The Prophets

Abstract

The Prophets Atilla Bodor and Christopher T. Begg Atilla Bodor The Biblicum Christopher T. Begg Catholic University of America 1751. [Peshitta of Isaiah] Attila Bodor, The Theological Profile of the Peshitta of Isaiah (Supplements to the Textual History of the Bible 5; Leiden: Brill, 2021). Pp. xvi + 245. €108. ISBN 978-90-04-46903-7. B.'s monograph explores theological elements in the Book of Isaiah as represented in the Peshitta translation. After a review of previous research and a description of his own research method, B. analyzes sixty-three interpretative renderings in Peshitta Isaiah involving a particular theological view of God, the Messiah, and the people of God. The book discusses both the origin and theological implications of these interpretative renderings, showing that the Peshitta's divergences from the Hebrew text often have an impact on its interpretation and reception of these main Isaianic themes. The book concludes with a brief [End Page 639] excursus addressing the question of the origin of the Peshitta of Isaiah. Here B. argues that the translation originated in a Jewish background, but the interpretative renderings studied do not reveal any details about the translator's religious tradition. The book includes three indexes (modern authors; ancient sources; and passages analyzed).—A.B. Google Scholar 1752. [Isaiah 29] Boris Lazzaro, Isaia l'oscuro. Forme dell'oscurità linguistica isaiana e storia della loro recezione nell'attestazione di Is 29 (Analecta Biblica 231; Rome: G&B Press, 2020). Pp. 370. Paper €36. ISBN 978-88-7653-733-2. The style of Isaiah often lends itself to paradox, irony, and ambiguity. It is an obscure style which might well condemn ancient and modern recipients to incomprehension and hardening (see Isa 6:10 and 29:9-12). Integrating synchronic and diachronic considerations, L.'s study, his Biblicum doctorate directed by Peter Dubovský, S.J., and defended by him June 2018, investigates this aspect of Isaiah's language, exploring its concrete forms of expression as well as the impact it may have had on later tradition that crystallized in the scriptural corpus. While not ignoring the multiple marks of obscurity in the whole of Isaiah 1–39, L. focuses on a segment of this material where the above feature is especially marked, i.e., chap. 29, a passage which is, in fact, often cited for its enigmatic, contradictory, and ambiguous character. As a whole, chap. 29 thus represents a paradigmatic case of Isaianic obscurity in terms of factors that generated this, the forms in which it finds expression, the marks it left in the later tradition, and finally in the sense of strangeness which it continues to produce on readers. L.'s investigation highlights the controverted reception of the prophet's poetic expressivity, alternating as it does between acceptance and transcendence of the paradoxes of its mode of communication. At the same time, the study presents a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon of Isaianic obscurity, and in so doing calls attention to the poetic function of the prophet's ambiguity, irony, and peculiar use of metaphor. [Translated and adapted from published abstract] L.'s study consists of an introduction, followed by three main parts entitled respectively: (1) "prolegomena," with its two chapters, the obscurity of a prophet: bases of the phenomenon and history of research, and Isaiah 29: text and structure; (2) the sealed book (Isa 29:11-12) also made up of two chapters (an ancient scribal dispute and ambiguity and irony of a metaphor [Isa 29:11-12]); and (3) the obscurity of Isaiah 29 (featuring two chapters as well: coefficients and factors of obscurity in Isaiah 29 and the obscurity of Isaiah in diachronic perspective). Following a conclusion, the volume is rounded off by an appendix that deals with the treatment of Isaiah 29 by Jerome, Thomas Aquinas, and Cornelius a Lapide, C. Vitringa, and R. Lowth, a multi-segment bibliography, and three indexes: authors, passages, and general.—C.T.B. Google Scholar Copyright © 2022 The Catholic Biblical Association of America