Review in: Interpretation
2009 63: 66
Review door:
Patricia K. TullGevonden op: http://int.sagepub.com/content/63/1/66.full.pdf+html
A Critical and
Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 40-55, Vol. 1 (40:1-44:23)
by John Goldingay and David Payne International Critical Commentary. Τ & Τ Clark, New York, 2006.
368 pp. $120.00. ISBN 978-0-567-04461-0.
A Critical and
Exegetical Commentary on Isaiah 40-55, Vol. 2 (44:24-55:13)
by John Goldingay and David Payne International Critical Commentary. Τ & Τ Clark, New York, 2007.
381 pp. $120.00. ISBN 978-0-567-03072-5.
A SERIES OF MISFORTUNES ranging from S.R. Driver's
frustration over the identity of Isaiah's servant to A.S. Peake's death
prevented the original International Critical Commentary's production in the
early twentieth century of volumes covering Isa 28-66. George B. Gray's work on
chs. 1-27 has stood alone for nearly a century. In the new edition of this
commentary series, Hugh G. M. Williamson's volume on Isa 1-27 appeared in 2006.
The two volumes on Isa 40:1-44:23 and 44:24-55:13, coauthored by John Goldingay
and David Payne, are a happy addition to the array of recent commentaries that
have benefited from ferment in the field of Isaiah studies over the past twenty
years.
It is strangely appropriate that a commentary on Isaiah should be
penned by multiple authors who have integrated their work into a whole.
Although the redactional layers of Isaiah can be detected but not proved,
Goldingay and Payne offer full disclosure, explaining not only who contributed
which elements, but also in what sequence the process was carried out. They
explain that Goldingay's volume, entitled The Message of Isaiah
40-55: A Literary-Theological Commentary (T 8c Τ Clark, 2005),
includes much material that had to be excluded from the present work so that,
true to ICC emphases, Payne's text-critical and philological work could star in
these two volumes. Goldingay has also authored a one-volume New International
Bible Commentary on Isaiah (Hendrickson, 2001).
Goldingay's engagingly written introduction in
vol. 1 declines to rehearse issues that have been treated at length before,
appropriately presuming both awareness of the chain of events the book of
Isaiah presupposes and basic agreement with the long-standing consensus
concerning the approximate historical settings of Second and Third Isaiah. The
first two sections explore Second Isaiah as both a portion of the overall book
and as a discrete entity. The morass of redactional theories is stepped over
lightly. Clear links with First Isaiah and other pre-exilic literature are
noted. A sequential, synchronic, and—though the term is not
employed—reader-response orientation is signaled:
We treat 42:1-4 as taking up issues raised in 2:2-4 and
taking them further. Historically it may be that 2:2-4 is later than 42:1-4,
but if so, the book as we have it invites us to read the older passage in light
of the later one, and we are accepting that invitation, (p. 4)
The authors raise five objections to the renewed practice,
mostly in continental Europe, of positing a complex redactional history within
the sixteen chapters. The section on text-critical matters draws a distinction
among what can be imagined by interpreters living in different eras (those of
manuscripts, printing presses, and word processors), noting that our era of
desktop publishing has allowed greater awareness of the problems surrounding
the idea of a single, fixed "original text." The authors resist pursuing
the unattainable original in favor of "something that at least has the
virtue of existing" (p. 9), and generally favor the MT over early
versions.
The introduction goes on to discuss the poetic movement of
the sixteen chapters and the rhythm and forms of the poetry before spending
substantial time on the question of the intended audience and its time,
location, and identity. Utilizing Beuken's distinction between the audience on
stage (the one overtly addressed, which often includes symbolic figures or
elements of the natural world) and the audience "in the house" (the
one actually meant to overhear what is said), Goldingay explores the various
possibilities of prophet and audience location, finally choosing Babylon for
both, though leaving open the idea that other Judean audiences would have been
welcome as well. The final section of the introduction discusses the primary
theological messages of Isa 40-55 regarding God, God's people, Zion, the
prophet as servant, and the nations.
The section on the poet/prophet's own identity and stamp
upon the book is very interesting, but seems a bit flatfooted after the careful
distinctions between implied and real audiences. It could have benefited from
maintaining the stage analogy. On the one hand, there is a welcome discussion
of suggestions that the author was a woman. This idea is supported by the
prophet's intimate knowledge of and appreciation for the experiences of women,
the command in 40:9 to mevasseret Zion (translated not as "herald
Zion" but as "herald [fern, sing] to Zion"), and the
deliberate hiddenness of the prophet's identity. Since all of these can be
accounted for differently, Goldingay appropriately leaves the question open.
On the other hand, he posits a
prophetic "I" in brief passages at 40:6 (following, despite the
above-mentioned preference, not the MT vocalization but LXX and Qumran; for the
difference see NRSV vs. Tanakh) and 48:16b, and more controversially, in the
first-person servant passages in Isa 49:1-6 and 50:4-9. The prospect of a
bearded female prophet is not the central problem here, but it does signal it.
In skirting past her, so to speak, by imagining her in disguise as a male
prophet, Goldingay unintentionally raises important distinctions (most easily
seen in first-person novels) among the author, the implied author, and the
constructed first-person voice of a speaking character, for example Huckleberry
Finn. However, the sixteen chapters are suffused with variously positioned voices,
many of whom speak of themselves as "I" or "we" (including
God, a heavenly voice, Jacob/Israel, idolators, Daughter Babylon,
Zion/Jerusalem, Zion's children, and a human chorus). Moreover, given the
function Goldingay attributes to this authorial adoption of the servant role—to
model a role for other Judeans to adopt
as well—it seems odd for the otherwise self-effacing poet, so accomplished at
staging the actors, to suddenly step onto the stage with not one but two
authorial soliloquies. He becomes a character who has the same "name"
as the author, rather like Jonathan Safran Foer as a character in his own book
entitled Everything Is Illuminated (Penguin Books, 2003), except without
the self-critical jokes that make that character enjoyable.
Trying to place the prophet into the movement
between third-person and first-person treatments of the servant not only raises
the strange question of who took up the pen to endorse the author in 50:10-11.
(The suggestion that YHWH is the speaker here only throws us back into the
drama of voices.) On a larger scale, it also forces what seems like an
arbitrary positing of the servant as Israel in chs. 41 and 42, the prophet in
49 and 50, and both prophet and people in 52:13-53:12. It would seem less
strained to adopt a neighboring position that likewise tacks between individual
and collective interpretation, such as that the author draws from his or her
own struggles and hopes in order to project onto the stage a figure, modeled on
the prophets, who communicates the struggles, cares, and triumphs of any
Israelite who responds to Israel's divine call to servanthood.
The commentary itself offers a
fresh line-by-line translation in the form of headers for discussions of
individual verses or portions of verses, but not in a continuous section that
would enable readers to capture the flow of the poetry and the translation.
These expositions are the heart of the commentary and will be most useful for
readers with Hebrew skills. Outside of Isa 52:13-53:12, where sections are offered
regarding the passage's links with other Isaian passages, form and background,
and history of interpretation, there is little space for topical and
theological issues raised by larger chunks of text, though these are presumably
found in Goldingay's companion volume. It is too bad that they are not
integrated into one larger smoothly-flowing whole, but perhaps there is some
ironic symmetry in Isaiah's three or more books having become one, and the
commentary on one of Isaiah's books having become three.
Isaiah 40-55 is unusually
challenging on both the macro and micro levels. To combine literary
sensibilities with traditional textual and historical methods is challenging as
well. These informative, careful, and copiously researched volumes respectably
fill a long-felt gap and will surely be sought as important reference works in
the study of Isaiah for decades to come.
Patricia
K. Tull
LOUISVILLE PRESBYTERIAN
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
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