More Than One Author of Isaiah?
No Evidence from Qumran
One of the most
debated issues in the critical research of Isaiah is its possible multiple
authorship. Critical scholarship posits the composite nature of the book named
Isaiah as created by the juxtaposition of two or three literary compositions.
Scholars usually make a distinction between the writings of Isaiah son of Amoz
living in the eighty century BCE in chs. 1-39 and that of Deutero-Isaiah living
in the second half of the sixth century in chs. 40-66. Often the chapters of
the second part of Isaiah are subdivided into Deutero-Isaiah (chs. 40-55) and
Trito-Isaiah (chs. 56-66). Presumably at one point these two or three books
were combined and a still earlier stage Isa. 36:1-39:8 had been copied
partially from 2 Kgs 18:13-20:19 and added as an appendix to the words of Isaiah
son of Amoz, just like 2 Kgs 24:18-25:30 was appended to Jeremiah 1-51 as ch.
52.
Not all scholars
accept these critical assumptions, and when the Dead Sea scrolls were found,
there were great expectations that an answer to this vexed dispute wound be
found. However, no evidence has been found in any of the scrolls either to
prove or disprove the composite nature of Isaiah. These scrolls are simply too
late in order to show any evidence. I might add that the copying of the large
Isaiah scroll by two different scribes (Isa. 1-33a and 34-66) is irrelevant,
since this division of work reflects a mere scribal convenience of dividing the
copying of this long scroll into two exactly equal segments (cols. I-XXVII,
XXVIII-LIV) (In modern scholarship chs. 34 [beginning of scribe B] and 35 are
often considered as authored by Deutero-Isaiah [see Paul, Isaiah 40-66,
4-5], but the historical appendix in chs. 36-39 is not. These chapters form an
appendix to the words of Isaiah son of Amoz, and hence their inclusion among
the chapters written by scribe B shows that the division is unrelated to
matters of content). In my view the two segments of the scroll were copied separately
in such a way that when scribe A finished his work he had to leave three lines
open at the end of Isaiah 33 in col. XXVII, while scribe B started at the
beginning of a new column. (Emanuel Tov, “Exegesis and Theology in the
Transmission of Isaiah,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed. The Unperceived
Continuity of Isaiah [Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related
Studies 28; London: T&T Clark, 2019, 2020], 94-127, here, pp. 96-97. Tov
himself is a proponent of multiple authorship of Isaiah)