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HARVARD

THE INTEGRITY OF THE BOOK OF ISAIAH.

BY REV. WM. HENRY COBB, UXBRIDGE, MASS.

THE Bibliotheca Sacra for April and October 1881, and for January 1882, contained Articles aiming to show a linguistic correspondence between the main divisions of the Book commonly ascribed to Isaiah too minute and undesigned to be accounted for on the hypothesis of a diversity of authorship. Since those Articles. were written, the thirteenth volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica has appeared, with an Article on Isaiah from the pen of Rev. T. K. Cheyne, which may be regarded as giving the high-water mark of recent exegesis, as its author has written the latest, and in some respects the best, commentary on the prophecies of Isaiah. This commentary, especially its appended essays, should be read in connection with the Article in the Encyclopedia, as the latter is too brief to express justly the writer's cautious, reverent, and thoroughly Christian spirit. It is gratifying to find him treating the conservative view with far more respect than was evinced in his earlier work. It is well to remind a certain class of critics that such epithets as "blind conservatism," "hard-and-fast traditionalism," fail to meet the present conditions of the problem. Professor Plumptre, for example, who cannot be accused of an orthodox bias, declares: "My own conviction is, that the second part of Isaiah bears as distinct traces of coming from the author of the first as Paradise Regained does of coming from the author of Paradise 1 London: C. Kegan Paul and Co. 1880-1.

2 The Book of Isaiah chronologically arranged. London: Macmillan and Co. 1870. 8 Contemporary Review, Aug. 1881.

Lost." The British Quarterly Review for last October, in a favorable notice of Dr. Bruce's recent work, remarks: "He accepts the idea of a Deutero-Isaiah, which, on grounds of exact criticism, is, to say the least, a mere hypothesis, and, we think, a gratuitous one." Professor W. S. Tyler, whose accurate and fair-minded scholarship is as conspicuous as his conservatism, stated a few months since that he considered the argument for the unity of Isaiah to come as near a demonstration as is possible in an investigation of this kind.

Mr. Cheyne is far enough from agreeing with the writers just quoted, but his progress during ten years is worth noting. In 1870 he held that Isa. xl.-lxvi. is the work of a single author, who wrote at Babylon in the time of Cyrus; he noted with evident satisfaction that "the principal passage (Isa. lvi. 9-lvii. 11), which has been thought by some to imply the authorship of a resident in Palestine, is given up by Delitzsch as incapable of defense." He also claimed, at that time, that four other anonymous prophets of the exile have contributed to i.-xxxix. The vicarious fifty-third chapter was rationalized as follows: "The genius of Israel rises from the ashes of martyrdom to an undecaying supremacy, and the actual nation is so transformed in character as to correspond to its divine ideal" (pp. 176, 177). At present, Mr. Cheyne gives back to Isaiah the Babylonian prophecy in xxi. 1-10, because a lately-discovered cylinder shows this to refer to Sargon's conquest of Babylon. He has also entirely reconstructed his theory of xl.-lxvi., making only xl.-lii. 12 Babylonian; the rest he breaks up into nine different works, all of which were written in Palestine, some of them probably in the time of Manasseh, that is, close to Isaiah's date, some by one or more Jews left in Palestine during the exile, and some as late as the days of Nehemiah. Isa. liii. is assigned to the age of Manasseh, but was "probably based on an older work." At all events, he regards it as typical of the Christ who was to come.

These and similar changes of view are confessed with a frankness which almost disarms criticism; but it is pertinent to remark that Mr. Cheyne's assignment of so many disputed chapters to a Palestinian authorship rests not on the discovery of any cylinder or other antique, but upon the more careful study of the local allusions and historical references in the prophecy itself. He had denied these in his earlier work, but he now says (Vol. II. p. 203): "Such references are really forthcoming as the elder traditionalists rightly

saw."

The question of phraseology he examines in some detail (pp. 223, 224, 232-234), but speaks very disparagingly of this kind of argument (see p. 223), considering the evidence from style to be of much greater importance. It is chiefly the variety of style which leads him to dissect so mercilessly the latter part of Isaiah. But surely an author may vary his style to a great extent, without committing felo de se; no one has ever invented an instrument for defining the lawful limits of this power. Mr. Cheyne himself says (Vol. 11. p. 169): "To me, indeed, it is tolerably clear that xliii. 1-xliv. 5 forms one section in itself, and xliv. 6-xlv. 25 another. But when I find Delitzsch connecting xliii. 1-13 with xlii., and Ewald not only accepting xliv. as an independent section, but even forming xliv. 1-9 into a single paragraph, I am obliged to distrust, my own insight."

Mr. Cheyne gives us in the Encyclopedia Britannica a much clearer and very amusing, because unconscious, instance of the difficulties of dealing with "style" (p. 379): "No doubt an author may change his style, writing in a different mood; we must, at all events, suppose that the author, whoever he may have been, was in a different tone of mind when he wrote so hardly, obscurely, and awkwardly as in liii." Again he mentions (p. 380) the "harsh, but strong style" of liii., which all will recognize as the description of the Servant of Jehovah in his vicarious suffering. Passing on to the foot of page 381 we read (the italics are mine): "But what shall we say what language is adequate to the divine beauty of such passages as Handel linked to music almost as divine: 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God;' 'He shall feed his flock like a shepherd;'He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth'? Silver tones of which the ear is never weary; honied rhetoric which thrills like a subtile odor even those who have lost the key to its meaning."

In view of this rhapsody, would it not be preferable to come back to the patient sifting of linguistic evidence, until we have laid a firmer foundation for the higher criticism?

In 1870 Mr. Cheyne states, as though there were no doubt in the matter: "With all his originality, our prophet [Isaiah A] was indebted for his most essential doctrine to Joel, Amos, and Hosea, his predecessors." In 1880 he says, on the other hand": "I have no doubt that Joel belongs to post-exile times." I repeat, 2 Vol. ii. p. 219, note 1.

1 Introduction, p. x. VOL. XXXIX. No. 155.

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