Comments on: Reading Nephi – 1:18-20

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 14:55:44 +0000

It seems a reasonable assumption especially given the quasi-messianic passages in the parts everyone agrees was pre-exilic. The idea they were editing rather than composed post-exile seems pretty reasonable to me. I recognize it won’t satisfy those who use source criticism to critique the Book of Mormon. My experience there is a certain absolutism not applied to their own favorite texts. Others might disagree though. (I also don’t think they think through the implications of a loose translation relative to KJV sections quoted as translation of somewhat different underlying text)

By: James Olsen

James Olsen — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 00:17:00 +0000

I’ve also spoken to scholars who postulate that shorter, deutero-Isaiah poetry was circulating pre-exile, but not added to Isaiah until later.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 19:51:10 +0000

I should note that some scholars think there is post-exilic redactions and edits made to Isaiah 7 – 11, such as 11:1-9. That’s not really my point though. Just the issue of ideal king vs. gatherer.

My thought is the best solution to deuteroIsaiah is just to postulate it was passing around in a preliminary form and that the final post exilic form developed later. Nephi has the prototype form but when Joseph translates he largely follows the KJV which has the more messianic exile form. That’s pure rank speculation of course.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 19:45:27 +0000

This strikes me as post-Babylonian exile Messianism, a deutoro-Isaiah message about God’s being faithful even after he’s obviously been unfaithful (on account of our own wickedness).

I’m not sure I’d say that’s God being unfaithful but Israel. Lehi and Nephi get at the underlying idea of God with the idea of a true arm and a false arm. God’s arm is the true one and if we trust on it then it is reliable whereas it is the arm of flesh that is unreliable. This makes sense even in the Palestinian context given that Lehi is warning Zedekiah and the people to not trust in an alliance against Babylon. However the imagery then continues and gets put in lots of interesting new contexts.

While the problem of deuteron-isaiah remains, I’m not sure the messiah sections are a problem. I do know that the mainstream scholarly view is that the very idea of a messiah doesn’t really evolve until the Book of Daniel develops. However most scholars are fine with Isaiah 32:1-8 being pre-exilic but that has a messianic tone to it. The big question then becomes whether messianism is tied to restoring from exile or can it apply to an ideal king? While 2 Nephi has quotations from the problematic portions of Isaiah, I’m not sure these portions are necessarily problematic and seem in keeping with Isaiah 7 – 11.