One thing I did not address this last week (Isaiah 40:1-11) is the question of who is called to take God’s message to the people? Who is the author of this text? You might say, “Duh! The book is called Isaiah. Obviously, it was written by him. That is, in fact, the position I took, and I didn’t even bother explaining myself. Should I have?
In modern scholarship (the last 100 years), this question has been much discussed. Let me explain.
As we discovered Sunday, there was a gap of approximately 160 years between the end of Isaiah’s public ministry and the circumstances of Isaiah 40-55. Obviously, in that time, Isaiah would have died.1
How then to explain his clarity about the events that transpired during Judah’s exile? At one point, Isaiah even name-checks Cyrus, the king of the Persians who defeated the Babylonians (44:25; 45:1). The Persians defeated the Babylonians in 539BCE, long before Isaiah’s death. For that reason, some scholars suggest there are one or more authors who wrote in Isaiah’s name and style after he was gone and contemporary to the events of the later chapters. This portion of Isaiah from chs. 40-66 they have dubbed “Deutero-Isaiah.”2 These same scholars go on to note different styles and language that “clearly” show the book of Isaiah is collected as an anthology of writings rather than a unified literary whole. Isaiah himself mentions his disciples, saying “Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching among my disciples” (Is. 8:16). These same scholars suggest that this school of disciples were the ones who amended Isaiah’s original words to capture “the rest of the story.”
More conservative scholars maintain the authorship of Isaiah. This school of disciples, they reason, could have had some role in collecting and safeguarding Isaiah’s prophecies and writings for the intended audience in the exile.
An interested person could take as deep a dive as they desired on this topic. Mountains of paper have been produced. Gallons of ink have been spilled.
What makes the difference in where one lands? The key question is whether to give assent to the role of the Holy Spirit in inspiring Isaiah’s prophecy. Critical scholars base their conclusions on the assumption that since the later chapters of Isaiah name specific people and events in the future, a man long dead could not have authored them. We know, however, that the Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures, and the nature of prophecy includes divine insight. Therefore, Isaiah’s predictive prophecy poses no problem.
I believe in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I believe that the words of Scripture are breathed out by God (2 Tim. 3:16). The word for God-breathed that Paul uses is theópneustos. It is a compound words that come from Theós (God) and pnéō (to breathe). Not coincidentally, the word the New Testament uses for the Holy Spirit is pneúma, which you can probably see comes directly from the verb above.
How many Isaiahs wrote the book we are studying on Sundays?
If you don’t believe in divine inspiration, you have a hard time limiting it to one. If you believe in the work of the Holy Spirit, we can trust that these are the words of the prophet Isaiah, given to Him by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We can trust that this is God’s Word, perfect since He is perfect. Profitable to us because we have been given everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him (2 Pet. 1:3).
- Tradition is that Isaiah died at the hands of King Mannasseh, son of Hezekiah. Mannasseh’s wickedness explains why Isaiah’s ministry went silent. His word was no longer welcome, and put his life at risk. Hebrews (11:36-37) notes some who “were sawn in two.” Many believe this is a reference to Isaiah. ↩︎
- Since chs. 56-66 point to an even more distant time horizon, some of the same scholars that contend the historical Isaiah could not have written chs. 40-55 suggest that someone else still wrote these chapters—a “Trito-Isaiah.” ↩︎