Abstract
Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 193 Reviews seemingly post-587 oracles of 33:1-20 and 34:17-22. Attention to these factors would have made a good book better. Leslie C. Allen Fuller Theological Seminary Pasadena. CA 91182 ZION'S FINAL DESTINY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH: A REASSESSMENT OF ISAIAH 36-39. By Christopher R. Seitz. Pp. xii + 228. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991. Cloth. A diachronic approach, shaped by B. Duhm's "epic-making" commentary (Das Buch Jesaia, HKAT 3.1; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1892), has dominated Isaiah-scholarship for nearly a century. According to this view, the book of Isaiah is a series of independent compositions. While chaps. 1-35 are the product of the Assyrian period, the remainder belongs to the Persian period, with chaps. 40-55 reflecting the middle of the sixth century and chaps. 56-66 the Restoration in the first half of the fifth century . The narrative included between First- and Deutero-Isaiah (chaps. 3639 ) has been assumed to be secondary to its parallel in 2 Kgs 18:13-20:19 and to function as a late editorial appendix, with no organic connection to the original composition of First Isaiah. However, this scholarly consensus has been challenged recently by the redactional school that tries to understand the whole book as the result of a dynamic editorial process. The objective of this volume is to provide a unified theological reading of the book as a whole, although the author accepts the classical separation of Isaiah's composition into three historical divisions as an undeniable premise. He is occupied, however, with two key questions concerning its growth and thematic integration: (1) why the material beyond First Isaiah was attached to this particular collection of prophecies, and (2) how this additional material grew to constitute the Deutero-Isaianic literature. These questions, which until a dozen years ago or so would have been dismissed as uncritical topics from the pre-scientific era of prophetic research, are characteristic of the new direction in current biblical scholarship and the study of Isaiah in particular. Seitz does not speak precisely about Isaiah as a unified literary composition ; rather, he joins synchronic and theological readings to treat the book as a continually growing body of tradition, with the Deutero-Isaianic ma- Hebrew Studies 34 (1993) 194 Reviews terial relying on the material in First Isaiah. He questions the idea that independent pieces were mechanically glued together, proposing instead that the later material is dependent on the earlier Isaianic literature. He also claims that the prose appendix in Isaiah 36-39 does not rely on the account in Kings, but rather constitutes a unified narrative which reflects directly on First Isaiah and inspired Deutero-Isaiah's language. Isaiah 39:5-7 even paves the way for the notion of the exile, which constitutes the subjectmatter for the remainder of the book. For Seitz, the book of Isaiah revolves around two key historical events: the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E. and the city's fall to the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E. The first of these is the subject of Isaiah 36-39, while chaps. 40-66 are based on the second. According to him, the message of the book as a whole emerges out of the relationship between these events: the first part's judgment prophecies are not an end in themselves, but pave the way for the salvation oracles of the second. Seitz claims that this theological cycle, which revolves around the historical frame of salvation , punishment, and allusion to salvation, explains why the additional material was attached to First Isaiah and not to the work of another prophet. First Isaiah itself combines the two prophetic categories, judgment and salvation. It is also characterized by an emphasis on Zion theology, according to which Zion was God's eternal city. This leads Seitz to find a single theological message in the entire book of Isaiah: just as God's miraculous intervention kept Sennacherib, king of Assyria, from ultimately destroying Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E., so too does Zion theology assure that salvation can be expected after the city's fall in 587 B.C...
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