“The Book of Isaiah and the Neo-Babylonian Period” by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer investigates the “black hole” in the book that is the Babylonian Exile from three perspectives. First, it analyzes how the Book of Isaiah conceptualizes Babylon. It demonstrates how the Isaianic authors sought to underscore Babylon’s weakness and transitory existence, and aimed to assert that its demise was the result of Yhwh’s supremacy over Babylon’s own deities. Second, it challenges the dating of those texts in Isaiah that are traditionally assigned to the Neo-Babylonian period. References to Babylonian customs and religious traditions, polemic against Babylon, and support of Cyrus should not be used without reflection as dating criteria. Third, it argues that the material in Isa 40–55, traditionally assumed to have been written in Babylon because of its familiarity with Babylonian matters, rather reflects the kind of general knowledge that the people living in the shadow of the Neo-Babylonian Empire would be expected to have.

In “Impressions of Isaiah in Classical Rabbinic Literature,” Joshua Ezra Burns surveys the reception of Isaiah in postbiblical Jewish culture. Focusing on the works and folkways of the rabbinic sages, the author illustrates how early Jewish interpreters understood the book of Isaiah as a testament to the life and vocation of its ancient namesake and as a source of reassurance for future generations of Jews. Innocent of contemporary science concerning his book’s composition, the sages portrayed Isaiah as a brash prophet of unmatched visionary ability who foretold the destruction of the first Jerusalem Temple and its restoration with uncanny accuracy. The fulfillment of his visions made Isaiah’s prophecies valuable resources for liturgies, homilies, and other rabbinic literary compositions expressing hope in another national revival led by their long-promised Messiah following the loss of the second Jerusalem Temple and subjection of the Jews to Christian imperialism.

Even though the theme of return migration is specific to Ezra–Nehemiah, the concept of social displacement appears throughout the Old Testament from the banishment from Eden, through ancestral journeys and multiple exiles from Samaria and Judah. Thus, the multivalent theology of Ezra–Nehemiah engenders a broader dialogue with the rest of the Old Testament.

With its many voices that are joined together, Isaiah is akin to a massive choir or symphony, and it sometimes strikes dissonant notes. Matthew R. Schlimm, in “Theological Tensions in the Book of Isaiah,” looks at a number of different themes on which the book contains contrasting testimonies: God is portrayed as both a loving savior and a wrathful punisher; God is said to be a mighty sovereign, and yet humans frequently do not act according to his will; God is universal and transcendent, and yet is also portrayed as intimate with his people, particularly Zion; humans are sometimes seen as pervasively sinful, but are exhorted to do good; the creation, too, is sometimes good and blessed, and yet elsewhere seen as corrupted; and the same leaders and empires are alternately condemned and used as divine agents. Schlimm reflects on the way in which these complexities press readers beyond simple answers.

William Blake’s literary prophecies constantly unsettle symmetries, “pulling the rug out” from under the harmony and balance neoclassical readers were trained to expect in a text or a painting. Blake’s prophecies have long been read through the teleological system of Ezekiel’s “merkabah” (chariot) vision. Each biblical allusion in Blake’s work seems to build to a greater whole, or can be explained through the prophetic “system.” However, what if Blake’s prophecies were refracted through Isaiah’s more dim vision? In the multiple versions of Isaiah’s initiation in Blake’s work, we encounter a prophecy of stutter, glitch, and weakness, and a flickering, partial vision. Rather than presenting a single bombastic image as a method to unlock a biblical allegory, Blake offers Isaiah’s prophetic walking as a figure for the interpretation of the difficult, irregular biblical text. From the perspective of the walker, the biblical text is full of hardened surfaces, desolate rocks, and irregular encounters, which must be read “with the feet,” topologically – not typologically – before the poet-prophet-walker can arrive at their destination.

In order to understand the Romantic fascination with prophets, we begin with an influential eighteenth-century figure poised on the cusp of neoclassicism and Romanticism: the English biblical scholar Robert Lowth – also a medieval historian, a shrewd politician, and the author of a bestselling English grammar handbook, who was destined to become the Bishop of London. Lowth is a key figure in the creation of the modern “poetics of prophecy.” Taking an approach which would become known in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as “the Bible as literature,” Lowth initiated and represents an important new way of regarding the Bible aesthetically, one which we encounter through his construction of Isaiah as a strong prophet. Yet examining the fissures in Lowth’s ideal Isaiah – who he reads as a perfect combination of elegance and sublimity – can also help us think more critically about the literary study of the Bible.

Like the later prophets, the Hebrew prophets were divinely authorized whistleblowers. The prophet Nathan confronted King David over his adultery and murder; Isaiah and Jeremiah confronted their kings over their alliances with foreign powers; Elijah confronted King Ahab over the murder and dispossession of his neighbor. Prophets from Amos to Jeremiah excoriate the priests of their day for making a mockery of Temple worship by attempting to bribe God with sacrifices and pious words. The prophets insist that all religious rites must serve righteousness, that moral purity comes before ritual purity. No wonder the Hebrew prophets were condemned and persecuted by priests and kings for being both heretics and traitors. The Hebrew prophets almost never attempted to exercise priestly or political power; they simply attempted to veto the abuses of priests and kings in the name of God. The Hebrew prophets, like our later prophets, were more than merely critics; they were also visionaries of peace and social justice.

This chapter pitches Arnold’s theory of how we should read against his reading practice. It uncovers how secular the practice of literary criticism really is. Arnold’s legacy, the idea of reading as moral formation, will remain confused as long as we neglect practice in favour of theory. Beginning with an overview of Arnold’s approach to reading the Bible in Literature and Dogma (1873), I explore how Arnold’s biblical hermeneutics works in practice, arguing that his preparation of a version of Isaiah for schoolchildren replaces established typological practice with a new method which he calls ‘employing parallels’. It is the genre and apparatus of the Bible ‘version’ which registers and enables his radical position. In Arnold’s method, the intellectus spiritualis is replaced by a secular method of imaginative engagement which has far-reaching consequences for how the reader finds themselves positioned: as a result, a secular intellectus culturae or cultural ‘tact’ comes to replace the traditional method of reading scripture. Throughout I am concerned with reading as a practice which is constitutive of concepts including faith and doubt.

This chapter places the notion of “pistis Christou” in the context of three major contemporary exegetical proposals regarding the shape of the Pauline narrative: “pistis Christou” as the faithfulness of the resurrected and ascended Christ (David J. Downs and Benjamin Lappenga), Christ’s coming as the end of exile and the return of Israel’s God to the people (N. T. Wright), and the idea of Christ as the embodiment of Isaiah’s suffering servant (Richard Bauckham). The chapter argues that these combined proposals offer a lens through which to interpret “pistis Christou” as the human expression of the Lord’s faithfulness to his people.

This chapter demonstrates how the oracles provoked by the illnesses of Abijah and Hezekiah work in combination to structure the presentation of Judah’s and Israel’s monarchic past as envisioned in the Book of Kings. Royal illness frames prophetic oracles which are used to confirm the validity of the Davidic dynasty and to condemn the dynasties of the North. Eventually, however, the oracles are expanded through a later redaction to frame the destruction of both Israel and Judah. This chapter concludes with an excursus on Hezekiah’s illness as it is featured in the Isaianic tradition, where the focus shifts to highlighting the link between the king and his people rather than the king and his dynasty.

The narrative Source BII includes a meeting of three Assyrian commanders accompanied by a large army with a Judean delegation at the conduit of the upper pool on the highway at the Fuller’s Field. Rāb-šaqê conveys to Hezekiah’s emissaries a message. He warns them not to rebel against Assyria, not to confront the Assyrian army with the aid of the Egyptians in a pitched battle, and not to trust YHWH for deliverance, since YHWH has allegedly sent Sennacherib to devastate the land of Judah. When Hezekiah sends a delegation to Isaiah to ask for YHWH’s aid, Isaiah delivers an oracle assuring the king of Judah not to fear, for a spirit will be given to the king of Assyria. He will hear a rumor, retreat to Assyria, and die by the sword. Source BII focuses on the murder of Sennacherib, on the Egyptian aid in a pitched battle, and mentions Taharqa, king of Kush, who would cause Sennacherib to retreat. The motifs of divine intervention, causing Assyria’s defeat and Sennacherib’s retreat and eventual murder, are the backbone of Source BII.

In Chapter 9, Strand BIII reflects the historical Sitz im Leben of the source in the Neo-Babylonian Period (the reigns of Nabopolassar and the early years of Nebuchadnezzar II). The author of this strand incorporated echoes of the events connected to the demise of the Assyrian Empire. More particularly, these echoes reflect the following events: a) the wars of the Babylonians under Nabopolassar on Assyrian soil from 616 to 609 BCE, during which the Babylonians devastated the heartland of Assyria and conquered its Western provinces, thus sealing Assyria’s demise; and b) the subsequent campaigns of the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar II, during which the Babylonians crossed the Euphrates and conquered the Levant (605–598/7). The struggle between Assyria and Egypt over the Levant is omitted. During the siege of Jerusalem between 588 and 586 BCE, the people of Jerusalem decided to oppose the besieging Babylonians and not surrender. Jerusalem withstood a siege for a far longer time than any of the nations listed in Isa 37:12–13, namely during the conquests of the Neo-Babylonian Kings. Therefore, the people of Jerusalem could claim that God was protecting them and Jerusalem.

The question of the priority of Isa 36–37 over 2 Kgs 18–19 or vice versa has been raised in research for many years. There are numerous variations between the parallel texts. In comparing the Kings and Isaiah versions, Gesenius concluded that the Kings version was the original setting of the Hezekiah-Isaiah narratives. This view began to change with the study of Ackroyd. Profiting from Ackroyd’s work, Smelik raised several arguments for the primacy of the Isaiah text.

In Chapter 10, I present the differences created by the process of transmission. In the second part of the chapter, I present the results of the text-critical investigation according to the new proposal to divide the comprehensive text into sources A, BI, BII, and BIII. Most of the variations can be explained as a result of the attempt to integrate the different sources into one coherent narrative. In most cases, it can be shown that the prior version was in Isaiah; the editor of Kings attempted to hide the coarse stitches in the final narrative.

For millennia the story of Hezekiah’s miraculous deliverance by the Angel of God from Sennacherib (in Isa 36–37/2 Kgs 18:13–19:37), has been perceived as the fulfillment of God’s words of salvation to Jerusalem as a reward for the pious king of the house of David.

Chapter 7 presents the historical reality of the period between the murder of Sennacherib in 681 BCE and the defeat of Assyria at the borders of Egypt in 673 BCE. Scholars did not consider the historical reality of Egypt and Kush, which excludes portraying Taharqa as a heroic victorious figure after 671 BCE, after which he could not have been depicted as the savior, who would come to the rescue of Jerusalem, since during the period from 671 BCE until his death in 664 BCE he was repeatedly defeated by the Assyrians and his kingdom conquered and subjugated. Thus, only a narrow window of opportunity can be detected for the composition of BII – the years between the murder of Sennacherib (681) and the conquest of Egypt by Assyria (671). During this period Assyria suffered a disastrous defeat, which might have been portrayed as the intervention of God’s angel in Isa 37:36. After the conquest of Egypt by Assyria in 671 BCE and the expulsion of the Kushites from Egypt never to return, Taharqa’s elevation to the role of savior would be highly improbable.

In Chapter 3, a fresh look at the text is suggested according to the historical-critical approach to solving the problems mentioned in Chapter 1.

In the Isaiah text (which will be the starting point for the investigation) by delineating the breaks in the sequence of the narrative and mutually exclusive contradictions, it is possible to isolate in Isa 36–37 threads of two discrete sources and a redactional strand. These were actually intertwined in the composition of the narrative, which tell different stories. They were composed at different times, for different purposes, describing various historical events and circumstances.

Instead of identifying twofold repetitions, it is possible to recognize threefold repetitions. The narratives include three different Assyrian delegations composed of various emissaries; three different messages conveyed by the Assyrians to the Judeans by different means, possibly at three (?) (different?) locations. There are traces of three different responses of Hezekiah to the Assyrian threat (excluding Hezekiah’s submission in putative source A). Finally, Hezekiah receives three different prophesies concerning the fate of the Assyrian king.

In Chapter 5, it is shown that Source BI reflects the events and atmosphere during the days of the Assyrian campaign of Sennacherib in 701 BCE. The Assyrians devastated Judah in Sennacherib’s third campaign – a claim corroborated by 2 Kgs 18:14–16; Mic 1:10–16 and Isa 1:4–9, and the extensive archaeological excavations and surveys of the Judean kingdom. 2 Kings 18:14–16 (source A) preserves an account of Hezekiah’s subjugation to Sennacherib and payment of an enormous tribute. Hezekiah’s submission occurred, according to the biblical narrative, at the beginning of Sennacherib’s campaign against Judah. Following the payment, Sennacherib sent his envoys to demand Hezekiah’s capitulation. The Assyrian annals describe the total submission of Hezekiah and a victory over his Egyptian allies. Hezekiah remained king of Judah and was not punished. The original Source BI, portraying the events during the 701 campaign, did not contain a description of an Assyrian defeat nor of the murder of Sennacherib, which occurred twenty years after his campaign to the Levant.