The Fundamentals - 1910: Vol.7

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The Fundamentals

RECENT VIEWS Among thé latest to investigate the problem is the Rev. Robert H. Kennett, D. D., Regius Professor of Hebrew and Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge, whose Schweich Lec- tures (1909) have recently been published for the British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1910. The vol- ume is entitled, “The Composition of the Book of Isaiah in the Light of History and Archaeology”, and is a professed “attempt to tell in a simple way the story of the book of Isaiah.” The results of his investigations he sums up as fol- lows (pp. 84-85) : (1) All of chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 20 and 31, and portions of chapters 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 14, 17, 22 and 23, may be, assigned to Isaiah the son of Amoz. (2) All of chapters 13, 40 and 47, and portions of chapters 14, 21, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46 and 48, may be assigned to the time of Cyrus. (3) All of chapters 15, 36, 37 and 39, and portions of chap- ters 16 and 38, may be assigned to the period between Nebu- chadnezzar and Alexander the Great, but cannot be dated pre- cisely. (4) Chapter 23:1-14 may be assigned to the time of Alexander the Great (332 B. C.), (5) All of chapters i t 12, 19, 24-27, 29, 30, 32-35, 42, 49-66, and portions of chapters 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 18, 23, 41, 44, 45 and 48, may be assigned to the second century B. C. Dr. Kennett thus assigns more than one-half of the book of Isaiah to the Maccabean Age. Prof. C. F. Kent, also, in his “Sermons, Epistles and Apocalypses of Israel’s Prophets,” 1910, makes the following noteworthy observations on the prophecies of the so-called “Deutero-Isaiah.” Pie says : “The prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah. . . . afford by far the best approach for the study of the difficult problems presented by Isaiah 40-66. . . . Chapters 56-66 are generally recognized as post-exilic. . . . In Isaiah 56 and the following chapters there are repeated references to the temple and its service, indicating that it had already been restored. More-

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