Isaiah layers

Isaiah Layers

December 13, 2008

The biblical book of Isaiah is the best kind of text: complicated. Every canonical text (whether for a religion or culture) acquires layers of interpretation that can be excavated and analyzed. But most fun is when all that interpretive activity is fossilized within the text itself. Isaiah was composed over the course of perhaps five centuries.. and since each successive layer appears to know about the earlier layers, the result is a text that continually re-interprets itself.

At a few points this process of reinterpretation steps out of the shadows and into the light, as in the following passage that follows a denunciation of the land of Moab:

This was the word that the LORD spoke concerning Moab in the past. But now the LORD says, In three years, like the years of a hired worker, the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt... [16.13-14]

Embedded in this response is recognition that a long time ago God said A, but now that will be updated with B. This kind of passage only makes sense by the assumption of a much later writer stepping into the text and making it speak for his own time.

Joseph Blenkinsopp summarizes this process:

A cumulative process of interpretation and expansion of an initial core of material was going on throughout the period of the formation of the book, until the point was reached after which commentary could no longer be incorporated in it but had to be written up separately. [56]

The model for understanding a heterogeneous book like Isaiah is to see it as a book that was for centuries in a process of becoming. As new historical situations arrived, the text was made relevant by new readings.. and those readings were embedded within the text itself. Finally this process came to an end and the book of Isaiah was closed (sometime in 2nd century BC by evidence of Dead Sea Scroll text). The text did not at that point stop acquiring new meanings, but the activity of interpretation shifted to external commentaries that functioned like lenses for understanding the book.

If we accept it that texts/scriptures are used by a culture as a way to understand or define itself, then interpretation will be seen as a constant strategy for forcing texts to speak to contemporary situations. If all we had left from the Hebrew prophets were denunciations of places like Moab and Edom, then these books would have been lost a long time ago. But thanks to the fact that in later readings parts of Isaiah that mention "Edom" were thought to be referring to Rome.. and who knows what else as time passed.. the texts maintained their value to readers.

Such interpretation would take place in different ways depending on the nature of the text. I can think of four models for interpretation:

1) oral text. In this case there is no written text within which a new interpretation can be embedded. But as the story is re-told new elements or emphases will be introduced. Each time a story is re-told it is by definition re-interpreted.

2) written text. In this state a text is written down, but the pristine borders of authorship are not widely held, and the text remains fluid in a way similar to the oral text. As the text is copied it is at the same time re-written and additions are incorporated if coming from a suitably inspired source. This is the category for a book like Isaiah.

3) settled text. The text acquires an authoritative status. The process of interpretation will continue, but it will now be embedded in some way outside the text (margins or independent commentary). Due to these commentaries the actual meaning of the text continues to be in flux as it is applied and re-applied. Religious change will often be accompanied by a re-interpretation of the central texts.. that is, the writing of a new commentary.

4) translated text. This is an easily ignored process by which texts are transferred into a new medium: scrolls to books, passages to pictures, books to website, books to video. The transfer of a text to a new medium brings about shifts in meaning that are often hard to detect, but nonetheless real. The choices made in such translations often amount to a new interpretation of the text.. or an updating of it.