tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post3093540735969524931..comments2023-11-02T07:25:45.884-05:00Comments on Mormanity - a blog for those interested in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Janus Parallelism: Book of Mormon Hints? Part 2Jeff Lindsayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-42560299254057688972017-02-10T10:07:36.876-06:002017-02-10T10:07:36.876-06:00Superb response. Thank you!Superb response. Thank you!Kerry L. Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00399672661348410031noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-7872952128727664102017-02-03T09:45:05.663-06:002017-02-03T09:45:05.663-06:00Jeff, much of what you're describing here as &...Jeff, much of what you're describing here as "unity" in the Book of Isaiah --- isn't it structural and thematic, rather than authorial? That is, isn't it about later authors picking up the original Isaiahan ball and moving it in the same direction in the original spirit? Isn't it still the scholarly consensus that Isaiah was written by different authors in different times?<br /><br />Are there any respected Isaiah scholars who think someone was writing explicitly about Cyrus --- writing passages like <i>I have aroused Cyrus in righteousness, and I will make all his paths straight; he shall build my city and set my exiles free....</i> --- prior to the exile?<br /><br />And are there <i>any</i> non-LDS scholars who consider the BoM the least bit relevant to the question of Isaiahan authorship?<br /><br />-- OKAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-24163131329962813842017-02-02T18:23:38.855-06:002017-02-02T18:23:38.855-06:00There are reasonable grounds for accepting Isaiah ...There are reasonable grounds for accepting Isaiah as the author of those chapters commonly assigned to a much later source. Richard Schultz, Professor of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College, presents some of these reasons. See Richard L. Schultz, “Isaiah, Isaiahs, and Current Scholarship,” in James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary, eds., Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? A Critical Appraisal of Modern and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), Kindle edition, chapter 10.<br /><br />Kenneth A. Kitchen also makes a brief case for the unity of Isaiah in On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 378–380, pointing to evidence from an Isaiah manuscript in the Dead Sea scrolls in which the full book of Isaiah is written with a division at the end of chapter 33, as if it were viewed as a book with two related halves. The parallelism between these two halves was long ago analyzed by W.H. Brownlee and said to be indicative of an overarching literary structure pointing to unity. See W.H. Brownlee, The Meaning of the Qumran Scrolls for the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 247–253; as cited by Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 582. Brownlee calls the structure the “Bifid” format of Isaiah, consisting of seven broad parallel sections in both halves. This approach was taken up and greatly refined by Avraham Gileadi in The Literary Message of Isaiah (New York: Hebraeus, 1994), Kindle edition. Gileadi provides a reworked “Bifid structure” of seven parallel elements and shows broad themes with detailed parallels that strongly unite the entire book of Isaiah in a work whose detailed scholarship has been praised by non LDS and LDS scholars.<br /><br />The unity of Isaiah was apparently not questioned by the Qumran community in 200 bc nor by New Testament voices, Christ included, who quote from the latter portions of Isaiah as writings of Isaiah and not a later author (e.g., Matthew 12:17, quoting Isaiah 42:1–4, which Christ attributes to Isaiah; and Matthew 8:16–17, quoting Isaiah 53:4, which Christ attributes to Isaiah; see also John 12:37–41, which quotes from Isaiah 53:1 and then Isaiah 6:10, identifying both passages as from Isaiah).<br /><br />A discussion of the issues for Book of Mormon students is provided by John W. Welch in <i>Isaiah in the Book of Mormon</i>, concluding that portions of Isaiah quoted were probably on the brass plates and most likely authored by Isaiah. Welch observes that there are reasonable grounds for accepting the unity of the version of Isaiah on the brass plates, though it may not have included the full book as we know it today. He also notes that the parts viewed as most strongly post-exilic by modern scholars, often ascribed to a “Tertio-Isaiah,” are not quoted in the Book of Mormon.<br /><br />Some wordprint and other statistical or scientific studies have also pointed to unity in Isaiah or at least have not provided support for multiple authorship.<br /><br />I would further argue that the sophisticated application of dust related themes in the Book of Mormon drawing heavily on Isaiah 52 — to be explored more fully in my Interpreter articles on that topic, Parts 2 and 3 — is something far beyond Joseph Smith’s abilities or perhaps even the state of biblical scholarship in Joseph’s day and helps make the Book of Mormon itself a witness for the authenticity of the later Isaiah chapters quoted or relied upon in the Book of Mormon.Jeff Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776493593387402607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-12848232988578247332017-02-02T10:58:41.200-06:002017-02-02T10:58:41.200-06:00Another question---In 1 Nephi 21, isn't Nephi ...Another question---In 1 Nephi 21, isn't Nephi reading to the people from the brass plates? <br /><br />1 Nephi 19:22 reads, "Now it came to pass that I, Nephi, did teach my brethren these things; and it came to pass that I did read many things to them, which were engraven upon the a plates of brass...."<br /><br />But how could Isaiah 21 be on plates engraved prior to Nephi's flight from Jerusalem, which is to say, before the Babylonian conquest? Isaiah 49 is part of Deutero-Isaiah, isn't it? If so, it would have been written during or after the captivity.<br /><br />To me, this would be strong evidence against the Book of Mormon's historicity, since Deutero-Isaiah was available to Joseph, but not to Nephi.<br /><br />-- OKAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-56031891772607527012017-02-02T02:37:41.302-06:002017-02-02T02:37:41.302-06:00This is an interesting exercise. It may never be c...This is an interesting exercise. It may never be convincing to non-believers, but it's a good-faith effort to test a hypothesis in one of the few ways that are possible. That's always a good idea, so let's see where it goes.<br /><br />One thing I'd like to see added, though, is a control group. Try doing the same search for Janus parallelism in King-James-ish English texts that were certainly not translated from Hebrew, and see whether any similarly plausible examples come up there. <br /><br />My guess is that they would, because the hypothesis of ur-text wordplay is one with a lot of inherent wiggle room. By the time you've run through all the conceivable alternative original Hebrew terms for every word in the text, you'd have to be very unlucky, it seems to me, to never find any combinations of text and hypothetical original that would fit Janus parallelism. <br /><br />Janus parallelism is probably less of a fluke than one might think, because in most cases where a word has two meanings, there is at least some connection between the two meanings. And in most cases where two sentences follow each other, there is some connection between their meanings, too. So Janus parallelism isn't really as artificial as it first sounds. I bet it shows up in modern English, without any inferred Hebrew.<br /><br />I'm sure Janus parallelism is still rare, but I doubt it's really rare enough that just finding some, at all, is a smoking-gun discovery. Given the freedom to sharpshoot and cherry-pick that is inherent in the hypothesis of a lost Hebraic source text, I'd really want to see a comparison with a control text, before concluding that Janus parallelism in the Book of Mormon was evidence for anything.James Anglinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18266855639647700167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7139169.post-4252169180352328232017-02-01T14:25:33.663-06:002017-02-01T14:25:33.663-06:00If the word translated as "rock" could a...<i>If the word translated as "rock" could also convey....</i><br /><br />If only we had those gold plates!<br /><br />Seriously, Jeff, I doubt this line of inquiry can go anywhere at all without the original text, for all the reasons you've already discussed.<br /><br />-- OKAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com