OK, so what's the deal with the Cyrus prophecy?

by Amha·’aret 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Amha·’aret
    Amha·’aret

    I'd really like an answer to this. Its probably been discussed already and if so, feel free to send the link.

    As a dub, I always marvelled at this prophecy - how Jehovah was able to name the person who would overthrow Babylon and in what manner he would do it (drying up the river, gates unlocked, etc.) and so far in advance too. I loved the Isaiah and Daniel books and all the "deep" matters like prophecy and their fulfillment.

    For a long time, I didn't want to know the truth about this prophecy and wanted to believe it was as I was taught. However, I feel ready for it now so hit me with it!

  • Tuesday
    Tuesday

    The earliest writing found of the prophesy was written hundreds of years after the event. There's no proof whatsoever it was written before the vent.

  • Amha·’aret
    Amha·’aret

    Have you got any more detail on that? I know they were found relatively recently but I thought the Dead Sea Scrolls are used by the WTS to show Isaiah's authenticity.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    There is a very sharp break at ch. 40 in tone, style, language, theology, etc., and it is generally accepted that what follows is an addition from the mid-sixth century BC, at a time contemporaneous with King Cyrus of Persia (prior to his conquest of Babylon). The author of this material is usually called Deutero-Isaiah. It should be borne in mind that nowhere does ch. 40-66 claim to have been written by the prophet Isaiah and nowhere does the prophet's name appear (unlike the earlier chapters where the name appears often). It is possible that an anonymous writer (or writers) added his own material to Isaiah or it is possible that this was originally an independent book that somehow accidentally got associated with Isaiah and was copied as part of the book (less likely imho but still possible). It is clear however that this is a separate unit (or units, if indeed ch. 40-66 is composite) from what precedes it on contextual, stylistic, and theological grounds. Concerning the first line of evidence, S. R. Driver said it best:

    "The prophet never abandons his own historical position, but speaks from it. So Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for instance, predict first the exile, then the restoration; both are contemplated by them as still future; both are viewed from the period in which they themselves live. In the present prophecy [of Deutero-Isaiah] there is no prediction of exile; the exile is not announced as something still future; it is presupposed, and only the release from it is predicted. By analogy, therefore, the author will have lived in the situation which he thus presupposes, and to which he continually alludes" (Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, p. 237).

    For instance, the author offers comfort and consolation to his audience (Isaiah 40:1) -- who constitute not the readership of Isaiah addressed in earlier chapters (who in ch. 1-39 were made up of those experiencing Assyrian domination) but plainly the Jewish exiles in Babylon who would experience release by Cyrus. Cyrus is referred to not as a figure from the distant future but a contemporary who has been already designated by Yahweh as his "anointed". The desolation of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews are not prophesied as these have already happened (cf. Isaiah 42:22, 25, 43:26-28, 44:26-28, 47:6, 52:5, 58:12, 61:4, 63:18, etc.), the prophet instead foretells the end of captivity and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Thus the author is able to rhetorically appeal to the past in order to make his point to his readership: "Who handed Jacob over to become loot and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not Yahweh against whom we have sinned? For they would not follow his ways and did not obey his law, so he poured on them his burning anger, the violence of war. It enveloped them in flames yet they did not understand". It is not just a matter of assuming a future situation but that the author was engaging with his readers to reflect on past events and the present circumstance of ruined cities and desolated Temple.

    The literary style also sharply diverges at ch. 40 and there are many expressions that in combination distinguish the two authors; in Deutero-Isaiah one encounters such frequent key words and phrases as "choose"/"chosen", "praise", "to shoot/spring forth", "break out into singing", "pleasure", "your-fem. sons", "rejoice", "I am" language, DN + participial epithet, "isles"/"coasts", "nought", "arm of Yahweh", etc. but these are absent in the rest of Isaiah, along with such techniques as word duplication, repeating the same word across adjacent clauses or verses, and so forth. In contrast, Isaiah uses such distinctive features as nature imagery, structured antitheses, and other phrases and expressions that do not occur in Deutero-Isaiah. To quote from Driver again: "Isaiah shows strongly marked individualities of style: he is fond of particular images and phrases, many of which are used by no other writer of the OT. Now, in the chapters which contain evident allusions to the age of Isaiah himself, these expressions occur repeatedly; in the chapters which are without such allusions, and which thus authorize prima facie the inference that they belong to a different age, they are absent, and new images and phrases appear instead. This coincidence cannot be accidental. The subject of ch. 40-66 is not so different from that of Isaiah's prophecies (e.g.) against the Assyrians, as to necessitate a new phraseology and rhetorical form: the differences can only be reasonably explained by the supposition of a change of author. Isaiah in his earliest, as in his latest prophecies (ch. 29-33; ch. 37, written when he must have been at least sixty years of age), uses the same style, and shows a preference for the same figures; and the change of subject in ch. 40-66 is not sufficiently great to account for the marked differences which here show themselves. and which indeed often relate to points, such as the form and construction of sentences, which stand in no appreciable relation to the subject treated" (p. 238).

    The theology is another key piece of evidence. Deutero-Isaiah is the earliest work that makes the leap to full monotheism, as opposed to the henotheism and monolatry of earlier writers. Deutero-Isaiah's characterization of God as having "no other", who is alone, who is the first and the last, etc., is unique in the OT.

    The Society makes a fallacious argument in appealing to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The only thing the Qumran scrolls of Isaiah show is that Deutero-Isaiah was part of Isaiah in the late second century BC, which is not anything anyone would have doubted. What would "refute" the claim that the text is composite is a copy of Isaiah that dates to the seventh century BC that already has ch. 40-66. The Dead Sea Scrolls -- while a millennium older than the Masoretic Text -- are still not old enough to prove that ch. 40-66 formed part of the original text, as they date some 500 years or so too late. One could argue on similar grounds for the authenticity of the Johannine Comma in 1 John (or some other spurious addition to the NT) by appealing to a text some 500 or 600 years later. Of course a late copyist would have no idea of the early transmission history of the book he was copying.

  • sir82
    sir82
    the Dead Sea Scrolls are used by the WTS to show Isaiah's authenticity.

    The oldest of the Dead Sea scrolls date back to about the 1st century BC.

    Babylon overthrew Jerusalem in the 6th century BC (unless you're a JW then it happened in the 7th century BC ).

    The oldest manuscript of Isaiah is from at least 5 centuries after the fact.

    More astute & scholarly posters than I will probably soon chime in on the linguistic & grammatical evidence that the "book of Isaiah" was written by at least 2, perhaps 3, persons living centuries apart.

    Imagine someone, a thousand years from now, finding a written piece of literature, 1/2 written in 16th century Shakespearean English and the other half written in 21st century English. Is it likely that he would be able to convince someone that the same author wrote the whole piece?

    The WT tries to use the Dead Sea scrolls to "authenticate" Isaiah. All the Dead Scrolls "authenticate" is that between the 1st century BC and the 9th or 10th century AD, the Jewish scribes were very meticulous and did a pretty decent job of copying. Nothing more.

  • sir82
    sir82

    See there? Quicker than I thought!

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos
    All the Dead Scrolls "authenticate" is that between the 1st century BC and the 9th or 10th century AD, the Jewish scribes were very meticulous and did a pretty decent job of copying.

    Even this is a serious misrepresentation of evidence. The wealth of Qumran "Biblical" manuscripts actually attest to a huge textual diversity: whereas some of them are reasonably close to the later Masoretic text, others are much closer to the Septuagint or the Samaritan edition for instance, or still different. And in some cases (e.g. Samuel, Jeremiah) the differences are big, involving a much longer or shorter text, or the entire organisation of a particular "book". If anything the DSS have contributed to blur the border between the classical definitions of "literary" and "textual" criticism, between the "pre-history" of the "original" and its "transmission".

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia
    All the Dead Scrolls "authenticate" is that between the 1st century BC and the 9th or 10th century AD, the Jewish scribes were very meticulous and did a pretty decent job of copying. Nothing more.

    The Society also uses 1QIs a to argue that the MT (Masoretic Text) as a whole is essentially unchanged in form, thanks to the meticulous copying of the Masoretes. This overlooks a huge text-critical problem: the MT belongs to a different text tradition (usually called the Babylonian Tradition) than the DSS (which belong to the Palestinian Tradition), and both differ from the presumed Vorlage of the LXX (which belongs to the Egyptian Tradition). It just so happens that the text of Isaiah has only relatively minor disagreements between the different text traditions. But if one chooses a different OT book, like 1-2 Samuel, Jeremiah, or Psalms, it would rather quickly be apparent that the MT is strikingly different from these other text traditions, such that one would have to recognize that different editions of these books circulated in antiquity. It is clear in many cases that the MT is inferior to what is found elsewhere -- examples that quickly come to mind are Deuteronomy 32 (in which the implication of henotheism is obscured via scribal emendations) and 1 Samuel 11 (wherein a whole paragraph had accidentally been omitted).

  • sir82
    sir82

    Huh, for some reason that didn't get mentioned in the "All Scriptures Inspired" book. Go figure!

    Thanks for correcting my misrepresentation and furthering my education.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Now just read what Deutero-Isaiah says about Cyrus:

    "This is what Yahweh says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut: I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am Yahweh, the God of Israel, who summons you by name" (Isaiah 45:1-3).

    Here what is prophesied and lies in the future is Yahweh's leading of Cyrus to overthrow Babylon. But the existence of Cyrus is not what is being prophesied. He is the one being addressed in this oracle, he has already been summoned and Yahweh has already taken his right hand. The existence of Cyrus is presupposed not prophesied -- it is his conquest of Babylon that is being prophesied. This suggests a date in the latter part of Nabonidus' reign, when Cyrus (who had already conquered Media) posed a significant threat to the continued existence of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom.

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