One Isaiah
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broad facts must decide the unity or collective character of Isaiah's book. To determine the exact historical background of each individual section is simply impossible, as the history of criticism plainly shows. Verbal exegesis may do more harm than good. Greater regard must be paid to the struc ture of the book. When treated as an organic whole, the book is a grand masterpiece. One great purpose dominates the author throughout, which, as he proceeds, is brought to a cli max in a picture of Israel's redemption and the glorification of Zion. Failure to recognize this unity incapacitates a man to do it exegetical · j ustice. The prophecies of the Book of Isdt'dn simply can not be properly understood without some comprehension of the author's scheme of thought as a whole. There is an obvious, though it may be to some extent an edi torial, unity to Isaiah's prophecies. But there is as true a unity in the Book of Isaiah as is usually found in a volmne of ser mons. To regard them as a heterogeneous mass of miscel laneous prophecies which were written at widely separated times and under varied circumstances from Isaiah's own period down to the Maccabean age, and freely interpolated throughout the intervening centuries, is to lose sight of the great historic realities and perspective of the prophet. In short the whole problem of how much or how little Isaiah wrote would become immensely simplified if critics would only divest themselves of a mass of unwarranted presuppositions and arbitrary restrictions which fix hard and fast what each century can think and say. ,, Accordingly, the writer's attitude is that of those who, while welcoming all ascertained results of investigation, de cline to accept any mere conjectures or theories as final con clusions. And while he acknowledges his very great debt to critics of all latitudes, he nevertheless believes that the Book of Isaiah, practically as we have it, may have been, and prob ably was, all written by Isaiah, the son of Amoz, in the latter half of the eighth century B. C.
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