I always try to go through passages and in the presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, I try to contemplate what it means. I mean, I'm also looking at, you know, other experts in the field. I'm translating many of the passages and, you know, making sure I understand what the Hebrew is. And I make comments on what I think would appropriate on what the Hebrew text might mean. And sometimes in distinction to the English translation, I address controversial issues such as, well, it says a virgin shall conceive, but they use the word Alma. Does that mean virgin or just young woman? Usually young unmarried woman. Well, it does mean a young unmarried woman in that culture. They just assume that they were virgins. That was normal. And I explain how when this was translated, that passage in the whole book of Isaiah was translated into Greek in the second century B.C. They use the Greek word Parthenon, Parthenos, meaning virgin, specifically, not just young woman. It means specifically a virgin. And when they translated it into Aramaic in the first century B.C., they translated Alma as Batula, which is a specific word, meaning virgin. In fact, in the Syriac liturgies, we still address Mary as Batula, no virgin. That's a common phrase, as well as the Arabic word Adara. And so they clearly understood it to mean virgin. And I explain all that. That's fine. But it's to get more than look at the vocabulary and argue about these things, but also to try and understand what the meaning is and how this helps us to understand Christ. So to see these passages and put yourself as much as this is my standard hermeneutic, a hermeneutic comes from the Greek word to translate. And you not only have to translate the words from one language to another, you also need to understand the experience of the local people at their own time. There's a translation culturally and historically to say, what was going on so that I understand this passage, not at first through my modern experience. They, you know, right now, unlike, say, in the 50s and 60s and 70s, there's a political correction that goes on constantly that didn't exist before and certainly not in the ancient world. And they would think, you know, this was very odd. But, you know, be that as it may, you try to understand them in their context, culturally and historically. And then through that, you help to recognize the same humanity we have. And in that, you learn elements about how Isaiah and his school understood the relationship to our Lord and how they lived it out and struggled with with God. And in crisis situations, a variety of types of crises that when you again perceive the historical and cultural background, say, oh, you know, there are a lot of crises that we have that are not completely unlike their crisis. And this is when it becomes more relevant and gives us a perspective. I remember some people said, well, why don't I just try to understand our crisis in our own term? Why would I need the Bible to help me? There's a great suggestion made by C.S. Lewis many decades ago. He would read one ancient book at least for every two modern books he read. The reason being this, it's only by looking at the past that you can get perspective on the present. When you live in the present, you are like a fish who takes water for granted. You don't know that there is another possible environment called an oxygenated environment or oxygen in a heavy environment with some nitrogen and other chemicals in it. And then until you go beyond the atmosphere, you don't know what it's like in outer space in a relative vacuum. You know, you're caught in your own environment. Fish, mammals that we all assume our environment. We bet more than the fish can go into the water and see there's a big difference between being underwater and being in the air. You don't have to figure out how to survive. Similarly, by analogy, we so take the modern world for granted that we can't get perspective except by going to the past. We don't know the future and we can't. We can only guess at it. Usually when I see most people's guesses, they're incorrect. A few people have some ideas about the future, but most people are incorrect. And, you know, what happens in the, especially optimists. Optimists are really incorrect when they think that their ideas are going to take over the future. Oh, not so much. But when you look at the past, you can see they thought differently. And here's how they thought. And that helps me to check on some of my modern thought. That's a very useful tool. It's good to know the modern world. We need to keep up, I do. But getting perspective on it from the past is crucial. And secondly, I would say this, it's something I notice in life in general. I was sharing this with my guests from my last television interview. A fine man named Raymond Ibrahim that he had not quite thought of. But, you know, we need God to give us perspective on ourselves. And one of the ways I notice that is atheists are rarely, if ever, very funny. They're just not. Right. You know, when they've lost it. Now, people may not practice their religion, but people who believe in God are capable of ironic observations on human behavior. And then they make a joke out of it. Right. That's why Jewish people were so funny. But as the Jewish community became increasingly secularized, they lost a sense of humor and boring. Now our comedians tend to be black and Hispanic. Again, not necessarily living out what they learned in church, at least not by the potty mouths that they use, but having that religious background, having come from a church background gives them a sense of human frailty, fallibility, and that's the basis of humor. Well, that is a clue to seeing how God gives us perspective on ourselves, not only for telling good jokes, but also for, you know, getting perspective on much more than that, on our sin, on our values, on the crisis of society, and going to a book like Isaiah and seeing these different stages of development of the crisis that the Isaiah community and tradition addressed is a great way to get perspective. That's why I put it in historical context. Again, that's wonderful new book, commentary on the book of Isaiah, an in-depth look at the gospel of the Old Testament. You can find it here online at tanbooks.com or ask for it at your local Catholic bookseller. Father, before we go, would you give us your blessing? Sure. May the Lord bless you all and keep you in cause his face to shine upon you, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God bless you all. God bless you all. God bless you all.