Friday, December 15, 2023

G. K. Beale on the Jewish pseudepigrapha being an inadequate parallel to Questions of the Authorship of Isaiah 40-66

  

Jewish pseudepigrapha could offer parallels to taking Isa 40-66 as written by a different author than Isaiah but in the name of Isaiah, which would have been assumed from chapters 1-39. However, our concern here is Jesus and the apostles quoting particular verses from “Isaiah” and attributing them to the prophet Isaiah. I do not consider the pseudepigraphic writings here because their authors do not quote from or expand on specific passages composed by ancient biblical figures in the precise way as argued by some scholars for the anonymous authorship of Isa 40-66, though allusions to Old Testament passages are common. Rather, pseudepigraphic works attribute completely new and later compositions to earlier biblical characters. Their authors attached pseudepigraphic names to “new works, rather than to citations of existing Old Testament writings. Furthermore, some of the names identify persons who wrote nothing of which we know (e.g., Enoch, Abraham, Jacob, etc.) Isaiah presents a different case. Those who argue for multiple authors contend that chs. 40-66 were composed by a school of disciples or editors who expanded on chs. 1-39, which were written by the historical Isaiah. Indeed, it seems the large collection of pseudepigraphic works were not included in the Old Testament canon because people likely knew at least by the time of the close of the Old Testament canon that they were not written by the biblical person whose name was attached to them, and thus concluded that these compositions lacked the authority of those composed by the Old Testament writers. Most scholars who recognize two or three Isaiahs believe that chs. 40-66 were written in the sixth century BCE, long before the literary genre of Jewish pseudepigrapha arose and flourished (the beginning of the second century BCE). Furthermore, if Isa 40-66 were pseudepigraphic, the author should have inserted the name of Isaiha at various points in these chapters, as happened typically in the pseudepigraphal books. (G. K. Beale, “’Isaiah the Prophet Said’: The Authorship of Isaiah Reexamined in the Light of Early Jewish and Christian Writings,” in Bind Up the Testimony: Explorations in the Genesis of the Book of Isaiah, ed. Daniel I. Block and Richard L. Schultz [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2015], 96 n. 32)