Poetry Catastrophe And Hope In The Vision Of Isaiah

"Offers a deep reading of the book of Isaiah by considering the response of poetry to catastrophe. Contributes to the growing body of feminist and gender-based interpretations of the Bible. Focuses on poetry and poets, to counter the conventional emphasis on scribes and scribal communities in biblical studies."--Publisher's website.

The book of Isaiah is one of the longest and strangest books of the Hebrew Bible, composed over several centuries and traversing the catastrophe that befell the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. Francis Landy's book tells the story of the poetic response to catastrophe, and the hope for a new and perfect world on the other side. The study traces two parallel developments: the displacement of the Davidic promise onto the Persian Empire, Israel, and the prophet himself; and the transition from exclusively male images of the deity to the matching of male and female prototypes, whereby YHWH takes the place of the warrior goddess. Utopia, Catastrophe, and Poetry in the Book of Isaiah consists of close readings of individual passages in Isaiah, commencing with Chapter One and the problems of beginning, and ending with Deutero-Isaiah, composed subsequent to the Babylonian exile. The volume is arranged thematically as well as sequentially: the first chapter following the introduction concerns gender, the second death, the third the Oracles about the Nations. At the centre there is what Landy calls 'the constitutive enigma', Isaiah's commission in his vision to speak so that people will not understand. This renders the entire book potentially incomprehensible; the more we try to understand it, the greater the difficulty. For Landy, this creates a model of reading and writing, the challenge and the risk of going up blind alleys, of trying to make sense of a disastrous world. Isaiah's commission pervades the book. Throughout there is a promise of an age of clarity as well as social and political transformation, which is always deferred beyond the horizon. Hence it is a book without an ending, or with multiple endings. In the final chapters, the author turns to the central Chapter Thirty-Three, a mise-en-abyme of the book and a prayer for deliverance, and the issues of exile and the possibility of return. Like every poetic work, particularly in an era of cultural collapse, it is a critique of the past and a hope for a new humanity.

This practical, "how-to" literary introduction to Isaiah as a poem is based upon the English text and focuses upon parallelism, figurative language, and the use of imagery.

"Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!" Isaiah's words are deeply loved by many who attend Sunday services. But how many can say that they have actually read this book? This commentary invites you to read Isaiah from the era when it reached its sixty-six-chapter form and came to be part of Israel's sacred writings. Three memories helped to give shape to the Isaiah scroll. The first memory is of the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. How could God have allowed that to happen? The opening section of the scroll addresses that question. The second memory involves the fall of Babylon after 562 BCE. People, nations, and even empires rise and fall. The second section of the scroll addresses war and the sorrows of war. The third memory is of Cyrus of Persia, who allowed the exiles to return home after 539 BCE. His actions are presupposed, not just in the joyful poetry of the latter chapters of the scroll, but also in the confidence in God's love that runs through the entire scroll. God is the Lord of all nations and of all creation. Isaiah is a theological interpretation of past history. It is a passionate call for people to live with integrity, compassion, and hope.

Where was God in the sixth-century destruction of Jerusalem? The Hebrew Bible compositions written during and around the sixth century BCE provide an illuminating glimpse into how ancient Judeans reconciled the major qualities of God—as Lord, fierce warrior, and often harsh rather than compassionate judge—with the suffering they were experiencing at the hands of the Neo-Babylonian empire, which had brutally destroyed Judah and deported its people. Voices from the Ruins examines the biblical texts “explicitly and directly contextualized by those catastrophic events”—Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Lamentations, and selected Psalms—to trace the rich, diverse, and often-polemicized discourse over theodicy unfolding therein. Dalit Rom-Shiloni shows how the “voices from the ruins” in these texts variously justified God in the face of the rampant destruction, expressed doubt, and protested God’s action (and inaction). Rather than trying to paper over the stark theological differences between the writings of these sixth-century historiographers, prophets, and poets, Rom-Shiloni emphasizes the dynamic of theological pluralism as a genuine characteristic of the Hebrew Bible. Through these avenues, and with her careful, discerning textual analysis, she provides readers with insight into how the sufferers of an ancient national catastrophe wrestled with the difficult question that has accompanied tragedies throughout history: Where was God?

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed a world of early Jewish writing larger than the Bible: from multiple versions of biblical texts to 'revealed' books not found in our canon. But despite this diversity, the way we read Second Temple Jewish literature remains constrained by two anachronistic categories: a theological one, 'Bible,' and a bibliographic one, 'book.' 'The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity' suggests ways of thinking about how Jews understood their own literature before these categories had emerged.