Shon Hopkin – Controversy Surrounding the Book of Isaiah

Ken Krogue:  There are some pretty big differences in point of view.

Shon Hopkin: Sure.

Ken Krogue: We found that there are some very controversial things.  We thought Isaiah was going to be boring.  It’s not.

Shon Hopkin: No.

Ken Krogue: What are some of the main issues, the main things we have got to be aware of?

Shon Hopkin: So, the controversy mostly comes when someone makes a modern-day interpretation.  Look at what he’s saying here and look how this proves this, right.  And I don’t know that we need to do those kinds of things.  My personal preference is to say, look at how we can understand it in our day and how it can support this view point without it being, hey, I am trying to nail down this thing and prove it so that you now know this is true.  I just don’t know that that’s what God is going for even, right?  I don’t know that that’s what His goals are, to prove something and now you’ve got to believe it, right?

Ken Krogue: Yes.

Shon Hopkin: And so, I think that’s where the controversy comes in.  It’s sort of unique interpretations that are now taken as iron clad evidence of a certain position, and I don’t know that the controversy needs to be there because most of the things, not all of them, that I read in other scholars, I think, yeah, they’re doing good work there. I’m going to do different things with Isaiah than what they care about doing.  So, they’re just sticking in the historical.  I want to start historical and come modern.  They don’t…a lot of them don’t care.

Ken Krogue: It seems like scholars have to publish, they have to get the word out.

Shon Hopkin: Sure.

Ken Krogue: So, they pick some pretty unique…

Shon Hopkin: Sometimes.

Ken Krogue: Sometimes some answering.  So, if we were Baskin-Robbins and there were thirty-one flavors of scholarship, what would be the three or four or five of yours, the things that pull you?

Shon Hopkin: Yeah.

Ken Krogue: Around Isaiah.  Do you mind just…could you say bullet points about Sean, what would they be?  Uniqueness.

Shon Hopkin: Yeah.  Well, so, before I go to that…answer that question, which is a great question, let me just say the other real challenge of latter day saint scholars and others is, when was this written?  Who is the author of Isaiah?  That’s the huge issue.

Ken Krogue: That’s the big one.

Shon Hopkin: That is the big issue, yeah, and latter-day saints are usually going to come down…

Ken Krogue: They says it was multiple authors?

Troy Fulmer:  Absolutely.  Multiple authors at different times, because if you’ve got Isaiah talking very clearly about future events, it’s more complex than this, but a lot of scholars are going to say, well, clearly somebody’s writing after those events happened, right.  And so then once that happens, then once you’re set in stone, well had to happen, and this was written after, like in 300BC, well then what’s it doing in the Book of Mormon, right?  And latter-day saints, it came with Lehi, in 600BC right?

Ken Krogue: So, the multiple authorship question?

Shon Hopkin: That’s the real challenge.

Ken Krogue: Are there any other big ones like that?

Shon Hopkin:  I think that’s probably the main one.