Sawed
in Two
Starting
with circumstances under which the prophet Isaiah died, there is a well-known
martyrdom tradition that probably originated sometime during the last centuries
BCE that recounts how the prophet Isaiah was sawed in two. It is alluded to in
Heb 11:37, which refers to those “sawn in two” (επρισθησαν) in a list of fates that had come
up upon heroes from the past. It is also mentioned in Justin’s Dial.
120, by Tertullian (Pat. 14; Scorp. 8), and in the Apocalypse
of Paul 49, and it picked up and renarrated in b. Yebam. 49b and y. Sanh.
10:2 (cf. B. Sanh. 103b, where the death of the prophet Isaiah is related to 21
Kings 21:16 and the shedding of innocent blood by Manasseh). In all of these
references—except for some of the rabbinic texts—only a very brief mention of the
fate of the prophet Isaiah is made, but a more expanded narrative has been
preserved in the early Christan apocalypse Ascension of Isaiah, which is
commonly dated to 70-120 CE. (David Davage, How Isaiah Became an Author:
Prophecy, Authority, and Attribution [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022],
248-49)
Interestingly,
Justin accuses Jews of having deleted that passage (cf. “Origen and Echtheitskritik”
above) and says that they would have done the same with passages from the
‘book’ called Jeremiah and the Psalms had they only understood them.
Regarding the Psalms, he likely refers to Ps 96:10 (for a discussion, see Anni
Maria Laato 2020; Antti Laato 2020), and as for Jeremiah, the passage is
quoted in Dial. 72 and referred to several times by Irenaeus, with
various attributions. It is related to the prophet Isaiah(!) once, in Haer.
3.20.4; to Jeremiah twice, in Haer. 4.22.1 and Epid. 78; to an
unidentified “prophet” once, in Haer. 5.31.1; to “Others” once, in Haer.
4.33.12 (possibly both the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah?) and quoted without
introduction once, in Haer. 4.33.1. (Ibid., 249 n. 71)
