Abstract
A Judean provenance for Isaiah 40-55
Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, For the Comfort of Zion: The Geographical and Theological Location of Isaiah 40-55, Vetus Testamentum Supps 139, (Leiden: Brill, 2011. €130.00/$185.00. pp. xv + 414. ISBN: 978-90-04-18930-0).
This monograph sets out to determine the geographical provenance of Isaiah 40-55, in particular whether the text reflects the concerns of the Babylonian exilic community and thus functions to reassure them of their impending return from exile. The first two chapters concern matters of authorship, dating and redactional development (chapter one) and the evidence for the continuous habitation of Judah immediately after the exile, including the existence of a literary tradition (chapter two). Chapter three reassesses previous scholarship that has often assumed a Babylonian focus to Isaiah 40-55 and concludes that there is little in the text to substantiate the claim that Isaiah 40-55 was written in Babylon. In chapter four Tiemeyer explores a number of passages that suggest the text is written from the perspective of the land of Judah and/or the city of Jerusalem. Chapter five explores the Exodus motif and the related wilderness wandering traditions in Isaiah 40-55, and argues that, contrary to much previous scholarship, these do not allude to a second Exodus out of Babylon but should be understood figuratively as typological references to the coming transition from death to life as the re-gathering of the exiles from all over the world enabled the rebuilding and restoration of Jerusalem. These first chapters have engaged in detailed historical critical exegesis, and in chapters 6-9 Tiemeyer broadens her study to literary study of the final form of the text, first exploring the relationship between the key dramatic ‘voices ‘ within Isaiah 40-55 and the authors and recipients outside the text. In particular she focuses on the characters of Jacob-Israel, Zion-Jerusalem and the Servant, and suggests that these function as symbols of or metonyms for the historic audiences to whom the oracles were addressed. She then investigates the theology attributed to these three voices in the text as well as those of God and the first person narrator, and compares these with the theological perspectives of Ezekiel (typifying the Babylonian community) and Lamentations (typifying a Judahite perspective). The conclusion that the theological concerns of Isaiah 40-55 are closer to those of Lamentations adds weight to her earlier suggestions regarding the Judahite origin of this text. This conclusion is further supported by the discussion in chapter ten of the so-called prologue of Isaiah 40-55 (40:1-11) that foreshadows many of the themes of Isaiah 40-55 and includes an emphasis on Jerusalem. The final chapter offers indirect support for a Judahite setting for Isaiah 40-55 by means of an intertextual comparison with the book of Lamentations. In this book, by means of extensive and detailed (often word by word) exegesis of the text, including discussion of semantics and textual variants, Tiemeyer presents a carefully constructed and clearly stated case for a Judahite provenance for Isaiah 40-55. Her conclusion has wide repercussions for future Isaiah studies, as Tiemeyer herself notes in her concluding remarks.