Abstract
This volume assembles a series of papers that go back to a session on unity in Isaiah at the International SBL in Rome in 2019 – the original line-up has been supplemented with further articles. In their introductory essay, editors Gina Hens-Piazza, Dominic Irudayaraj and Benedetta Rossi outline the agenda of the collection that focuses on the ‘diversity of the methodological perspectives arguing for unity’ (p. 7). Illustrating this diversity, the contributions are arranged in three sections: First, seven chapters consider the world behind the text, tending towards a diachronic approach. Ulrich Beres (‘The “unity” of the Book of Isaiah’) introduces his approach of ‘diachronically reflected synchrony’ (p. 17), while Hugh G.M. Williamson (‘Methodological Reflections on Reading Isaiah as a Unity’) reviews the history of scholarship, arriving at an affirmation of the diachronic approach. Hyun Chul Paul Kim focuses on ‘Finding Intertextual Threads that Unite the Book of Isaiah’, using Isa 34 as a sample case. In her contribution (‘Tracking the Scribal Trails’), Benedetta Rossi shows that the focus on the Sabbath in Isa 56:1–8 builds on the tension between Sabbath and justice in other texts of the book. Peter Dubovsky (‘The Concept of History’) studies the references to historical events and persons, arriving at the conclusion that these have been put in sequence by a redactor. Finally, Jacob Stromberg (‘The Remnants of a Figural Past’) demonstrates a figural symmetry of the book sections, according to which the remnant of the holy seed in Assyrian and Babylonian times foreshadows a holy seed following post-exilic judgment.
The second section of the volume is dedicated to the world of the text, considering unity from a text centred perspective. First, William A. Beuken (‘The Unity of the Book of Isaiah’) shows the framing function of Isa 1 and 12, illustrating their dramatic function for the composition. Marvin A. Sweeney (‘Jacob as a Unifying Motif’) tracks the mention of Jacob through the book, demonstrating how the parts of the book are unified by references to the Pentateuchal patriarch. Georg Fischer (‘Can Jeremiah quote Deutero- or Trito-Isaiah’) uses the links with the book of Jeremiah to show that the scroll of Isaiah was finished before Jeremiah, while Boris Lazarro (‘Blindness in Discourse’) analyses the compositional function of the recurring images of seeing and hearing. Finally, section three focuses on the world in front of the text, in which unity is established through the lens of mainly reader-oriented perspectives. Thus, Dominic S. Irudayaraj (‘“Desolate” Depictions in Isaiah’) follows the motif of desolation through the book, while Gina Hens-Piazza (‘Zion’s Destiny as Theological Disclosure’) maps the use of Zion as metaphor. Blaženka Scheuer (‘Suffering in the Book of Isaiah’) investigates the motif of suffering through the lens of Camus’ notion of the absurd. Elisabeth Esterhuizen and Alphonso Gronewald use trauma studies for a synchronic reading of Isa 1–12 and last, Attila Boden investigates the Peshitta translation, showing that the translators used the motif ‘God as supporter/helper’ to contribute to a unified reading. The strength of this collection is showcasing the diversity of the concept of ‘unity’, but one cannot help wondering if the reader (together with the research landscape) might have benefitted from a final chapter contextualising and correlating the different concepts used.