The Earth will be cleansed with fire at Christ's Second Coming
A companion to your Come, Follow Me study of Isaiah
Isaiah 13-14— Babylon will Fall
Chapters 13 and 14 are the first in a series, (which ends with Chapter 23), of prophecies warning nine ancient nations of their impending doom. But Chapters 13 and 14 both focus on Babylon, which is a ‘type’ or symbol of the world we live in. And these two chapters in this series, are the only two quoted in the Book of Mormon.
Monte Nyman explains: “There is undoubtedly a dual message within them. The basic message is against the old Babylon, which existed before Isaiah’s time and became a world power under King Nebuchadnezzar after Assyria’s downfall and after the ministry of Isaiah.
“Babylon became the epitome of wickedness in the ancient world, and was used in both the New Testament and the Doctrine and Covenants as the symbol of the wicked world (see Revelation 14:8; D&C 133:14). Thus a greater message is to modern-day Babylon, the wickedness of our world. It is often difficult to know which Babylon the text is referring to, and it may be that sometimes it refers to both at the same time.”[1]
The events foretold in this chapter are those leading into the last days before Christ’s Second Coming. The Lord calls members of His Church to prepare as a righteous army to battle with Babylon, which is the world’s evil today.
Second Nephi 24 is the last of 12 chapters that Nephi quoted continuously from Isaiah. This chapter continues Isaiah’s prediction of the fall of Babylon (whose fall is a symbol or ‘type’ of the fall of the world at Christ’s Second coming), but Isaiah moves on to the other nations of Assyria (Isa. 14:24-27) and Philistia (Isa. 14:28-32) as similar types of the coming end.
“…a seer can know of things which are past, and also of things which are to come, and by them shall all things be revealed, …and things which are not known shall be made known by them, and also things shall be made known by them which otherwise could not be known.”—Mosiah 8:17
Isaiah 24–27—The Apocalypse of Isaiah
Isaiah 24–27 expands the prophecies of individual nations found in Isaiah 13–23 to include the whole earth. And the Earth, explain Shon Hopkin and And Madsen, will be “profoundly affected by the wickedness of its inhabitants. The events described [in these chapters] will be universal. Neither wealth and power nor poverty and obscurity will allow anyone to escape.”[2]
These chapters also demonstrates Isaiah’s seership, as he records things not chronicled before his ministry. In fact, as Victor Ludlow explains, these chapters establish him as a “great seer” recording, “a cycle of prophecies that has no parallel in the writings of earlier Old Testament prophets.” However after his ministry, those prophets that follow (Daniel, Zechariah, and John the Revelator), reiterate many of his themes.
In these chapters, Isaiah “sees Isaiah 24–27.”[3] Sometimes chapters 24–27 are referred to as “the Apocalypse of Isaiah..”[4] Chapters 24 and 25 are contrastive as 24 tells of coming destruction and sadness, while 25 promises times of new life and gladness.
And these chapters, Isaiah is not only acting as a prophet and seer, but he also exercises his poetic skill. Again from Ludlow, “…as a prophet he warns and testifies of the consequences of wickedness; as a seer, he reveals future events upon this earth and spiritual developments in the post-earthly spirit world; as a poet, he combines semantic parallelism, sound, repetitions, and symbolism to memorably portraying the condition of the earth in the last days.”[5]
Isaiah 24
Men will transgress the law and break the everlasting covenant—At the Second Coming, they will be burned, the earth will reel, and the sun will be ashamed—Then the Lord will reign in Zion and in Jerusalem.
Isaiah 25
In Mount Zion the Lord will prepare a gospel feast of rich food—He will swallow up death in victory—It will be said, Lo, this is our God.
Isaiah 26
Trust in the Lord forever—Jehovah will die and be resurrected—All men will rise in the Resurrection.
Isaiah 27
The people of Israel will blossom and bud and fill the earth with fruit—They will be gathered one by one and will worship the Lord.
Isaiah 28
Woe to the drunkards of Ephraim!—Revelation comes line upon line and precept upon precept—Christ, the sure foundation, is promised.
Isaiah 29 — A Voice from the Dust
Unlike the previous chapters, in 2 Nephi 26–27, John Bytheway points out that, in quoting Isaiah 29, Nephi “likened” or applied passages this chapter “concerning the destruction of Jerusalem to the destruction of his own people in the Americas. It also appears that Nephi interjected his own commentary among the words of Isaiah. While Nephi applied certain Isaiah passages concerning the inhabitants of Judah to his own people, Isaiah clearly saw events specific to the latter days.”[6]
In this chapter, “Isaiah foretells the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, the visit of Martin Harris to Charles Anthon, the three witnesses, and other events of the Restoration. The prophet Isaiah is a wonderful Old Testament witness of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon.”[7]
In the last days, when darkness and apostasy has covered the earth, the Nephites will speak as a voice from the dust. The coming forth of the Book of Mormon will be a “Marvelous Work and a Wonder;” there will be 3 witnesses who will testify of its validity from God, while learned mean cannot read the sealed book.
Isaiah 30 and 35—Further Warnings
According to Monte Nyman, “Chapters 30 through 35 present the last three of the six ‘woes’” that began back in Isaiah chapter 28. “These three warnings appear to be based on actual historical incidents …The first warning speaks against trusting the wisdom of man, and the second against trusting the power of man, as shown in the following outline.”[8]
Isaiah 30
Judah rejects her seers and prophets—The Lord will come in a day of apostasy to judge and destroy the wicked—The wicked will be burned at His Seond Coming , but Israel’s people will be gathered and blessed both temporally and spiritually
Isaiah 35
In the day of restoration, the desert will blossom, the Lord will come, Israel will be gathered, and Zion will be built up.
“We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.”
“A substantial portion of this Article of Faith,” writes Billikopf, “is covered in Isaiah 35—and even more so when we consider Isaiah 35’s parallel text, D&C 133. This glorious chapter of Isaiah gives the blossoming of the Utah desert as a rose—along with other attendant blessings—as a type of the Earth being converted into its paradisiacal gory in the millennium.
“From Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith: ‘The land of America is a promised land unto [the descendants of Joseph], and unto it, all the tribes of Israel will come, with as many of the Gentiles as shall comply with the requisitions of the new covenant. But the tribe of Judah will return to old Jerusalem, The City of Zion spoken of by David in the 102nd Psalm will be built upon the Land of America. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads.’ (Isaiah 35:10); and then they will be delivered from the overflowing scourge that shall pass through the land. But Judah shall obtain deliverance at Jerusalem. See Joel 2:32; ISAIAH 26:20–21; Jeremiah 31:12; Psalm 1:5; 10.
“The testimonies that the Good Shepherd will put forth His own sheep, and lead them out from all nations where they have been scattered in a cloudy and dark day, to Zion, and to Jerusalem; besides many more testimonies which might be brought.
“Elder Orson Pratt taught: ‘I say those who will travel through this Territory [Utah] may see some of the effects of the gathering out of the Saints who have made a covenant with the Lord by sacrifice. If we had gathered together into a country that was well timbered, where we could go out and get a load of fence poles or firewood before breakfast; if we had settled in a country that was not, comparatively a desert, and that was blessed with the rains of heaven, we could no doubt have accomplished far more than we now see. But the Lord purposely led us into this desert to fulfill prophecy.’ (Pratt, Elder Orson, JD 15:57-58). Horsley says that this chapter relates to the ‘final triumph of the Church over the apostate factions.’.[9]
Since the published Old Testament Reading Schedule doesn’t include every chapter in the Book of Isaiah our team has not curated all resources from our site. But we have made this workable directory for your five-week study of this important book in the Old Testament in a total of seven curated posts:
The contest of ideas regarding Isaiah as a prophet, seer or historian has plagued the Book of Isaiah’s unity and prompted a multiple author theory for well over a hundred years. Few reputable scholars outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would even bother to consider this Old Testament book as something written from a single author. Most, in fact, take for granted that the later portions of the book were written during Israel’s Babylonian captivity and in the period just after that when the Jews had begun returning to Jerusalem to build the temple. This, of course, allows those writers to treat history as prophesy, making it fiction.
But for us in the church, the multiple-Isaiah theory, as it is known, presents a problem with parts of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon as discussed in other posts, but it also opens a big crack in the definition of a prophet as a seer, at least in the area of seeing the future. The LDS Bible Dictionary explains:
“A seer is a revelator and a prophet also” (Mosiah 8:15–16), …There have been many seers in the history of God’s people on this earth but not so many as there have been prophets.
“A seer is greater than a prophet … and a gift which is greater can no man have …” (Mosiah 8:15–18).”
So while many of our readers accept the seership of prophets, this is a prime example of the discomfort scholars feel who question the Bible as the word of God. These scholars cannot believe in Biblical prophetic inspiration, so they must make what is written into religious history, or worse, historical fiction.
To accommodate their views, they try, after the fact, to ascribe authorship of any prophecy in the distant future to someone closer to the event or other re-dating efforts. For example, the specific mention of “Cyrus, King of Persia” by name in Isaiah 44:28–45:1 would require predictive prophecy by Isaiah at least 150 years before the king came to power. This is something they cannot accept,
Instead, they propose a student or disciple of Isaiah, was the author of the last twenty-six chapters of the prophet’s book. If one of his later students wrote it, say sometime after the Babylonian captivity (after 586 BC), that would explain its accuracy; the idea of a second Isaiah would negate the need for an accurate prediction. That is how prophecy is made into history in many portions of the Bible.
This proposed student or disciple of Isaiah has no name, but according to the multiple author theorists, “his work has been preserved in the collection of writings that include the prophecies of the earlier Isaiah, he is usually designated as Deutero-Isaiah — the second Isaiah. The chapters attributed to this prophet of the exile include some of the noblest religious ideals found in the entire Old Testament.
“The prophet was a pure monotheist. Rejecting the idea of Yahweh as a God who belonged only to the Hebrews, Deutero-Isaiah boldly proclaimed Yahweh as the only true God of the entire universe. He maintained that the so-called gods of foreign nations were but figments of the imagination. His conception of the people of Israel was also unique in that he regarded them as Yahweh’s servants, whose primary function in the world is to carry religion to the ends of the earth. He made explicit an interpretation of history that, although it had been implied in the teachings of the earlier prophets, had never been stated as clearly by any of them. Finally, he introduced a new concept to account for the sufferings of people that could not, in all fairness, be explained as punishment for sins.”1
Marc Zvi Brettler of Duke University wrote: “Exactly how and why someone attached these oracles [40-66] to those of an earlier prophet is unknown, scholars are certain, however, that 40-66 does not reflect the work of the eighth century Isaiah son of Amoz”2
Others dismissive of seership among Israel’s prophets reject the idea of predictive prophecy by any ancient Jewish prophet. For example, in his Dictionary of the Bible, John McKenzie claimed:
Most of the book of Isaiah does not come from the Prophet Isaiah, and even those discourses which are his come in the reports of those who wrote them down from auditions or from memory. The book is a compendium of many types of prophecy from diverse periods.3
There are some conservative scholars outside the church who accept the unity of the book of Isaiah. For example,
O. T. Allis, The Unity of Isaiah(Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1950)
E. J. Young, Studies in Isaiah (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1954)
E. J. Young, Who Wrote Isaiah?(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 19,58).
Most Bible scholars these days, in fact, treat the Old Testament books as compendiums, written and added to by scribes and followers of the prophets which bear their names. Timothy H. Lim, professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh, says the Old Testament is “was not written by one man, nor did it drop down from heaven as assumed by fundamentalists. It is …a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing.”4
Emanuel Tov, Ph.D., a professor at Bible Hebrew University in Jerusalem writes, “scribal additions in ancient sources as well as of individual glosses” are part of the Hebrew Bible. Glosses are any kind of explanatory information added to the Bible text by a scribe and may include, “textual growth inserted in the text base, whether intentionally or unintentionally. …The discussion of the categories of scribal additions in ancient sources as well as of individual glosses and interpolations in the manuscripts of the various biblical books has led to negative conclusions with regard to the existence of these phenomena in the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible.”5
David Bokovoy, Ph.D., professor in Bible and Jewish Studies at Utah State University, is among church scholars that accept the multiple authorship of Isaiah. He reconciles his position by asking, “So what is a believing Latter-day Saint to do? Is there an effective apologetic approach given the weight of this evidence? I believe that there is (maybe are). I believe that an effective apologetic argument would state, ‘I do not know why there is postexilic material in the Book of Mormon, but I do know that I feel connected with God through the book. I, therefore, believe, even though I do not have an answer.’
“Another way of approaching this topic would be for Latter-day Saints to recognize that the Book of Mormon is a revelatory work that comes to us through Joseph Smith. The prophet didn’t sit down and work his way through ancient script line upon line. Shouldn’t Latter-day Saints, therefore, expect that the work would contain inspired prophetic, Midrashic use of material known to Joseph Smith, including the material in Isaiah 40-66?” 6
However, there are a few reputable Bible scholars in and out of the Church who still the unity of Isaiah with a single author. “Their conclusions include the similarity of writing styles in both sections, the consistent use of the same words throughout, and the familiarity of the author with Israel, but not Babylon. Furthermore, Jewish tradition uniformly ascribes the entire book to Isaiah.”7
One of these is L. LaMar Adams, who wrote this explanation of the seership problem, “It was claimed by divisionists [those that divide the Book of Isaiah into two or more parts] that a prophet is sent to prophesy to the people of his own time and that his predictions do not extend beyond the horizon of his own day.”8Then he cited Norman Gottwald who claimed:
When [the prophetic writings are] studied in their context, apart from dogmatic preconviction, [it is clear that] no prophet leaped across the centuries and foresaw the specific person Jesus of Nazareth. It is a plain violation of historical context to think that they did so, and in practice those that interpret the prophets as predictors of Jesus obscure the setting in which the prophets functioned.9
Kent Jackson, Ph.D., professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, penned an essay several years ago taking on the authorship of Isaiah as a unified book. He wrote, “From the outset, it must be made clear that multiple-authorship theories for the book of Isaiah have no support from any ancient manuscripts or traditions. The earliest known translation of Isaiah (the Greek Septuagint) is from the third century BC, and it includes all the material now found in the book of Isaiah. The same is true of the earliest existing manuscript of Isaiah, from the second century BC, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. No ancient document—including the New Testament and the rabbinic literature—shows any hint that readers in antiquity questioned Isaiah’s authorship of the entire book. Some modern scholars, however, see features within the text of the book that cause them to conclude that in its present state, it is not the product of one author but of two, three, or perhaps more.”10
He explains that most scholars who hold to the multiple authorship theory, do so for four reasons:
Proto Isaiah mentions Isaiah as the son of Amoz and providing biographical material about him and others of his time in chapters 1–40. He wrote: “These chapters clearly fit within the period of time in which they purport to have been written, in the late eighth century BC.” However, in chapters 41–66, there is no mention of Isaiah’s name or other clues that would link thos chapters to him.
It seems the historical setting of “Second” and “Third” Isaiah differ from “First” Isaiah.
(a) Cyrus, the Persian king who lived more than 100 years after Isaiah, is named
(b) In Isaiah’s time the Assyrian’s were the biggest threat, but in the last third of the book, Isaiah moves emphasis to the Babylonians, who were no threat in his time
(c) Isaiah moves the narrative from future tense to past tense listing the destruction of the Kingdom Judah and the temple more than a century before it happened
(d) Judah and its people are “described as already being punished and exiled, which took place after 586 BC.”
Isaiah’s theological perspective switches from judgment in the early chapter to forgiveness and reconciliation in later chapters.
His literary style also shifts from that of the earlier chapters.11
Jackson states that Church “scholars agree that the observations presented above, for the most part, represent accurately the change in tone that begins in Isaiah 40. Scholars who believe in the essential unity of the book acknowledge the changes, but they do not see them as grounds for denying the material in chapters 40–66 to Isaiah son of Amoz. If the Book of Mormon did not quote from ‘Second’ Isaiah, the discussion of authorship would have little meaning for Latter-day Saints; it would not matter to us either way. But because there is material after chapter 39 in the Book of Mormon, the issue is important.”12Then he tackled each of these issues.
First, he pointed out that nearly “all of the sixteen prophetic books in the Old Testament identify the author by name at the beginning of the book,” which true of Isaiah too. And, “While it is true that Isaiah’s name is never mentioned after chapter 39, neither do the later chapters ascribe authorship to anyone else. The lack of biographical inferences does not argue either for or against Isaiah as the author.”13
Next, Jackson explained that Isaiah, like Book of Mormon writers, wrote both for their times and for the future generations. He continues, “As the Nephite writers saw and understood our time, they also wrote to meet our needs, not exclusively those of their contemporaries, who would never see the Book of Mormon as we have it. In the book of Isaiah is a striking parallel: Isaiah saw and understood the circumstances of his countrymen beyond his own lifetime, and through the inspiration of heaven he wrote in their behalf, as he also did for his contemporaries.”14
In regard to the switch in tone or theme in the last 26 chapters of Isaiah, Jackson believes the shift is deliberate. He wrote, “In the prophetic books of the Old Testament, as a general rule, prophecies of judgment and punishment precede those of blessing and restoration. …This is true within individual prophecies and chapters as it is in the organization of entire books. … God’s judgment would be the inevitable consequence of Israel’s rebellion, but in the latter days, Israel would be gathered and restored and would enjoy full reconciliation with God.”15
And finally, he addressed literary continuity in the chapters of Isaiah, calling attention to literary variation in all the chapters. “Hebrew poetry has sufficient flexibility to allow an author a wide range of literary options,” he said. “Even critical scholars who argue for multiple authorship see a great deal of Isaiah son of Amoz throughout the entire collection, pointing to language and themes that were carried on in the later chapters.…Thus arguments defending multiple authorship based on different literary styles are inconclusive, especially since we do not know the history of Isaiah’s words once they left his mouth or his pen.”16
Then in his conclusion, Jackson comes to the point of this post which is centered on this basic question: “Can a prophet see beyond his own time? One’s answer to the question necessarily determines whether one can accept the book being in place when Nephi acquired it or whether one must date parts of it to a later time. Those who begin with the assumption that people cannot see beyond their own day must logically conclude that Isaiah could not have written those sections of the book that speak to a different historical setting than his own.
“In contrast, those who understand the true nature of revelation and prophetic foresight have no trouble with prophecies of future events. Latter-day Saints are blessed with abundant revealed evidence that God can indeed inspire his servants with views of future days. The Book of Mormon provides us with ample proof of that.
“…Latter-day Saints who accept the evidence from the Book of Mormon and believe that prophets can see beyond their own time should have no difficulty accepting the idea that the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon were compiled before 600 BC. But this does not mean that all our questions have been answered.” But, “the answers to these questions are not critical for our understanding of Isaiah’s message.”17
These days, the answer to this question troubles many Millennials who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but computer assisted word-printing analysis or stylometry may help answer this question. But why is this a concern?
Questions come for the acceptance of the Deutro-Trito Isaiah theory so universal among Bible scholars. In their arguments, these scholars suggest the last third of the book of Isaiah, including chapters 48–54 which are quoted by Nephi, Jacob, Abinidai and even the Savior Himself, which were written after Lehi’s departure. For some this makes the Book of Mormon’s believability come into question, at least in the areas of the book that quote Isaiah.
In both Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of “Controversial Issues in the Book of Isaiah,” we have explained the theory of multiple authorship of Isaiah’s book in the Bible. In their argument for multiple authors, critical Bible scholars see the book of Isaiah in its present state as something that is not the product of one author but of two, three, or perhaps more.
Yet “in an unpublished dissertation at the University of Chicago, Mrs. Judith Reinken has made a vocabulary study according to modern statistical methods which simply does not support the thesis of different authorship; nor does it support the thesis of unity of authorship. This is to say that the vocabulary alone is not decisive. Nor is the style alone any more decisive.”1 This points to the fact that not all scholars are behind the Deutro-Trito theory, but most are.
This could be bewildering for some Church members, even those with a testimony of the Book of Mormon. So several Church scholars have set out to prove the unity of Isaiah using computer-assisted word-printing analysis.
In “Multiple Isaiah Theory and Stylometry” which we posted last Spring, Dr. Paul Fields, who has conducted extensive studies using stylometry wrote, “It is important to realize that none of the studies can establish that there was more than one writer of the text. Although there is evidence of more than one writing style in the text, factors other than the identity of the author must be considered.
“More than one style does not necessarily indicate multiple ‘hands hold the pen.’ The same author can express himself or herself differently when writing at different times, to different audiences, on different topics, or for different purposes. So, the presence of multiple writing styles cannot be asserted as indicating multiple people as authors of a text.”
Prior to the use of computers, which now allow for exacting stylometric studies, word-printing was a tedious way to analyze the authorship of manuscripts. John Hilton explained word-printing or stylometry as it is referred these days, as a science that examines word patterns “that, when properly done, …is an accurate, objective tool for measuring which authors did not write large documents.” This process has been used to prove who wrote the Federalist Papers and Shakespeare. But in reverse, it can also show a cohesiveness in authorship.2
The earliest computer-assisted word-prints of the Book of Mormon began at BYU in 1970, but since then there have been multiple studies both by Church members and others to explore authorship of the book. Along the way, Isaiah was included in some of those studies.
Wordprinting Isaiah in the Book of Mormon
Hilton clarified that “word-printing is based on what appears to be a normal human phenomenon.” Where when we speak naturally or “write… each of us uses a different set of noncontextual words, such as and, the, of, in, that, with, and so on. The rest of our vocabulary is heavily influenced by context… But our use of these noncontextual words remains relatively constant as the need to quote another person or to fit our words into a formal structure like poetry. These personal free flow writing patterns of using contextual words tend to be stable throughout a person’s life.”
However, he continues: “Isaiah’s writings contain a large amount of poetry, they also contain extensive quotations from the word of the Lord. Once again, this constraint on the writer’s free choice of words presumably weakens the pattern of noncontextual word choices that usually creates a recognizable personal word print. Together, the quotations and poetry constitute nearly 85 percent of the book of Isaiah, making successful word-printing difficult.”
Nonetheless, he concludes, “The present word-prints of the biblical text of Isaiah indicate a slight distinction between the first and second halves of the text.” However, that shift does not occur at chapter 40, but begins, “ten chapters earlier than is expected by their theory. The shift does make it seem likely that at some time during the text’s transmission, more than one editor, or nonliteral translator, or poet, or additional writer contributed to the extant text. But at the present time, we cannot say more than that, based on the word-printing evidence.”3
Wayne A. Larsen and Alvin C. Rencher used word-print analysis to study the Book of Mormon to prove that it had many authors. But they state that “in an analysis of word-print in the Book of Isaiah… Although virtually all the higher critics believe Isaiah is the product of two or more distinct authors, the Adams and Rencher work pointed to a unity of the Book of Isaiah. In fact, it showed a greater internal consistency for Isaiah than any other Old Testament book of that approximate time period.”4
In Appendix D of that same report, Larsen and Rencher reported their findings on “the unity of Isaiah. Many present-day Bible scholars accept the theory that there were at least two authors of the Book of Isaiah. The principal divisions are chapters 1–39 and 40–66. We compared these two using word frequencies for the portions available in the Book of Mormon. Although we ran this test four times, we could get no significant results. This means we were unable to detect any statistical difference which would support the theory that Isaiah has more than one author.”5
Of course, this sampling was from the Book of Mormon, so it only included one-third of Isaiah’s chapters. They cautioned that “the tests on Isaiah… involved much smaller sample sizes than the tests on the book as a whole; therefore statistical differences would be harder to find, even if there were a real difference.”6
In Isaiah and the Prophets: Inspired Voices from the Old Testament, Adams wrote “A Scientific Analysis of Isaiah Authorship,” where he concluded that “the statistical results in this study do not support the divisionists’ claim that little or no evidence exists for unity of the book of Isaiah. To the contrary, the results strongly support single authorship of the book. …The book of Isaiah also exhibited greater internal consistency than any of the other books [of the Old Testament] when authorship style was analyzed.
“These results do not exclude the possibility that minor changes in the text have been made by scribes and editors since the time of its origin. However, the evidence indicates that in spite of such possible changes, an overall style has been retained… The results of this research bear witness that the book of Isaiah has a literary unity characteristic of a single author. These results, therefore, confirm the claims made in the Book of Mormon and the New Testament by later prophets and by the Savior that Isaiah was the author of the book bearing his name.”7
Other Wordprinting studies of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon
I feel that Kent Jackson sums this up best when he wrote:
“Latter-day Saints, who accept the evidence from the Book of Mormon and believe that prophets can write to future generations, should have no difficulty accepting the essential unity of the book of Isaiah as the product of Isaiah son of Amoz from the eighth century B.C. Yet many interesting questions about it remain to be answered.
“The noted Old Testament scholar W. F. Albright pointed out that the prophetic books are not books but ‘anthologies of oracles and sermons.‘This description certainly fits the book of Isaiah. Like the Bible itself, it is not a book but a collection. And, as with the Bible itself, the circumstances under which it was written and compiled are not clearly known. Did Isaiah record his prophecies himself, or did he dictate them to scribes? If they were dictated, was Isaiah responsible for their final poetic structure, or were others? Did Isaiah gather and compile the revelations himself, or did others do it? Were they collected in his lifetime, or later? Were they edited or reworded by later scribes? Though the answers to these questions are not critical for our understanding of Isaiah’s message, they may explain such things as changes in emphasis, organization, and literary style of the revelations that make up the book of Isaiah.”8
1 Reported in FairMormon without citation in Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon? 2 John L. Hilton, New Developments in Book of Mormon Research, Ensign, February 1988 3 John Hilton, “Word Printing Isaiah and the Book of Mormon”, Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, Deseret Book and FARMS, pp. 4394–43 4 Adams and Rencher, “The Popular Critical View of the Isaiah Problem,” 149–57; Adams and Rencher, “A Computer Analysis of the Isaiah Authorship Problem,” 95–102. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 L. La Mar Adams, A Scientific Analysis of Isaiah Authorship, in Isaiah and the Prophets: Inspired Voices from the Old Testament, Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1984), 151–64. 8 Kent Jackson, Authorship of the Book of Isaiah,Studies in Scripture, vol. 4: 1 Kings to Malachi, Deseret Book, p. 11
Nearly all academics, even some in the Church, doubt that Book of Isaiah comes from one prophet and maybe not even from God. They date the last third of the Book of Isaiah to the 6th century BC nearly 200 years after Isaiah’s death and after Lehi’s family left Jerusalem with the brass plates—that is the “Isaiah Problem,” as it is called, in the Book of Mormon.
“If the author of the latter part [of Isaiah] were another prophet, who was contemporary and lived among the people whom he consoled, how can it possibly be believed that his name would be entirely forgotten? Isaiah ben Amoz who lived centuries before the Exile was well remembered and details of his life recorded. Furthermore it is indeed strange that Isaiah ben Amoz who denounced the people and whose message was certainly not welcome at the time should be remembered and his writings preserved but the name of this supposed Second Isaiah who preached a message of consolation whose message must have been quite welcome should be forgotten and, indeed, so completely forgotten that we do not even know his name. (Freehof, Isaiah, pp. 199-200.
If Chapters 40–66 were not compiled or written until after Lehi’s family left for the Americas, then what is it doing in Mosiah, First, Second and Third Nephi? Nephi quotes from Isaiah chapters 48-49, his brother Jacob quotes from Isaiah 50–51, Abinadi quotes from Isaiah 53 in Mosiah 14, and the Savior quotes Isaiah 52 and 54 in 3 Nephi. Of course, if the Book of Isaiah only made it to Proto-Isaiah (Chapters 1-39), Lehi would not have had those final chapters on the Brass Plates, making it impossible to quote from.
Most Church members see the Book of Mormon as evidence of unity in Isaiah, for them the discussion is mute. But those same Church members may not immediately see the “Isaiah problem,” as it is called. And though members of the Church may not question the authorship of Isaiah, enemies of the Church do. The bottom line for these folks is that at least seven chapters of the Isaiah shouldn’t show up in the Book of Mormon.
Church Leaders and the “Isaiah Problem”
This debate goes back a long time with church leaders and scholars defending Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. During the last century, as the theory of Deutro-trio Isaiah became popular, several apostles addressed the problem.
B. H. Roberts, who was President of the First Seven Presidents of the Seventy in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1888 until his death in 1933, wrote about this issue twice in the Improvement Era.1In June 1911, he wrote:
“It is insisted that there are two Isaiah’s instead of one. Some Isaian critics …think they can trace …seven different authors in Isaiah. But generally is represented that there are at least two, and perhaps more—but two at least; that first Isaiah it was the prophet himself …is the author the first 39 chapters of Isaiah; but from chapter 40 to 66, is written by other authors, and, …that this portion of Isaiah was not written until some 50 years, at least, after Lehi left Jerusalem.”
Roberts then cites three common positions of the time. First, is that scholars who accept the theory “dismiss the miraculous” nature of prophecy, which we as Church members do. Second, that though Isaiah’s literary style shifts beginning with chapter 40, this is likely a function of his long period of service as Judah’s prophet. Third, that the theological messages of Isaiah change beginning in chapter 40, and this because, as Roberts calls it, is “the more important part of the book; it is the Messianic part of the prophecy.”
Elder James E. Talmage speaking in April conference in 1929, said:
“It has been declared and proclaimed by a certain school Bible students, commentators, and scholars, that book of Isaiah was written not entirely by Isaiah the Prophet, …but that book is the work of at least two men, and perhaps of many …who lived somewhere near the end of the Babylonian captivity or exile, fully a century after the death of Isaiah…
“Such is the speculation concerning the duality of authorship in that book; but, once started, these learned investigators have undertaken to dissect in Isaiah …to the extent of denying his authorship other parts of chapters, and of certain verses from the rest.
“… my testimony as to the genuineness of the book of Mormon is sufficient to set at rights with me any question as to the authorship of the book of Isaiah.”2
Talmage went on to explain how he recalled the German school of theologians who put forth the “positive and emphatic denial of the unity of the Book of Isaiah.” To which he replied, “Why trouble yourselves about the matter? I know that claim is false …for I have received the testimony promised by the Lord through the prophet Moroni concerning the integrity and genuineness of the Book of Mormon.” Then he explained how the Brass Plates of Laban taken to the Americas by Lehi’s family contains word for word transcriptions from Isaiah. He stated because of this, “the entire Book of Isaiah must have been in existence” at the time Lehi’s family left Jerusalem in 600 BC. Then he pointed to the words of Jesus while visiting the Americas after his death as a “higher authority.” Then he said, “Take the words of the Lord Jesus Christ himself when he appeared as a resurrected being amongst the Nephites. In preach to them, he quoted one entire chapter of Isaiah… I repeat, Jesus Christ quoted to the Nephites almost word for word what we now know as the fifty-fourth chapter of his book.”3
Elder Bruce R. McConkie writing for the Ensignin October 1973 stated:
“Isaiah’s writings, in an even more perfect form than found in our Bible, were preserved on the brass plates, and from this source, the Nephite prophets quoted 414 verses and paraphrased at least another 34. …the Book of Mormon prophets interpreted the passages they used, with the result that this volume of latter-day scripture becomes the witness for and the revealer of the truths of this chief book of Old Testament prophecies. The Book of Mormon is the world’s greatest commentary on the book of Isaiah.
“And may I be so bold as to affirm that no one, absolutely no one, in this age and dispensation has or does or can understand the writings of Isaiah until he first learns and believes what God has revealed by the mouths of his Nephite witnesses as these truths …the saints of God know thereby that the sectarian speculations relative to Deutero-Isaiah and others being partial authors of the book of Isaiah are like the rest of the vagaries to which the intellectuals in and out of the Church give their misplaced allegiance.”4
Church Scholars and the “Isaiah Problem”
In Since Cumorah, Hugh Nibley wrote,”…our immediate concern is not with the unity of Isaiah but with the dating of the Deutero-Isaiah since the charge against the Book of Mormon is that it quotes from that work, which did not exist at the time Lehi left Jerusalem. The dating of Deutero-Isaiah rests on three things:
The mention of Cyrus (Isaiah 44:28), who lived 200 years after Isaiah and long after Lehi;
The threats against Babylon (Isaiah 47:1, 48:14), which became the oppressor of Judah after the days of Isaiah; and
The general language and setting of the text, which suggests a historical background commonly associated with a later period than that of Isaiah.
“The late date of Deutero-Isaiah is one of those things that have been taken for granted by everybody for years so that today it would be hard to find a scholar who could really explain it and impossible to find one who could prove it.”5 Naturally, he goes on to refute each item he listed, but his statement above was written 30 years ago.
In all the above it is clear to see that text-critical Bible scholars would agree that chapters 40–66 compiled, written or edited after the time Lehi’s family has left Jerusalem. This becomes problematic for those scholars who believe those chapters were written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the resulting Babylonian captivity because much of Isaiah 48–54 is found in the Book of Mormon, well after their departure.
Most scholars who are members of the Church ultimately resolve the question of authorship by accepting the scriptures for what they are. Among these are Victor Ludlow, Sidney Sperry, and Avraham Gileadi, all of whom have advanced arguments based internal unities they find in all sixty-six chapters which we posted in Part 1.
Other Church scholars who have defended the unity of Isaiah, include John Welch who wrote “Authorship of the Book of Isaiah” which was published in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. He wrote, “Latter-day Saint scholars have …undertaken the study of many of the unifying characteristics that are indeed demonstrable in the book of Isaiah as it is found in the Bible.
“While these unifying characteristics provide evidence single authorship, at least to the extent that one would usually expect find commonalities throughout any book written by a single author, these unities do not necessarily establish authorship, though they are most easily explained as the result of a single hand.”6
Welch continues by tackling the issues of form, content, and prophetic foreknowledge. He writes, “Any author, working as Isaiah did over long lifetime, might well produce an eclectic book that contains poems, prophecies and narratives. Describing Isaiah as a genius of Hebrew literature he continued, “…it is evident that various sections and chapters of the book of Isaiah were drafted originally as independent prophecies or separate oracles that were eventually gathered together on single scroll” and that “…some of the stylistic differences between the various parts of Isaiah may be the result of the work of a scribe or collector.”7
Regarding content, Welch points to Kent Jackson‘s “The Authorship of the Book of Isaiah” in 1 Kings to Malachi and Victor Ludlow’s Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet, then writes that “Isaiah came to understand more about the future during his lengthy prophetic ministry, he naturally adapted his theological ideas to different needs, insights, and circumstances.”8
Moving to prophetic foreknowledge, Welch explained that the argument against the unity in Isaiah, “…is an agreement against the possibility of divine, prophetic inspiration about future historical developments. Some scholars believe that Israelite prophets spoke only to and about their contemporaries. …Other scholars, including Latter-day Saints, however, believe that prophets are not restricted to foretell only a certain portion of the immediate future. God may see fit reveal much more information to his servants than we realize or presently understand.”8
Isaiah’s Authorship is Debated Among Current Church Scholars
Kent P Jackson, professor of ancient scripture at BYU
To demonstrate the divisive nature of this problem among Church scholars today, let’s compare an essay written by Kent Jackson with some peer responses. In 2016 Jackson wrote “Isaiah in the Book of Mormon,” one of several essays in a series A Reason for Faith, published by Deseret Book. In the paper, he supported the idea of a single author in Isaiah, which backs the Book of Mormon’s inclusion of selected chapters from Isaiah.
David Bokovoy, online professor at Utah State University in Bible and Jewish Studies
In response to his essay, several scholars wrote counter-points. In his “The Truthfulness of Deutero-Isaiah: A Response to Kent Jackson (part 1) David Bokovoy took the essay apart at Rational Faiths—Keeping Mormonism Weird. His position is that there were multiple authors who wrote Isaiah after Lehi left Jerusalem, making parts of the Book of Mormon problematic since Lehi could not have had those words on the Brass Plates.
I have contrasted some of their views below, which shows the battle lines of the two camps regarding the authorship of the book of Isaiah as has been discussed previously in other posts in this blog:
Point
Counter Point
Jackson points out that, “If the Book of Mormon did not quote from ‘Second’ Isaiah, the discussion of authorship would have little meaning for Latter-day Saints; it would not matter to us either way. But because there is material after chapter 39 in the Book of Mormon, the issue is important.”
Bokovoy counters with, “I am a Latter-day Saint, and I find the evidence that Isaiah 40-55 is exilic material written by later authors rather than the historical Isaiah irrefutable.” With that, he begins his two-part essay post at Rational Faiths—Keeping Mormonism Weird
Jackson writes, “From the outset, it must be made clear that multiple-authorship theories for the book of Isaiah have no support from any ancient manuscripts or traditions.” Then he explains that the Greek Septuagint from the third century BC is the earliest known translation of Isaiah. It includes the 66 chapters we find in our Bibles today. Similarly, he points out that the Great Isaiah Scroll, part of the Dead Sea collection, dates to the second century BC, and also has all 66 chapters we use today. Then he states, “No ancient document—including the New Testament and the rabbinic literature—shows any hint that readers in antiquity questioned Isaiah’s authorship of the entire book. Some modern scholars, however, see features within the text of the book that cause them to conclude that in its present state, it is not the product of one author but of two, three, or perhaps more.”7
Ben Tov counters that, “…scholars have recognized for at least the last half-century that the large gap between Isa. 33 and 34 on the Great Isaiah Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QIsaa) is evidence that anciently the book was viewed as being separated at least in half.8 ” Ben Tov continues, complaining that Jackson is not up to date with contemporary critical research and then says: “This is a significant point if Jackson and others hope to grapple with the theological implications of the Book of Mormon being dependent on texts written in or near Jerusalem well after Nephi supposedly leaves for the New World. If scholarship on the authorship of Isaiah has created a problem in chronology and availability of Isaiah for the Book of Mormon, then it is of prime importance that those studies are correctly understood and explained. Unfortunately, Jackson has not excelled at either of those points.”
In his essay, Jackson says that Church members “who accept the evidence from the Book of Mormon and believe that prophets can see beyond their own time should have no difficulty accepting the idea that the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon were compiled before 600 BC.” He did allow for the idea that in the century after Isaiah’s death and before Nephi acquired the plates of brass, that while Isaiah himself may have gathered and compiled his the revelations, others may have done it for him—even after his lifetime?
In Bokovoy’s response he both applauds Dr. Jackson “efforts at addressing this topic,” but he has “some serious concerns with his essay.…I sincerely appreciate the fact that Jackson seeks to expose LDS readers to the topic of Deutero-Isaiah and to provide them with an apologetic response that will help retain religious convictions,” he wrote.” But it’s not simply the archeological evidence of the Cyrus Cylinder that Jackson’s essay ignores. The essay fails to consider any of the evidence that I believe provides the strongest case for the mainstream scholarly consensus concerning Isaiah 40-66.”
Quoting W. F. Albright, Jackson explained “the prophetic books are not really books but rather ‘anthologies of oracles and sermons.’”8 He writes that Isaiah is a collection like the Bible; it was written and compiled in ways not really known.
Quoting Kenton Sparks, Bokovoy writes “’a sober and serious reading of Isaiah will easily suggest to readers that large portions of this prophetic collection were not written by an eighth-century prophet whose name was Isaiah’9
Jackson’s view is that we cannot know “with certainty on many issues related to how and when the book of Isaiah became what it is today. What we do know is that Lehi and his sons had at least part of the book with them when they left Jerusalem…”
Referring back to Sparks’ confidence concerning Deutero-Isaiah, Bokovoy writes, “Perhaps it is because the evidence for the mainstream view is so compelling. And this evidence simply has to be accommodated for by people of faith, including Latter-day Saints.”
Jackson states that “Scholars who believe in the essential unity of the book acknowledge the change [of tone beginning at chapter 40], but they do not see them as grounds for denying the material in chapters 40–66 to Isaiah son of Amoz. “
Ben Tov argues, “…almost all scholars who specialize in the study of the book of Isaiah agree that Isaiah of Jerusalem did not write most or all of the following chapters of the book: 1-5, 13-14, 24-27, 34-35, 36-39, 40-55, and 56-66. “
Jackson describes how Nephi obtained the plates of brass and then used them to teach his people about his own vision, which he was forbidden to write. Most frequently quoting from parts of Isaiah, “…decades before ‘Second’ Isaiah was supposed to have been written. This is the most important piece of evidence for Isaiah’s authorship of later chapters. “
Bokovoy derides this, “In other words, the most important evidence Jackson can produce to counter the scholarly consensus concerning Deutero-Isaiah is the Book of Mormon itself.” Then he explains that Jackson approach may not, “…ultimately prove to people struggling with their faith over issues such as the attestation of Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.”
Jackson states that authorship within the book of Isaiah is not “centered on biographical references or literary style,” but is mostly centered on this basic question: “Can a prophet see beyond his own time?One’s answer to the question necessarily determines whether one can accept the book being in place when Nephi acquired it or whether one must date parts of it to a later time. Those who begin with the assumption that people cannot see beyond their own day must logically conclude that Isaiah could not have written those sections of the book that speak to a different historical setting than his own. In contrast, those who understand the true nature of revelation and prophetic foresight have no trouble with prophecies of future events” (pp. 74-75).
Bokovoy acknowledges that most scholars would not consider the possibility of divine communication idenifying Cyrus by name as a future “annointed one” to Judah then he cites Kenton Sparks concerning this prophecy: “It strains the imagination to believe that Isaiah addressed these theological debates about a gentile messiah some one hundred and fifty years before they took place, and that his response to those debates was copied and recopied for many years by scribes—and read by audiences—who could not have made heads or tales out of Isaiah’s rhetoric. It is more sensible to conclude that the prophet’s words did not predict these debates so much as presupposes them” (God’s Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriate of Critical Biblical Scholarship, pp. 106-7)
In his conclusion, Jackson stated that Church “members who accept the evidence from the Book of Mormon and believe that prophets can see beyond their own time should have no difficulty accepting the idea that the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon were compiled before 600 BC. “
Concluding, Ben Tov writes. “The Isaiah that Nephi and his descendants might have known would not have included a lot of the chapters that are explicitly quoted in the Book of Mormon. This is an obvious issue and one that deserves serious and honest attention.”
Not all scholars are so polarized. Joseph Spencer, for example, is a BYU religion professor who explained this about the world of Isaiah scholarship and its two major camps of thought :
“One gets called ‘Liberal Protestant Scholarship,’ and other gets called ‘Conservative Evangelical Scholarship.’ Liberal Protestant Scholars tend to be more secular and tend to just say ‘Let’s sift the evidence and so on. What does it look like is going on?’ And almost all if not all, say ‘Isaiah is written by multiple authors over several centuries.’
“Conservatives scholars are Evangelical scholars who are committed to Biblical inerrancy, the idea that there is no problem in the Bible at all. This is God’s word, it can’t be wrong. And so they tend to say ‘If the Book of Isaiah says The Book Of Isaiah, then this whole thing had to be written by Isaiah of Jerusalem in the 8th century B.C.’
“Conservative Evangelical scholars tend to find ways to explain problems that suggest multiple authorship, so they tend to go through it very carefully, and say ‘This is more nuanced. These data work against the ideas that most scholars agree with’. So there are a number of scholars who definitely say ‘No, this is one author!’”
Then Spencer concluded: “I take the Book of Mormon at its face value because I believe the Book of Mormon. And so I trust it, somehow this works out …Let’s move a lot more slowly, let’s take our time before we draw wild conclusions. And so I get a little frustrated when I hear people say something like ‘Look, it’s just clear, all scholars agree, Isaiah was written by multiple authors’, I’m gonna say ‘Ok, but let’s move more slowly, let’s not be so sure of ourselves.’”
It was nice to hear that testimony from such a young BYU scholar. It gives me hope that I am not alone taking the Book of Mormon for what it seems to be, an inspired work.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, authorship of the Book of Isaiah has come into question. Many mainstream Bible critics and scholars identify at least three separate authors of the Book of Isaiah and the notion idea of a Second Isaiah was put forward as early as 1167 AD, by a Jewish Bible Scholar, Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra. He saw three divisions within Isaiah so distinct to him that he suggested there were different authors of each and since then his theory has expanded.
Compiling the Book of Isaiah
There is no reason to assume that Isaiah wrote his book in a single setting. He served Judah as the prophet for nearly 40 years and through the reigns of four kings, which would have given him time to write much. But whether he pulled his works together or not, is unknown.
If it was a biblical scribe who compiled the writings of Isaiah, he could have chosen to put them together as we see them today and easily after Isaiah’s death. This itself could have taken as much as a hundred years and still leave time for his words to make it onto the Brass Plates that Lehi and his family took with them.
It is also clear that the Qumran community had access to Isaiah’s works as seen in the Great Isaiah Scroll found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This ancient scroll has all sixty-six chapters of Isaiah that we find in our modern Bible, which means that at least by 350 BC, the Book of Isaiah as we know it, was complete. Written in Hebrew, the scroll contains the entire Book of Isaiah and it is the earliest full copy of that book, being nearly a thousand years older than the oldest known transcripts known this discovery.1
Background to the Multiple Authorship Theory
As stated before, Ibn Ezra, is the first to put forth the ideas of multiple authorship. He was a noted Jewish Bible scholar during the 1100s who hinted at three divisions within Isaiah he saw as so distinct that to him pointed to different authors. However, most Christian and Jewish Bible scholars accepted the idea of single authorship of Isaiah until the late 1700’s.
At that time two German historical-critical scholars, Eichhorn and Döderlein, and later Wilhelm Gesenius began to theorize that Isaiah 1–39 and 40–66 were written by two different individuals about 150 years apart. A hundred years later, Bernhard Duhm (1892) further hypothesized that there was another break between chapters stating that the last ten chapters might have even been written later still and suggesting that a third author had written these chapters.
This new Bible scholarship influenced by the Enlightenment and its religious skepticism accepted the existence of God but not that he intervenes on Earth. This called into question a Prophet’s ability to foresee the future. Even going so far as to reject any scripture as actually coming from God. Naturally then Bible prophecies came under scrutiny and in the case of Isaiah chapters 40–66 it was postulated these chapters were written by a historian after the fact, who was part of Judah’s Babylonian captivity; his predictions were not inspired by God.
Proto, Deutro and Trito Isaiah Authorship
In today’s world of Bible scholarship, nearly every scholar questions the idea of a single prophetic voice in the Book of Isaiah. For the most part, scholars would identify at least three Isaiah’s in the Bible, Proto or First Isaiah, Deutro or Second Isaiah and Trito or Third Isaiah.
Proto
Isaiah
Israel is partially occupied, Judah is threatened and trying to appease the Assyrians
Isaiah 1–39
730–701 BC
Deutro
Isaiah
Israel and the Lost Ten Tribes have been taken North, Judah is captive in
Babylon
Isaiah 40–55
560–540 BC
Trito
Isaiah
Judah returns to
the land of Israel
to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem
Isaiah 55-66
510 BC–33 AD
Since 1789 this hypothetical author has been referred to as the Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah. But once the dual authorship of Isaiah was generally accepted, it soon became apparent that there was no need to stop at two Isaiahs. By applying exactly the same reasoning that split the original Isaiah in two, it was possible to break up the two main sections into a number of separate packages, each of which in turn readily yielded to the fragmentation process to produce scores of independent compositions, all going under the name of Isaiah. 2First, chapters 40—66 broke up into separate books, 40—55 being by one author and 56—66 by another, duly labelled Trito-Isaiah. Chapters 36—39 were recognized as a separate book on the grounds of their resemblance to 2 Kings 18:13—20:19. The earlier Isaiah, chapters 1—35, became a swarm of separate sayings glued together, according to one school, from a large number of smaller or medium-sized collections or, according to another school, gathered as minor additions to a central main work. Some scholars agreed that chapters 1—12 and 13—23 represent separate collections, though each had his own theory as to how, when, where, and by whom such collections were made. 3 There is no point to going into the subject in detail. Typical is the present dating of the so-called Trito-Isaiah, which is variously placed in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries B.C. 4
These same scholars often call Isaiah’s prophecies historical fiction or say they were placed into scripture after the fact, denying God’s hand in those prophecies, pointing to different literary forms and theological messages in each section of the book.
The Deutero or Second Isaiah theory claims that Isaiah chapters 40—55 do not contain the same kind of personal details about Isaiah when compared to Isaiah 1—39. In the first 39 chapters, Isaiah shares numerous personal stories, explaining his dealings with the kings and others. This theory also suggests that the language and style of Isaiah 40—55 differs from the earlier chapters. But that leaves chapters 56–66 of the book.
Scholars generally believe that disciples of Isaiah who wrote the last eleven chapters would no longer have been in Babylonian captivity, but back in Jerusalem. “Unlike Second Isaiah with its grand poetry and drawn out description of the coming salvation of God, chapters 56-66 are a mixture of prose and poetry, of hope and despair at the same time. The major portion of Isaiah 56-66 arose against the background of the severe hardships that prevailed in the time between Sheshbazzar’s unsuccessful attempt to rebuild the Temple and its completion under Zerubbabel in 515 B.C. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah are contemporaries of Trito-Isaiah.”5
I first became aware of this and other controversies regarding the Book of Isaiah about a year ago when I joined the SearchIsaiah team. This was a surprise because, like other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I read the Standard Works to find Christ and to seek guidance in my life. All the time without knowing that there are others around us examining these works in ways that I could not have imagined.
Victor Ludlow’s Thoughts on Unity of Authorship
In The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Victor Ludlow states: “Of the writings in the Old Testament, the message of Isaiah enjoys high priority among Latter-day Saints. The attraction derives primarily from the extensive use of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.” He then goes on to explain that Church members, ” belief in revelation and the seership of prophets, along with the quotations from Isaiah in the Book of Mormon and its admonitions to study his writings, have reinforced Latter-day Saints in the traditional view concerning the date and authorship of Isaiah,” in three ways:
First, while some scholars argue that prophets could not see the future and that, therefore, the later chapters of Isaiah must have been written after Isaiah’s time (e.g., Isa. 45 concerning Cyrus), Latter-day Saints recognize that prophets can see and prophesy about the future. In chapters 40-66, Isaiah prophesies of the future, just as the apostle John does in Revelation 4–22,and the prophet Nephiin 2 Nephi 25–30.
Second, the Book of Mormon prophet Lehi and his family left Jerusalem about 600 B.C. and took with them scriptural writings on plates of brass that contained much of the Old Testament, including Isaiah (1 Ne. 5:13;19:22-23). Book of Mormon prophets taught from the brass plate records, not only from chapters 1-39, which are usually assigned by scholars to the prophet Isaiah of the eighth century B.C., but also from the later chapters, the so-called Deutero-Isaiah. For example, Isaiah chapters 48-54 are all quoted in the Book of Mormon, with some passages mentioned a number of times (1 Ne. 20–21; 2 Ne. 6:16-8:25; Mosiah 12:21-24;14;15:29-31; 3 Ne. 16:18-20;20:32-45;22). Hence, the existence of a virtually complete Isaiah text in the late seventh century B.C., as witnessed by the Book of Mormon, negates arguments for later multiple authorship, whether those arguments be historical, theological, or literary.
Finally, other significant witnesses exist for the single authorship of Isaiah, including Jesus Christ in particular (cf. Matt. 13:14-15;15:7-9; Luke 4:17-19; 3 Ne. 16, 20-22). Indeed, after quoting much from Isaiah 52(3 Ne. 16:18-20;20:32-45) and repeating Isaiah 54 in its entirety (3 Ne. 22), the resurrected Jesus Christ admonished his Book of Mormon disciples to study Isaiah’s words and then said, “A commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah. For surely he spake as touching all things concerning my people which are of the house of Israel” (3 Ne. 23:1-2).
“Latter-day Saints accept the words of the risen Jesus that Isaiah was a seer and revelator whose prophecies, as recorded throughout his book, will eventually all be fulfilled (3 Ne. 23:1-3). Particularly from Jesus’ attribution of Isaiah 52 and 5 4 to the ancient prophet have Latter-day Saints concluded that the book of Isaiah is the inspired work of the eighth-century prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz.” 6
In 1981, in his seminal work, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet, Ludlow added a defense for the unity of Isaiah in the book’s appendix (with the author’s permission you can read it in its entirety here). He offers readers ten additional witnesses for consideration each of which validate the book’s unity alone, but when read together offer a compelling witness for the book’s integrity by one author:
The Judeo-Christian traditions from their earliest times until the last couple of centuries has supported the single authorship of Isaiah in their texts. The oldest Jewish (Masoretic Text) and Christian (Septuagint) record Isaiah as a unified book.
Book of Mormon writers quoted from both “Proto” and “Duetro” Isaiah including these chapters from the second half Isa. 48-55, which would show the compilation of the book not later than 600 BC, in time for Lehi to take the plates with them.
Critical attitudes and anti-dogmatic beliefs during the Enlightenment (17–1800s) fostered a kind of vogue attitude of the scholars which lead to radical criticism of the Bible beyond its natural bounds.
As internal evidence in the book, Isaiah unique use phrases and techniques “uncommon in other works, such as imagery, parallelism, psalms, repetition, paronomasia, and expressions such as ‘the Holy One of Israel.’
Modern apostles have witnessed concerning Isaiah’s authoring his whole book. (James E. Talmage, CR, April 1929, pp. 45-47; Bruce R. McConkie, Ensign, Oct. 1973, pp. 78-83, and Jeffery R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant: The Messianic Message of the Book of Mormon, Deseret Book, 1997)
“A personal testimony about Isaiah’s book and his efforts in its composition is available to everyone who seeks for a witness through the Holy Ghost.
“Also, there is no record of anyone besides Isaiah writing the last half of his book. If the “Deutero-Isaiah” is one of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament, why is no mention made of him? All other prophetic writings at least mention their source, even the small, comparatively insignificant Obadiah. As one Jewish scholar records:7
‘If the author of the latter part [of Isaiah] were another prophet, who was contemporary and lived among the people whom he consoled, how can it possibly be believed that his name would be entirely forgotten? Isaiah ben Amoz who lived centuries before the Exile was well remembered and details of his life recorded. Furthermore it is indeed strange that Isaiah ben Amoz who denounced the people and whose message was certainly not welcome at the time should be remembered and his writings preserved but the name of this supposed Second Isaiah who preached a message of consolation whose message must have been quite welcome should be forgotten and, indeed, so completely forgotten that we do not even know his name.8
Sidney Sperry on Authorship, Style, and Theology
In making a literary comparison between First and Second Isaiah, Sperry writes: “I am willing to admit a somewhat different style in Isaiah 40-66 as contrasted with most of what precedes. There is a note of triumph in these chapters not so apparent in other sections of the book. There is a brighter and more comforting tone throughout. But all of the supposed differences do not necessarily argue for a different author. A writer may vary his style from one lime to another as he: writes under different conditions and on different subjects.
“In Isaiah 40-66, Isaiah deals with the great theme of Israel’s redemption. This accounts for the difference in style (or should we say mood) between them and most other chapters in the book…
“In ‘Second’ Isaiah and in ‘Trito’ Isaiah there is no real difference in the prophet ‘s theology as compared with other chapters—what we find is rather an extension or more complete expression of his theology. …Authors usually claim the privilege of emphasizing different doctrines and topics as occasion requires. The internal evidence, therefore, is strongly in favor of the unity of Isaiah.”9
Avraham Gileadi’s Thoughts on Isaiah’s Authorship
Gileadi’s treatment of Isaiah contrasts a seven-part structure of the entire book, with 33 chapters in each half. He writes: “Literary structures are a way of organizing the content and carry their own message over and above what appears on the surface. Analyzing structures reveals the underlying themes and concepts of the Book of Isaiah. Its layered holistic structures attest to a single author—Isaiah.” Then he shows this pattern to make his point:
“The above seven pairs of antithetical themes reveal a divine pattern in which ruin precedes rebirth, punishment precedes deliverance, humiliation precedes exaltation, suffering precedes salvation, and disinheritance precedes inheritance.”10
Conclusion
Recently I was reading about the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s part in taking the lost tribes of Israel into captivity when I read this with interest: “The consensus among modern scholars is that the book of Daniel is historical fiction.”101 I’ve read the same kinds of things about Isaiah for a year now, that it is fiction, constructed after the fact and while I admit that Wikipedia is not the best source, it seems to point to what nearly every scholar thinks about the authorship and unity of Isaiah.
These scholars outside and some inside the Church debate the authorship of the book of Isaiah, theorizing that there were three or more authors. And if you look at Isaiah as a whole you can see their point:
Chapters 1-35 focus on judgments against Israel, the Jews, and humankind in general.
Chapters 36-39 are a mostly historical narrative closely aligned with 2 Kings 18:13–20:19)
Chapters 40-66 are words of comfort and hope
While these divisions may point to multiple authorship, they could also reflect a prophet’s life of service for over forty years. Even though Isaiah chapters 40—55 do not contain the same kind of personal details about Isaiah as when compared to Isaiah 1—39 a prophet over time might choose to emphasize different doctrines and topics.
Though I see no sense in taking a polemic position on the matter, I feel that anyone of faith I can keep their own beliefs regarding the Book of Isaiah. When a theory is proposed a thousand years ago and then built on for 150 years it is still a theory. The Book of Mormon is my main reason for accepting the words of Isaiah and even Christ commanded, “… search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah.” (3 Nephi 23:1). If it is good enough for our Lord then it is good enough for me too.
Bibliography
In favor of the unity of Isaiah
Adams, Larry L., and Alvin C. Rencher. “A Computer Analysis of the Isaiah Authorship Problem.” BYU Studies 15 (Autumn 1974):95-102.
Anderson, Francis I. “Style and Authorship.” The Tyndale Paper 21 (June 1976):2.
Gileadi, Avraham. A Holistic Structure of the Book of Isaiah. Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1981.
Kissane, E. J. The Book of Isaiah, 2 vols. Dublin, Ireland, 1941, 1943.
Ludlow, Victor L. Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet. Salt Lake City, 1981.
Tvedtnes, John A. “Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon.” In Isaiah and the Prophets, ed. M. Nyman. Provo, Utah, 1984.
Young, Edward J. Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1949.
Franz Delitz.sch. Biblical Commentary 011 the Prophecies of Isaiah, trans. James Denney, 2 vols. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1829.
George C. M. Douglas. Isaiah One and His Book One. London: Nisbet, 1895.
Letitia D. Jeffreys. The Unity of the Book of Isaiah. Cambridge: Deighton Bell, 1899. This is one of the most useful books on the subject. The linguistic evidence is carefully treated and Dr. Driver’s position is examined in some detail.
William Kay. In “Introduction” to Isaiah in The Speaker’s Commentary, 10 vols. New York: Scribner, 1873- 81.
John J. Lias. “The Unity of Isaiah,” Journal of The Transactions of the Victoria Institute 48 (1916): 65- 84. The author gives a fuller treatment of this subject in Bibliotheca Sacra 72 (October 1915): 560–91.
David S. Margoliouth. Lines of Defence of the Biblical Revelation. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1900, chapter 3.
Carl W. E. Nagelsbach. ” Isaiah,” in Johann P. Lange. A Commentary all the Holy Scriptures: Crilical, Doctrinal. alld Homiletical. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1866.
George L. Robinson. The Book of Isaiah: A New Interpretation. New York: Young Men’s Christian Association, 1910.
William Urwick. The Servant of Jehova: A Commentary Grammatical and Critical, upon Isaiah 52:13- 53. Edinburgh: Clark, 1877.
In favor of the critical division of Isaiah
Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, vol. 19 of the Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2000), 87
Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40–66: Translation and Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 1–3; accessible responses to the issue are provided in W. S. LaSor, D. A. Hubbard, and F. W. Bush, Old Testament Survey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 371–77
R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1969), 764–80.
Samuel R. Driver. An Introduction to the Literafllre of theOld Testament new ed. New York: Scribner’S Sons, 1960,204-46.
Samuel R. Driver. Isaiah: His Life and Times and the Writings Which Bear His Name. London: Nisbet, 1888, 185-212; where the arguments on both sides are carefully stated.
George B. Gray. A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1913, 178-88.
John E. McFadyen. Introduction to the Old Testament, new ed ., rev, London: Hodder and Sioughton, 1932, 127–62.
William O. E. Oesterley and Theodore H. Robinson. An Introduction to the Books of the Old Testament. New York: Macmillan, 1934, 233-87.
Charles C. Torrey. The Second Isaiah. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1928. This book while “critical” holds vigorously to the unity of Isaiah, 34-35. 40-66.
Johann C. Doderlcin, Esaias. Altorfi: Schupfelian, 1775.
Johann G. Eichhorn, Die Hebräischen Propheten. 3 vo1s. Gottingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 1816–1819.
Heinrich Ewald, Die Propheten des Alte Testament. Stuttgart: Krabbe, I. 804-41.
Wilhelm Gesenius, Der Prophet Jesaia, 3 vols. in 4. Leipzig: Vogel, 1821-1829.
Heinrich E. G. Paulus, Philologischer Clavis über das Alte Testament. Jena: Cuno’s Erbcn, 1793.
Ernst F. K. Rosenmuller, The Targgum and the Peshitta Version of file Book of Isaiah. Leipzig: Barth, 1821. George
Adam Smith. The Book of Isaiah, 2 vols. New York: Armstrong, 1902.
1The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls: The Great Isaiah Scroll“ 2 The more the authorship of the Book of Isaiah has been investigated, the more complicated has the question appeared.” Finally “there remained very few long passages of unchallenged authoriticity. …It seemed that the entire book was best described as an anthology of the work of many writers, …a confusing amalgam of greater or smaller fragments from many sources.” J. Eaton, “The Origin of the Book of Isaiah ” VT 9 (1959): 138—39. 3 The process is described in the latest extensive survey of the problem, Otto Eissfeldt, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 3rd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1964), 408—12. For the English translation, see Otto Eissfeldt, The Old Testament, An Introduction, trans. by Peter R. Ackroyd (New York: Harper, 1976), 304—7. 4Hugh Nibley, Since Cumorah, Chapter 5: The Bible in the Book of Mormon. 5 TRITO (Third) ISAIAH After the Return of the Exiles Chapters 56-66 6Victor Ludlow, Isaiah: Authorship,The Encyclopedia of Mormonism 7 Victor Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet,Deseret Book 8 Freehof,Isaiah, pp. 199-200. 9 Sidney Sperry, The “Isaiah Problem” in the Book of Mormon,Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol 4, No. 1, Article 17 10Avraham Gileadi, Isaiah’s Layered Literary Structures, Isaiah Explained 11 Nebuchadnezzar II, Wikipedia
Other References used in this article:
Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1–39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, vol. 19 of the Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2000), 87; Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40–66: Translation and Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 1–3
W. S. LaSor, D. A. Hubbard, and F. W. Bush, Old Testament Survey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 371–77
R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1969), 764–80.
Craig A. Evans, “The unity and parallel structure of Isaiah”, Vetus Testamentum, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 2 (April 1988), 132. Evans quotes the work of William Brownlee from 1964, and his argument that the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) supports the previous authorship theories of scholars that Isaiah’s of Jerusalem’s writings only go up to Isa. 33. See also H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 15-16.
William F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process, 2nd ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor, 1957), 275.
God’s Word In Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship, p. 108
The Prophet Isaiah Foretells Christ’s Birth, by Harry Anderson
“God Is My Salvation” / September 5–11
The Come, Follow Me Study Guide for September 5–11, 2022 suggests that we “seek spiritual guidance as [we] study. [And that] the words of Isaiah are best understood when we are ‘filled with the spirit of prophecy,’ as Nephi taught (2 Nephi 25:4).
And even the Savior Himself quoted Isaiah in the New Testament and called Isaiah’s word great in the Book of Mormon.
Recognizing the importance of Isaiah to the Savior, the team at SearchIsaiah.com has been collecting and curating study aids for more than 4 years. There are many posts here to assist your study of Isaiah 1–12. However, we have only curated materials that connect with this year’s curriculum. To access this collection just click on the Isaiah links in the table (2 Nephi links will take you to the Isaiah Chapters in the Book of Mormon).
(Note: the next two weeks of study will focus on Chapters 1-39 in the Book of Isaiah, where the prophet warns of the consequences of breaking the covenant with God that his people have made, His punishments for this disobedience, which is interspersed with moments of hope. But once our study takes us to Chapters 40-66, we will see God’s mercy as He reestablishes His covenants with us as His people, when as a seer of events to come, Isaiah introduces the last half of his work with these words:
“‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,’ saith your God.—Isaiah 40:1)
This is Isaiah’s introduction to his collection of prophecies. The wicked and rebellious shall be punished for their iniquities, social injustice, and neglect of true temple worship, but Israel may be cleansed through the Atonement.
In the last days, the Lord’s house will be built in the mountains; there all nations will receive instruction and be judged by the Lord. During the millennium there will be no war, but God will humble all the proud and mighty. Israel is commanded to rely on God, not man.
Judah will fall. Men of skill and leadership will be taken away, leaving the inexperienced to rule. Israel provoked God and oppressed each other. The daughters of Zion (in a metaphor for the people of Judah and all covenant Israel) are obsessed with fashion and appearance to attract other lovers (not God), but they will be humbled as slaves, their men will die in war.
Isaiah’s vision of God. His sins are forgiven, and he is called to his ministry. He prophecies of the Jew’s rejection of Christ’s teachings and of their return to the promised land,
Isaiah promises that Christ will be as a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to many. That we must stop seeking peeping wizards and seek the Lord. We must turn to the law in the scriptures.
Isaiah Isaiah Prophesies the Birth of Christ: “Unto us, a child is born,” he will be the Prince of Peace, reign on David’s throne, and all those in darkness will see a great light.
The prophet calls out Judah for neglecting the poor. Assyria’s destruction is a ‘type” of the destruction awaiting the wicked at His Second Coming. Very few people will be left then, but the remnant of Jacob will return to Isreal
In Millennial times the stem of Jesse (Christ) will judge righteously, all enmity and hostility will cease and knowledge of God will cover the earth. The Lord will raise an ensign to gather Isreal.
Following Prophetic Counsel, (Isaiah 1-12) Elder Ballard declares there is safety in following the prophet’s counsel.
Since the published Old Testament Reading Schedule doesn’t include every chapter in the Book of Isaiah our team has not curated all resources from our site. But we have made this workable directory for your five-week study of this important book in the Old Testament in a total of seven curated posts:
Click here to read the Isaiah Chapters in the Book of Mormon
Chapter Links to the Book of Isaiah
While our SearchIsaiah.org project is ongoing, a directory of posts and their related chapters of the Book of Isaiah seems valuable to our readers. Also helpful are the Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon listed in the sections below this chart
Book of Mormon prophets included about one-third of Isaiah’s 66 chapters in their engravings. That makes the Book of Mormon a special commentary on Isaiah’s works. And as Garold N. Davis explains the, “prophetic commentary” by Lehi, Nephi, Jacob, and the Lord himself helps us understand Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon.
But according to Victor L. Ludlow, “About one-third of the verses have major differences when compared to the King James Version of the Bible—that is, wording changes or additions which significantly change or enlarge the meaning of the verse. Another one-third of the Isaiah verses in the Book of Mormon have minor wording or punctuation changes which do not alter the verse’s meaning, and one-third are exactly the same as the corresponding Biblical passages.
“Two large blocks of Isaiah chapters (2-14 and 48-54) are scattered among four books (1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, Mosiah, and 3 Nephi). In addition, Isaiah 29 is quoted in 2 Nephi.
“The following chart shows where these 21 Isaiah chapters are found in the Book of Mormon:
Isa 11:5-9 in 2 Ne 30:11-15 Isa 11:4 in 2 Ne 30:9 Isa 49:23 in 2 Ne 6:7 Isa 52:8-10 in Mosiah 15:29-31; 3 Ne 16:18-20 Isa 55:1-2 in 2 Ne 9:50-51 Isa 49:24-26 in 2 Ne 6:16-18 Isa 52:1-2 in 2 Ne 8:24-25 Isa 52:7-10 in Mosiah 12:21-24
Isa 5:26 in 2 Ne 29:2 Isa 22:13 in 2 Ne 28:7-8 Isa 28:10,13 in 2 Ne 28:30 Isa 29:5 in 2 Ne 26:18 Isa 29:15a in 2 Ne 28:9b Isa 40:3 in 1 Ne 10:8 Isa 49:22 in 1 Ne 22:8; 2 Ne 6:6 Isa 52:1a in Moroni 10:31a Isa 52:7 in 1 Ne 13:37; Mosiah 15:14-18 Isa 11:11a in 2 Ne 25:17a; 29:1b; cf 25:11 Isa 25:12 in 2 Ne 26:15 Isa 29:3-4 in 2 Ne 26:15-16 Isa 29:14a in 1 Ne 14:7a; 22:8a; 2 Ne 25:17b; 29:1a Isa 29:21b in 2 Ne 28:16a Isa 45:18 in 1 Ne 17:36 Isa 49:23a in 1 Ne 22:8b; 2 Ne 10:9a Isa 52:10 in 1 Ne 22:10-11 Isa 52:13-15 in 3 Ne 21:8-10 Isa 54:2b in Moroni 10:31a Isa 52:12 in 3 Ne 21:29 Isa 53:8,10 in Mosiah 15:10-11 Isa 55:1 in 2 Ne 26:25
Presented by Victor L. Ludlow at BYU Education Week 2006
To those faithful followers left in the Land of Bountiful, the Savior commanded “search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah” (3 Nephi 23:1). In that commandment, the Lord implies that understanding Isaiah will help you understand the gospel of Jesus Christ; they go hand in hand.
5 experts that will help you finally understand Isaiah:
Sadly many of us find the writings of Isaiah quite hard to understand, even daunting. Worse, our surveys show that less than half of church members try to understand Isaiah; they either shun, skip our skim the Isaiah chapters all together in the Book of Mormon.
Knowing that this might be the case, Nephi, in 2 Nephi 25, left us five keys to help us understand Isaiah’s words. He used these same keys to help his brothers understand the prophet better. These keys include having the spirit with us as we study his prophecies, living as righteously as we can in a dark world, understanding the middle-eastern geography of the time, and coming to know the literary style and rhetorical tradition of the Jews.
Ryan Gardner and David Edwards wrote, “to help you have some confidence as you study, here are five basic keys to focus on that can help you understand Isaiah’s writings.”
See the Savior in Isaiah: “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. … He was wounded for our transgressions, … and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4–5).
Realize you already know a lot from Church attendance and other places like seminary and institute.
Know that Isaiah’s main topics include not just the history of his day, but prophecies about the last days and Jesus Christ. Look for these ar you read
Take advantage of the words of latter-day scriptures and prophets from conference talks. These are easily found by chapter and verse at the LDS Scripture Citation Index: Isaiah
Get to know Isaiah’s world by studying how the Jews prophecied using symbolism, a unique literary style, local themes and idioms. And, it helps to know where things are going on, so use the maps in the back of the Bible to learn about the geography of that day.
Commit to studying by the Spirit. Gardner and Edwards concluded with, “As the Apostle John learned, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10). So Nephi is saying, in other words, that Isaiah is easier for people to understand if they have a testimony of Christ. Deepen that testimony and you’ll deepen your understanding of Isaiah.”
Victor Ludlow
Ludlow says that if we first read all the 66 chapter headings of Isaiah, somewhere in that overview we will find a chapter of interest. Then he suggests that you read that chapter, not just once but two times and if it is in the Book of Mormon, read it a third time.
Then he recommends we select a section that seems to be the main message to examine the footnotes and any terms, names, places, etc. that might be in the Bible Dictionary. Then write your own summary of the major ideas or keywords of that section in just one brief sentence.
Finally read that chapter again, listing other major ideas. Then put your study aside for hours or days, letting it foment in your head.
After a break, read the chapter and your notes all over again. Pause to follow Moroni’s admonition on how to study the scriptures as you read, remember, ponder, and pray. (See Moroni 10:3-5.)
First, turn to 1 Nephi 19:23-24 to discover two reasons Nephi thinks Isaiah is so valuable for us. (Answers include – Isaiah persuades us to more completely believe in Christ and gives us hope that we can make it back to Him in the end)
Second, Isaiah is deliberately symbolic which gives several possible levels of meaning. To understand these symbols our SearchIsaiah team has offered infographics under our lab’s tab.
Third, make notes right in the margins of your scriptures. To help you with that effort, try my column “Discover With Darryl.” Try one of these outlines I have done, where I have listed marginal notes you may want to reference:
Above is pictured the first part of an essay the translators prefixed to the King James Version
of their 1611 Bible. In this they defended their work against "criticisms they expected to be
brought against it." They wrote: "The Apostle excepteth no tongue; not Hebrew the ancientest,
not Greek the most copious, not Latin the finest."—Bible-researcher.com
If you ever think, I think Isaiah is plain or simple, I have left you with the wrong impression! In fact, one of our scholar podcasts offers insight on the subject: Why is Isaiah Hard to Understand.
After six months of working on the SearchIsaiah project, I have a few of my own ideas:
First, Isaiah was a highly educated Jewish writer who used the most sophisticated writing styles of his day. What he wrote 2700 years ago was in ancient Hebrew. Back then there was already two forms of Hebrew; just miles north the Kingdom of Israel spoke a dialect that differed from Isaiah’s Jerusalem Hebrew. This makes anyone wonder how a translator could figure word meanings from back them. Following the diaspora, the spoken language was virtually lost, finding a revival only again in the late 1800s. By then the Hebrew of Isaiah’s day was dead.
Second, a lot of what Isaiah considered day-to-day conversation would escape the best translator today. He lived in a time of relative prosperity and neglect of the poor and he used common idiomatic phrases of his time to explain his vision. As the meaning of those words and phrases have evolved, translators have had trouble determining actual meaning. A simple example during my life is cited in Wikipedia: “When we hear the word ‘wicked’, we automatically interpret it as either ‘evil’ or ‘wonderful’, depending on whether it is uttered by an elderly lady or a teenager. Deutscher, [an Israeli linguist] speculates that in “a hundred years’ time, when the original meaning of ‘wicked’ has all but been forgotten, people may wonder how it was ever possible for a word meaning ‘evil’ to change its sense to ‘wonderful’ so quickly.'”1
Richard Bancroft, (Getty Images as used in the Ensign, Aug 2011)
With that as background, let’s look at the third problem:
In the very early 1600’s King James commissioned Bishop Richard Bancroft and a team of 50 scholars to make a new translation of the Bible. According to Ken Curtis, Ph.D., the King ordered, “it was to be accurate and true to the originals,” but “that the translation use old familiar terms and names and be readable in the idiom of the day.” I can attest to that from my reading; (a crisping pin in 1610 may clearly be a coin purse to those translators, but not so much to me).
Still, as the August 2011 Ensign reports, “The unique skills possessed by those who translated the King James Bible were at their apex during this time. The translators were all learned, biblical scholars and linguists. It would be difficult today to gather 50 scholars with the knowledge of ancient languages possessed by these men.”2
First Edition of the King James Bible
These scholars were organized into six committees working in three different locations. John Harding headed the team that translated Isaiah. Together, they had a formidable task taking a dead language like Hebrew and making sense of it for an Englishman in the early 1600s.
As each group “completed their assignment, they passed it onto the next company, so that all companies reviewed the entire Bible. This process took four years.”3 Then each of the six teams sent two translators to London to review all their work until the final product was made available in 1611. That is a lot of peer review and committee debate to get the words we use today—I served on a school board with seven members that struggled to get consensus, but I cannot fathom 50 scholars agreeing on much of anything.
The Bible, as it has been transmitted over the centuries, has suffered the loss of many plain and precious parts. ‘We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.’ (A of F 1:8.)…While other Bible versions may be easier to read than the King James Version, in doctrinal matters latter-day revelation supports the King James Version in preference to other English translations. All of the Presidents of the Church, beginning with the Prophet Joseph Smith, have supported the King James Version by encouraging its continued use in the Church.4—LDS First Presidency
Now move forward 400 years to our day and look at how the King James Version uses archaic words and expressions that meet the King’s request of using “old familiar terms and names and be readable in the idiom of the day.” Many of these are unfamiliar to us as modern readers, so it is no wonder it is hard for us to understand Isaiah’s words.
Each week as I share a chapter from Discover Isaiah experience, I have read from several translations, (usually five in all) and I have read a dozen or more commentaries about those chapters. I can hope that I have added to finding the correct meanings of words and phrases, but I doubt it; remember Isaiah got his words from the Lord and as the Prophet Joseph Smith taught, “the Holy Ghost is a revelator,” so you can call on him to get your own revelation and understanding of Isaiah.
1 The Unfolding of Language, 2005, chapter 2, esp. pp. 63, 69 and 71 2 Richard N. W. Lambert and Kenneth R. Mays, 400 Years of the King James Bible, Ensign, AUGUST 2011 3 Lambert /Mays, ibid. 4 The First Presidency Statement on the King James Version of the Bible, Ensign, AUGUST 1992 5Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith[2007], p 132
In this section of “Come, Follow Me,” Church curriculum writers explain that beginning with Isaiah and ending with Malachi, this part of the Old Testament is called “the Prophets.” It constitutes about a quarter of the entire Old Testament and records the words of those prophets from about 900 and 500 BC.
In speaking with God in vision and sharing His word, these prophets played a major role in the religious life of the Jews. But for those of other faiths who see prophets as exclusive to Old Testament times, we as members of The Church of Jesus Christ, “see them as something we have in common with Old Testament times” explained the curriculum committee. “Still, reading a chapter from Isaiah …might feel different from reading a general conference message from the current President of the Church” and yet among these ancient prophets, Isaiah remains the most quoted of them at General Conference.
Curated posts from SearchIsaiah about Isaiah and prophecies:
And it should not be lost on us as Church members that Nephi, Mosiah, and Christ himself, quote Isaiah more often than any other old testament prophet. So while it may seem difficult to understand his writings, Isaiah must have something to say to us, which makes this study “worth the effort—and it does take effort—to read the words of ancient prophets.”
Do Ancient Prophets Still Witness Christ To Us Today?
As an example, “Isaiah could not only warn people of his day about their sins—he could also write about deliverance for Israelites living 200 years in the future and simultaneously teach of the deliverance that all God’s people seek,” the curriculum team writes. But “he could write prophecies that, even today, are still awaiting their complete fulfillment—like promises of ‘a new earth’ (Isaiah 65:17) that is ‘full of the knowledge of the Lord’ (Isaiah 11:9), where the lost tribes of Israel have been gathered and where ‘the nations’ do not ‘learn war any more’ (Isaiah 2:4). Part of the joy and inspiration that comes from reading the words of Old Testament prophets like Isaiah is realizing that we play a role in the glorious day they envisioned.”
One way to understand what Isaiah and the other prophets have to say, is to “see yourself in them, or ‘liken them unto [yourself],’ as Nephi put it,” in 1 Nephi 19:23–24. As we try to liken them, we may “understand that a prophecy can be fulfilled in multiple ways.”
Consider this prophecy in Isaiah 40:3: “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” To the Jews in Babylonian captivity, it could have offered hope for a leader to return them to Jerusalem; but for Christ’s apostles, it was John the Baptist, “who prepared the way for the Savior’s mortal ministry,” who fulfilled this prophecy; and “Joseph Smith received revelations that this prophecy is still being fulfilled in the latter days in preparation for Christ’s millennial ministry. In ways we’re still coming to understand, ancient prophets did speak to us.”
Since the published Old Testament Reading Schedule doesn’t include every chapter in the Book of Isaiah our team has not curated all resources from our site. But we have made this workable directory for your five-week study of this important book in the Old Testament in a total of seven curated posts:
See the Savior in Isaiah: “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. … He was wounded for our transgressions, … and with his stripes we are healed” (
