Judaism
The Prophets 2
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, June 12, 2001
It is indeed characteristic of apocalyptic… to put an account of past history into the mouth of a pseudonymous author in the guise of prediction.J P M Sweet
Isaiah
The prophet Isaiah is shown in the scriptures as being the man through whom Judah emerged in history from Israel. He is supposed to be a late eighth century prophet living in Jerusalem. The history of Isaiah’s activity purports to be the history of Judah at its formation, but it is a pseudepigraph from a later age. Isaiah realized his calling in the year King Uzziah died, and he begins speaking in the reign of Ahaz. He threatens Judah with the punishment of its sins by experiencing the same fate as Samaria. Only a remnant would remain.
If the prophets were Persian propagandists, they were fifth and fourth century figures partly written back into the imaginary history of the Jews to give a mixed group of colonists a basis for self identity, unity and patriotism. Even then, within the major sections, there are obvious inserts of different authorship and date.
Nothing in the book of Isaiah after chapter 39 is the work of the eighth century prophet, and perhaps even very little before.B S J Isserlin, The Israelites
The first 39 chapters of Isaiah maintain the historical pretence, but chapters 40-55 are more honest, being supposedly written in the “exile”, while the last chapters 56-66 seem to be written some time after the “return”. William Neil, in his popular one volume commentary on the bible, can say:
It was in Babylon that the Jews most noticeably acquired their sense of being different, of being a peculiar and indeed superior race.
The truth is that this sense was not acquired, it was deliberately given to them by the Persians so that they would set up the temple state of Yehud. The prophets were the people who conditioned them into their beliefs. They were taught by prophets before they had any law, and possibly in some cases like Ezekiel before they were transported to Yehud.
Commentators make out that each prophet founded a prophetic school and the biblical “prophet” is a compilation of the work of members over the years. A simpler hypothesis is that the words of official propagandists had been collected thematically for the use of the temple priesthood in warning the people to be obedient. The theme is reflected in the name of the prophet, so the book of a prophet of a certain name began as a collection of oracles or warnings by Persian infiltrators or sympathisers with a particular message.
Commentators also tell us that in “exile”, the Jews, devoid of a temple for expression of their piety, expressed it in ways that made them unusual and exclusive in the foreign society. They emphasized the sabbath, their food taboos and their cleanliness and purity laws. These practices “marked them out as being different”. It is nonsense. The sabbath was observed by the Babylonians who considered it an unlucky day and did not work on it. The Persians observed meticulous food and purity laws because in their Zoroastrian religion, some things were of the evil creation and polluted Ahuramazda’s good creation. Thus, they had to be avoided. What reason had the Jews for avoiding them? When the Babylonians and their conquerors already observed, with better reason, the supposed practices of the exiled Jews, how were the Jews making themselves different? They would have been doing the opposite—assimilating to the local customs and practices, not expressing their own exclusiveness derived from a supposed unique religious conviction.
The “returners” were not an exiled ethnic group of people but people of mixed race, probably mainly Aramaeans and Assyrians from the small kingdoms in the north of the Levant and Syria, possibly with some Greeks. They will have had some initial coaching in a simplified form of Zoroastrianism, giving rise to the idea that some of the prophets worked in exile, but then were sent on their imposed mission to set up a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:6)—the temple state and treasury of Abarnahara.
First Isaiah
Christian commentators ask us to consider the time and the place of the prophecies to put them in context, but every point of detail we have about their time and place is supplied by the same book of myths—the bible. Some historical events, known by the Persian compilers from Assyrian records, served as an historical framework. First Isaiah pretends to be in Jerusalem before its fall to the Babylonians, in the period of Assyrian domination. It uses the conquests of these two aggressive nations to warn the colonists and the native people they are to rule that the same fate can be expected if they do not obey God or rather His law given by the Persian chancellery.
First Isaiah has been considerably edited and expanded at a later date, probably finally in the time of the Maccabees by the Hasids or Essenes whose apocalyptic interests it reflects, but the original collection would have inspired the additions. It is plainly indebted to the editors of the Deuteronomic History because the last chapters of First Isaiah are copied from Kings, and much of its style and interests are like those of the Deuteronomic Historian—the perpetual theme of apostasy and punishment, obedience to the True God and reward.
The colonists were led to believe that their dedication would be an act in the victory over evil. It looks forward to a period of peace under a just ruler, a barely veiled allusion to the Persian King, though presented as an eschatological saviour. He would bring about a renewal of the world, a new creation free of evil and corruption. The burden of preparing for this task was placed upon Israel who therefore were given an onerous duty but with the promise of the honour and reward that its success would bring. Christians might be right that the Emmanuel “prophecy” was of an eschatological saviour whom God would send to bring about the renewal, but this was the Persian viceroy for God on earth.
Isaiah was depicted as a government advisor or chief minister. He prepared a circle of disciples. His aim was non-intervention in international affairs, but concentration on the problems of internal government. But he left a lot of reformation in legal and social matters for the coming messiah. A reform in worship was shown as a prelude to it. With the fall of Samaria, Judah became a puppet of Assyria, and Isaiah is a man trying to keep the status quo, keeping Judah from having anything to do with external powers. Similar kingdoms were shown as being in rebellion, but not Judah. But when Sargon was succeeded in 705 by Sennacherib, the allies among the small Aramaean states joined against the inexperienced new Assyrian king, unbeknown to mythical Isaiah, who could not be responsible for such an ill-considered adventure contrary to everything he had taught. When he got to know, all he could do was be angry about it. “Quietness and rest” was the motto given by Yehouah to Judah, powerless as it was. Isaiah was being painted as the hero who knew that Judah should not be embroiled in the affairs of empires. Assyria, the proxy in these stories for the actual empire of the Persians, would not tolerate any such thing, and did not elsewhere, so the lesson is to stay clear. Of course, it was all God’s work really.
Round about the turn of the seventh century BC, in the reign of Hezekiah, the king is shown as reforming the cult of Yehouah, removing the high places, breaking the pillars, cutting down the Ashera, and breaking up the brazen serpent that Moses had made (2 Kings 18:4). The tale does not inspire much confidence. The “high places” Solomon raised on the Mount of Olives were not removed, though close to Jerusalem, but were consecrated to foreign deities. The reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah can never have been too profound, if they happened at all. They will not have done, but were written in history as having been to relieve the Persians of being accused of it. Isaiah is taken to have been the moving influence, following Hosea’s mythical example. Nominally to avoid the fate of Samaria, the need for reform was put by the prophet (Isaiah 17; cf Jeremiah 3), adding to the stone and wooden idols the ephods, those of silver and gold, of which the land was full. The Persians would not have wanted their finance department from wasting income on golden and silver idols. Note though that he did not object to the many altars to Yehouah on the high places. The date of Hezekiah’s reformation, needless to say, is uncertain.
Sennacherib with a great army entered Philistia and Judah along the Phœnician coast (701 BC). He defeated the Egyptian and Ethiopian army, and captured Askelon and Ekron. Judah was devastated (Isaiah 1). Sennacherib was still threatened by Egyptians, and felt Jerusalem could not be left in his rear as he marched into Egypt, but was ready to settle with Hezekiah with the payment of a large tribute. In the myth, the Assyrian army woke up and found themselves dead, and Hezekiah was allowed to keep Jerusalem. The king of Jerusalem got off lightly.
Any revolt from Assyria was a rebellion against Yehouah, and would be sternly punished after the fashion of Samaria, but a remnant would be righteous and would return! The real agent was not Yehouah, but the Persian chancellery. The mythical figure of Isaiah, a sort of Merlin, was painted up as the model Persian colonist. The picture of Isaiah they painted made him the man who set about building the church. The outcome of Isaiah’s work was ultimately a theocracy, an ecclesiastical state, but only the Persians could have set it up, and it is their propaganda that we read when we read about all this preparation done by prophets. Who but the Persians could have known of the holy remnant which would return. How anyone can imagine all this was not written to justify the “return”, the Persian colonization, is hard to say—the distorting power of faith, presumably.
Second Isaiah
Second Isaiah is the heart of the redactional process (Rendtorff, Williamson)—the original Isaiah, to which the other two have been added. The eighth century prophet does not appear in the book after Isaiah 39, a problem that Christians resolve by the eighth century prophet’s ability as a clairvoyant. King David is a mythological character invented by the authors of the Deuteronomic History. He appears ten times in Isaiah, nine of them in First Isaiah, indicating that it is written by some author with the same interests and precedents. Second Isaiah makes one mention of David in its final chapter, but it was probably inserted, because it and the one sentence following it appear out of the blue. An editor added it thinking it was appropriate in a list of the benefits of the New Covenant. Both Second Isaiah and Third Isaiah were written before David was invented when the Persian Cyrus had become regarded as the saviour king of Judah.
The whole of Isaiah, in traditional commentaries, is prejudiced by the acceptance of the propaganda that the colonists from Persia were returning Jews. Plainly they were presented in that way, but the later interpreters have gone much further than even the originals. Second Isaiah seems to be propaganda contemporaneous with the “returners”—the colonists being sent to form the temple state. It instructs the colonists on how to present propaganda to the native Canaanites.
From Deutero-Isaiah, G Garbini sees Isaiah as having a religious vision of Yehouah as Ahuramazda, and wanting to spread the idea, but “once again, it remained unheard”. He sees the Iranian consequences as marginal, and more of a “literary legacy than a real ideological adherence”. A professor only of philology might conclude this, but it is a serious blind spot for someone like Garbini. If he had seriously compared Judaism with Zoroastrianism, and wondered why it should be that the latter explains practices in the former that it does not explain, then the relationship of the two would be undeniable.
The two diverged when Judaism became Hellenized then Rabbinized, and Alexander tried to destroy the Persian religion by torching its holy texts. Zoroastrianism survived by eastern regimes subsequently picking up the pieces but much had been lost forever. Even so, too much is alike in the pieces of each that remain of Judaism and Zoroastrianism, and the fact that the latter has the answers shows it to be primary.
Great civilisations can culturally conquer their conquerors—Babylon was doing it to the Persians when their empire ended—but not insignificant and unpopulated backwaters. Garbini thinks the Jews, a subject people, could act independently of the Persian ministries, saying, “With Xerxes, the Jews detached themselves from the Persian monarchy”, because he was a tyrant who upset them. It seems the Jews joined the Egyptians in rebellions when Xerxes died in 465 BC. The Egyptian princes Inaros and Amyrtaeus were eventually defeated and Inaros was executed in 454 BC, ending the rebellion. Greeks had fought for the Egyptians and the Satrap of Abarnahara, Megabyxos, had promised them safety if they surrendered, which they did, but was then obliged on higher authority to despatch the Greek captives. On a point of honour he refused and fought two victories against his friend Artaxerxes before they agreed a truce.
The Jews would have been involved in either or both of these rebellions, and the despatch of Nehemiah looks to have been the outcome. The intransigence of the Jews in mid-century had forced the hand of Artaxerxes. The king had tried and failed to punish Megabyxos, and seemed to decide a better policy was that an anti-Egyptian buffer had to be set up as soon as feasible in Yehud. Such colonization as had already happened had been ineffective, as the rebellion showed, and Nehemiah was sent to sort the Jewish buffer state out. The city and temple, if they had been restored at all hitherto, were again razed in these wars, but the policy was now to rebuild as quickly as possible. In Isaiah 44:28, Jerusalem and the temple are spoken of as newly founded and built by Cyrus. Plainly, Jerusalem had been devastated so thoroughly, that it had to be founded and built anew by the Persian settlers. Pussy-footing ceased and a mass of deportees were obliged to impose the restored worship of Yehouah. Ezra launched the new system about 417 BC in the reign of Darius II. This was when the colonists were sent to take control of the unruly state, and the proper worship of Yehouah was finally instituted by Ezra.
The titles of Yehouah denote him as Ahuramazda. Even Garbini wonders how a subject people can make claims contrary to the ruling people about their god. Both gods could not have been the “god of heaven” without conflict, in this view. The answer is obvious. They could, if they were the same god but simply with a different name. Garbini freely accepts:
If there is one God, He is God of all men. They may call Him by different names but He always remains the same.Giovanni Garbini
The Persians understood that a universal God did not have to have the same name in every language. They also understood better than worshippers of the Hebrew god for the next 2,500 years that religion was a political policy from the outset.
The Persians “restored” the old religions particularly of people who did not resist them or rebel against them. Those who rebelled had their temples destroyed! The restored religions however were not restored as they had been but how they ought to be, in the Persian view. The Persians did not aim to replace Marduk with Ahuramazda, but they transformed Marduk into Ahuramazda. It seems obvious that this was not an instantaneous policy. It was one which continued throughout the reigns of the kings, although it was always referred to its initiator, Cyrus. Ezra did not impose a Persian law on to the Jews until 100 years after Cyrus, and the imposition was probably because the Jews had assisted either the Egyptians or Megabyzos in rebellion, but Cyrus was nevertheless cited as the initiator of the restoration.
Ezra 1:1 mentions the edict of the first year of Cyrus, but it is absurd to imagine that the instant that Cyrus issued an edict of restoration that thousands of Jews returned. It seems that the colonisation of such a poor land was not taken up by many expatriot Jews or anyone else, and eventually, the rebellious Jews were punished by having colonists deported into the land to rule them. Garbini wonders how Isaiah could attack Marduk and Nabu in his book when the Cyrus cylinder praises them. He ackowledges that these are propaganda works but seems not to understand propaganda. Propaganda has a specific audience. Cyrus knew this but not Garbini. If each god being favoured was to be shown as the universal God who favoured the Shah, then all other gods were to be disparaged by the propaganda for that God. So Bel and Nebo would bow before Yehouah in his propaganda, but Yehouah would bow down before Bel in his propaganda.
Isaiah speaks (Isa 43:3; 45:14) of the conquest of Egypt, Cush and Saba. This must have been written after the reign of Cambyses when Cyrus was already dead, though Isaiah sounds as if he were alive. Garbini thinks that Isaiah 40-48 “reflects precisely the political ideology of Darius”. He therefore dates it to 500 BC, but, as C Herrenschmidt, in Studia Iranica (1977), has shown, it was Darius the Great and subsequent monarchs of Persia who devised the notion of the Shahanshah as the earthly mirror of the God who created the world. The parallels of Isaiah 42:5-7 with Yasna 44 of the Avesta, and the juxtaposition of Cyrus and God in parallel passages (40:12-32, God; 41:1-5, Cyrus; 41:25-42:7, God; 44:27-45:8, Cyrus) could certainly not have been written until the reign of Darius the Great, but probably not until later in the fifth century. By this time, Cyrus was invariably specified as the originator of the policy whichever Persian king was actually implementing it.
The rebellion of Babylon, put down by Darius, along with other rebellions, appears (Isa 47), but Darius did not convert from being a devotee of Marduk back to worshipping Ahuramazda, as the case would have to have been if Cyrus in his cylinders had really taken up Marduk worship. The policy was to restore the gods of nations that co-operated but rebellions were not considered as co-operation. Rebellious people had their temples and gods destroyed. This was no change of policy. Nor was this the Darius under whom the Jewish religion was restored in Yehud, though the biblical authors obviously did not realise there were two kings Darius, and so thought the restoration had happened in the reign of the famous one.
Second-Isaiah is really itself two Isaiahs, or is in two acts, one from 40-48 and the other from 49-55. The first is concerned with the time of the return itself and the second with the immediate period of the return. The first mentions Cyrus and Babylon, the second does not. The first appeals to prophecy through history, not the later verses. In the earlier verses, the redeemed community is Jacob-Israel and Israel is explicitly the “servant.” In the later verses, the references are to Jerusalem.
Isaiah 40-48 announces Cyrus the Persian as the messiah. Cyrus is Yehouah’s choice of earthly regent just as he was Marduk’s choice in Babylon. Cyrus’s tactic was to set up propagandists in neighbouring countries to persuade them of his future success. He aimed to undermine any spirit of resistance and make people feel they were backing a winner. With the morale of opponents weakened and the will of supporters strengthened, he could chose the appropriate time to act—when the response would be most favourable. The Babylonians offered no resistance to Cyrus when his soldiers got to its gates. Most of the people welcomed the Persian conquerors. His “prophets” had laid the ground and the result was a bloodless victory.
In Isaiah, the appeal to the Jews is shown as being contemporary, but it is more likely to be a later king making use of Cyrus’s historic pronouncements with the usual intention of giving a historical authority to current decisions. The return is depicted as the gracious act of a merciful God, the same propaganda as that used by the Persians in Babylon. By tying it to the edicts of Cyrus, God is shown as acting in history through the Persian kings as saviours.
In Second Isaiah 49-55, the colonists are actually sent to Jerusalem, the year being around 420 BC, and the “return” is shown as a victory for the whole world (Isa 45:22-23)—which was in practice Abarnahara. Jerusalem is the centre of true revelation, the centre of worship and the witness to God’s salvation.
A key concept introduced in Second Isaiah is that of the suffering servant. This will have been a personification of the colonists themselves returning as a servant suffering for God (Isa 42:1-4;49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12) that the final victory be won. However, the odd distribution of these references looks as if they have been inserted later, and they could be specific references to the Essene Righteous Teacher inserted as late as the second century BC.
Comfort Ye My People
Second Isaiah is mainly in verse, and the structure of Attic plays suggests Isaiah 40-55 is drama with stage instructions. The Greek war against Persia lasted from 492 to 479 BC. Aeschylus’s drama, The Persians, was already performed in 472—only eight years after the Persians had been defeated at the battle of Salamis. Aeschylus grapples with Persian rule, but there, even from a Greek viewpoint, Cyrus is an ideal ruler as in Isaiah.
It has a prologue and epilogue, and is divided into separate acts and scenes. The songs of a chorus separate the major units of the epeisodioi from one another, an epeisodion being that part of the tragedy in its full extent which is played out between the choral interludes, as Aristotle has it. The choral interludes had the practical purpose, because there was no curtain in the ancient theatres, of allowing time for changes of roles and costumes, and allow for time to pass between the different parts of the action. They also explained the action so that the audience did not miss its nuances. There were no stage directions. The place and time of the action, what was happening, and who was speaking, had to be deduced from the text, which therefore contained suitable clues.
Deutero-Isaiah seems older even than Attic drama. Compared with Egyptian texts, Deutero-Isaiah departs more radically from ritual and its explanation—say, of the cultic vessels or sacrificial ceremonies. A speaker is continually announcing the action. Procession, dance and music fill up the time. The number of the chief performers is small, especially the number of those with speaking parts. Two to three actors suffice. Jacob/Israel (from Isaiah 41 onward) and Zion/Jerusalem (from Isaiah 48 onward) do not appear simultaneously. The sole exception is 51:12-16. But there neither Zion/Jerusalem nor Jacob/Israel is called by name. They are a nameless pair who do not themselves speak. So they could have been played by non-speaking stand-ins or trainees. Cyrus and Babylon do not meet either.
It begins with the narrator saying God commanded some unspecified group, the imperative being plural, of devotees to comfort “His people.”
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
The people being thus commanded, according to Christian commentators are the “exiles” in Babylon. Piety demands that the exiles should comfort themselves, and it is read as, “Take comfort, my people”. But it sounds like an order to someone to comfort my people. Who then are “my people?” The problem is solved if the people being instructed are the Yehouist colonists being sent to Jerusalem to set up the temple state. “My people” are the people who would thus be comforted, the people of the Persian satrapy of Abarnahara. The colonists are being transported to Jerusalem and are told:
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of Yehouah’s hand double for all her sins.
The “exile” has been twice what is was meant to be. The first instruction to the colonists is to tell the locals that they have been forgiven for their previous sins! This was at first and remained the prime propaganda to the people of the temple state—they had been sinners and had been punished by Yehouah for it. The implied threat is that they would be punished again, if they reverted to their bad practices, but would be treated comfortably if they were obedient to God.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Yehouah, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, And the glory of Yehouah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of Yehouah hath spoken it.
The beginning is the passage quoted wrongly, in the Christian New Testament, applied to John the Baptist, a typical Essenic variant reading applied by Christians. The grandiose promises here mean that the setting up of the temple state is an eschatological act that will help to reveal God and bring about the restoration of the world. The levelling of hills and filling of dales all pertain to the eschaton, proved by the promise of a theophany, which is instantaneous because it is seen simultaneously by all living creatures. These colonists were being given a role in salvation.
The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of Yehouah bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
This seems also to be part of the eschatological explanation, but its presentation suggests a call and response liturgy. Here the colonists are speaking in answer to the prophet/priest earlier. The acknowledgement is that human beings are like grass and so any one might not see the revelation at the end. The “word” mentioned here seems to bracket with the earlier “wilderness” which has the same root. In the wilderness the vegetation withers and fades but the metaphorical word of Yehouah does not. Wilderness therefore seems to stand for the material corrupt world which will end in God’s Judgement.
O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
The message they are meant to convey is that they should see and accept the “good tidings” of their God as Yehouah, a new god to the natives of the Canaanite hills of Palestine.
Behold, the Lord God (really, “Behold your God, Behold my Lord Yehouah”) will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.
The proper doublet distinguishes the imposed god from the Lord of the imposers. Naturally, it was the same god, but the relationship would be different. The colonists were an elite class while the natives were to be converts to the new religion. The work was before Him and His agents temporally, and the “reward” is the reward the ruling colonists would recieve when they had completed God’s work. Riches were therefore regarded as a reward of God in Judaism.
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.
The poem concludes with a homely metaphor assuring the colonists that they would be carefully looked after like a shepherd watching over his flock. This too was to be a lasting metaphor in Judaism and Christianity.
Arguably, some of the verses have been misplaced, but the overall sense remains. The colonists had a job to do and would be cared for and rewarded for doing it.
Can other biblical writings be understood as “dramas” or a basis for a dramatization? It has to be seriously considered, for worship in Greek culture was dramatized often. The same might be true also of Mesopotamia, where dramatized programmes might have accompanied liturgies and processions. It has been long suggested that the Passion of Christ is a religious drama misunderstood by gentile observers who ran off and, taking it seriously, started Christianity.
