Isaiah in the New Testament 217 p. Publisher: London : T & T Clark, 2007. Reprint ed

Uitti, Roger W.

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 33Issue 1 In Honour or Dr. Erwin Buck Article 1911-1-2008Isaiah in the New TestamentRoger W. UittiFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationUitti, Roger W. (2008) "Isaiah in the New Testament ," Consensus: Vol. 33 : Iss. 1 , Article 19.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol33/iss1/19Jesus and the community. Baptism presupposes the body into which thebeliever is incorporated; the sacrament of initiation and the sacrament ofnurture provide critiques by which the Christian can discern whether agiven apprehension of the image of God is faithful or not. The Eucharistreminds us that the body is also present in the mode of absence andBaptism reminds us of the irreplaceable uniqueness of each member,and the manner in which evangelism renders the body of Christ as everchanging. Envisioning the invisible God precludes an image which ispredictable, parochial, or static. To the sacraments, McFarland adds theScriptures as the necessary but not yet sufficient condition foridentifying the image of God. Scripture provides us with enough of avision of Christ that we can grasp fragmentary visions of the imago deiin our communal and personal relationships.This is a commendable book and one that ought to be read by anyinterested in making sense of the enigmatic phrase imago dei. My onecritique of it is McFarland’s curious decision to locate the treatment ofthe sacraments at the end of the book rather than the beginning. Thechristological criteria as articulated in his treatment of the sacramentswould have served well his discussion of the communal and personalmeans whereby the image of God is discerned. Related to this criticismis my surprise at his silence on the significance of preaching for a properunderstanding of the modus operandi of the sacraments.Notwithstanding these concerns, I heartily recommend this as a book thatought to be read by academics, pastors and theologically literate laity.Allen JorgensonWaterloo Lutheran SeminaryIsaiah in the New TestamentSteve Moyise and Maarten J.J. Menken, editorsThe New Testament and the Scriptures of Israel. London, UK: T.& T.Clark, 2005; reprint 2007217 pages, $51.50 SoftcoverTwelve different scholars contributed to this book. In eleven chapterswe learn about the use of Isaiah within 2nd Temple Judaism (516 BCE-70 CE), in Mark’s Gospel, in Q, in Matthew, in Luke-Acts, in John,Book Reviews 129Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2008in Romans and Galatians, in 1-2 Corinthians, in Hebrews, in 1 Peter,and Revelation. Because of a common pattern of presentation eachchapter of the book is quite uniform in style and quality. Anintroduction commences each chapter, followed by a discussion ofspecific Isaianic citations and allusions, with a concluding summaryof observations.For quick and most helpful reference there are three closingindices: 1) an index of quotations and main allusions – NT order; 2)an index of quotations and main allusions – Isaiah order; and 3) anindex of modern authors. With the quotations and allusions givenboth according to their place in the books of the NT and in chapterorder in the book of Isaiah the first two indices are most useful andvaluable. With the unfortunate absence of a final bibliography of allsources utilized within the essays, the panorama of articles and bookscited in footnotes scattered throughout the chapters is recoverable ifone notes authors while reading. The footnotes carry a goodly rangeof material dealing with the use of the OT in the NT.The commentary is excellent, with NT use of Isaiah in earlyJudaism and the NT both critically and fairly judged. The first essayby Darrell D. Hannah focuses on the use of three Isaianic complexesin Second Temple Judaism (Is 10:33-11:10; 6:1-13; Is 42:1-4/ 49:1-6/50:4-9/ 52:13-53:12). The use of these three Isaianic complexescontributes to the detailing within early Judaism of non-messianicand messianic expectation, apocalyptic envisioning of God, andcontent for Jewish liturgy. Hannah concurs with former scholarshipthat nowhere in this literature is the idea of vicarious suffering everattributed to the Servant of the Songs. Such a judgment ends up,however, hardly that arresting, as the Isaiah Targum is generallyacknowledged as anti-Christian in its intentions. What is more, theidea of a Davidic messiah suffering is equally absent in the OT as awhole. Indeed, the Servant who dies in the Fourth Servant Song is nota king but a martyr prophet. With twenty-seven pages or almost 13%of the monograph devoted to Isaiah’s use within Second TempleJudaism, i.e., by texts outside the NT per se, one might have expectedsuch a broader quest to be reflected in the book’s final title.The ten essays on the NT use of Isaiah that follow are laid out inNT canonical order. According to Morna D. Hooker, the key Isaianicpassages in Mark are Is 5:1-2; 6:9-10; 29:13; 40:3; and 56:7.Likewise, Mk 9:48 and 13:24-25 may point to Is 66:24 and Is130 Consensushttp://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol33/iss1/1913:10/34:4, along with eighteen further possible allusions to Isaiah.Since 1959 Hooker has challenged the common assumption thatMark based his portrait of Jesus on Is 53’s Servant. In this essay shecontinues to do so, in her understanding of Mk 10:45. The additionalIsaiah material that appears outside Mark but common to bothMatthew and Luke, usually known as Q, is examined in the nextessay by Christopher Tuckett. In this essay the most important text inQ is said to be Is 61. In a scene where John the Baptist sendsmessengers to inquire of Jesus, Jesus’ response in Lk 7:22 alludes toIs 26:19; 29:18-19; and 35:5-6, but the closing reference comes fromIs 61:1. This latter text may also lie behind a number of the beatitudeswithin Q, as a kind of programmatic summary of the teaching of thehistorical Jesus. Richard Beaton then deals with Matthew’s use ofIsaiah. He notes that, although Matthew borrowed Mark’s use of Is40:3; 6:9-10; 29:13; 56:7; 13:10, 34 he also inserted his own use ofIsaiah: Is 7:14; 8:23b-9:1; 53:4; and 42:1-4. The focus of Beaton’sessay is upon Matthew’s functional and theological use of the bookof Isaiah. Most of the Matthean quotations end up having both achristological and/or an eschatological thrust.Bart J. Koet’s article on the Isaianic use in Luke/Acts uncoversfour explicit Isaiah quotations in Luke’s Gospel. Two of them occuralso in Mark and Matthew (Is 40:3-5; 56:7), though Luke addssubstantially to the quotation of Is 40:3-5 in Lk 3:4-6. Two otherquotations are found only in Luke’s Gospel: Is 61:1-2a in Lk 4:18-19,and Is 53:12 in Lk 22:37. There are also five explicit Isaianicquotations in the book of Acts: Is 66:1-2a (7:49-50); Is 53:7-8c (8:32-33); Is 55:3 (13:34); Is 49:6 (13:47); and Is 6:9-11a (28:26-27). Thepattern reveals a fine balance in the distribution of such materialbetween Luke and Acts. In summary, Luke uses the figure of theServant to depict both the mission of Jesus and that of his disciples.Is 49:6 is used in Acts as the legitimation of the Gentile mission as aconsequence of Jesus’ own mission.Catrin H. Williams closes out the study of the four Gospels withhis study of the Gospel of John. While John shares two texts (Is 6:10and 40:3) with the other Gospels, although he uses them somewhatdifferently, the Gospel adds two explicit quotations of its own, Is54:13 (6:45) and 53:1 (12:38). The first occurs in the “bread of life”discourse where the words of Isaiah are understood with reference toJesus’ own words with the promise of a new kind of teaching; theBook Reviews 131Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2008second quotation, Is 53:1, speaks to the unbelief that Jesus meets (Jn12:37) and occurs just before the quotation of Is 6:10 (Jn 12:39-40)explaining why Isaiah spoke the harsh words he did (Jn 12:41). Thewitness of Isaiah thus fits neatly into John’s chain of witnesses as tothe true identity of Jesus and significance of his earthly mission.Two essays are devoted to St. Paul’s use of Isaiah in his epistles.We learn that Paul quotes the text of Isaiah more than any other OTsource. J. Ross Wagner informs us that Romans itself contains themost quotations of and allusions to the book of Isaiah in the wholePauline corpus, and that it is from Isaiah that Paul obtains theinterpretive leverage he needed to reconceptualize and to reinterpretthe OT as a witness to the Gospel mission. The main texts quoted inRomans are Is 1:9; 10:22-23/28:22; 11:10; 28:16/8:14; 28:16; 29:10;45:23; 52:5; 52:7; 52:15; 53:1; 59:7-8; 59:20-21/27:9; and 65:1-2. InGalatians Wagner also notes the use of Is 54:1 (Gal 4:27) andallusions to Is 49. The use of Isaiah in 1-2 Corinthians is dealt withby the German scholar Florian Wilk. He examines the use of fourmarked quotations (Is 29:14; 28:11-12; 25:8; 49:8), four quotation-like allusions (40:13; 45:14; 22:13); 9:1[2]), as well as other probable– or not so probable! – allusions (Is 61:1; 33:18b/19:11-12/44:25b;53:12; 43:18-19/42:9/48:3, 6-7; 49:13; and 55:10). On the whole, inthe Corinthian correspondence Isaiah is read as referring: 1) to God’ssaving work in Christ; 2) to Paul’s own apostolate; 3) to prophecyfulfilled in the Christian community of Jews and Gentiles as achievedby the charitable collection for the saints at Jerusalem; ( 4) to theimportance of always speaking/prophesying for communaledification; and 5) to the final parousia.The last three essays close out the NT use of Isaiah. J. CecilMcCullough treats Hebrews; Steve Moyise, 1 Peter; and DavidMathewson, the book of Revelation. The book of Hebrews appearsquite meager in direct/indirect reference to Isaiah: out of twenty-fourexplicit OT quotations only one is from Isaiah, Is 8:17-18 in Heb2:13. Still the author claims there are significant allusions, literaryparallels, and echoes of Isaiah through the book. The whole of Is 6-9allegedly appears to contain theological themes very much in play inHebrews, while Is 51:12-55:13 is held to be behind much of how theauthor of Hebrews configures the significance of Jesus’ death.Moyise, next, observes that 1 Peter for its size is a rival to Romansfor its frequency of quotations from Isaiah. Within the five chapters132 Consensushttp://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol33/iss1/19of 1 Peter there are six texts quoted (Is 8:14; 11:2; 28:16; 40:6-8;43:20-21; 53:4-12). While there may be controversy over how Is 53is to be properly interpreted in its occurrences elsewhere in the NT,with reference to 1 Peter there is little debate: in 1 Peter, the mixtureof quotations and allusions make it by far the most explicit andelaborate rewriting of Is 53 in the entire NT; at the very center of suchexposition stands 1 Pet 2:22-25.Lastly, the book of Revelation is the most interesting andchallenging of all. While there are no explicit citations of Isaiahwhatsoever in Revelation, the book is nonetheless said to be saturatedwith allusions to and echoes of Isaiah. Following the lead of J. Fekkes(Isaiah and Prophetic Tradition in the Book of Revelation [1993])author David Matthewson reiterates the four main headings ofIsaianic influence detected: 1) overall visionary experience andlanguage; 2) christological titles and descriptions; 3) descriptions ofeschatological judgment as well as 4) eschatological salvation. Textsthat once spoke about YHWH are found reapplied to Christ and textsoriginally about ancient Israel are updated in terms of the Christianchurch.Jesus spoke of things hidden “from the wise and understanding”but “revealed … to babes” (Matt 11:25). St. Paul spoke of the“foolishness of the Gospel” (1 Cor 1:18) and “the scandal of thecross” (Gal 5:11; 1 Cor 1:23). Reading through this collection on theuse of Isaiah in the NT demonstrates here and there that there is alsopresent something of “a scandal of the exegesis.” Thus, in the viewof the essayist treating John’s Gospel, Isaiah the prophet is heard toprophesy as he did because “he foresaw Christ’s glory and spoke ofhim” (Jn 12:41). This suggests to author C.H. Williams that whatIsaiah saw (in his temple vision in Is 6?) was the pre-existent glory ofJesus or, as Williams himself prefers, “the glory of the earthly Jesus.”Is 6:9-10, in its message about hardening hearts and blinding eyes, isaccordingly no longer understood as an ancient word of judgmentabout people and leadership within Isaiah’s historical horizon andsituation but has become in John a contemporary, harsh wordexplaining why the message of Jesus was not received by his owncontemporaries (Jn 12:37-40). The other three Gospels also read Is6:9-10 in similar terms, either with God doing the hardening (Mk4:12) or with the people hardening their own hearts and minds (Matt13:13-15; Lk 8:10).Book Reviews 133Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2008Then there is Paul’s use of Is 65:1-2 in Romans 10:20-21. HerePaul identifies “those not seeking me” not as recalcitrant Israel, butnow as the Gentiles. Isaiah’s words are cited to support and clarify theancient testimony of Moses himself: God will provoke his people tojealousy precisely by revealing himself as Savior to “outsider”Gentiles. Likewise, there is Paul’s use of Isaiah 28:11-12 in 1 Cor14:21. For the 8th century people of Israel and their leadership whorefused to accept YHWH’s offer of salvation, the word of Godthrough Isaiah was heard as gibberish by them, yes, indeed, theywould hear even more incomprehensible nonsense, only this timefrom their captors, in Neo-Assyrian Akkadian! Strangely, St. Paulapplies these very same verses of Isaiah to the issue of glossolalia inhis clarification of the proper relationship between prophecy andspeaking in tongues in the assembly of the church at Corinth. To doso Paul omits Is 28:12a. 1 Peter 1:10-12 suggests that the Christianperspective began within the prophets themselves: “The prophets …inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christwithin them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and thesubsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving notthemselves but you, in the things which have now been announced….”In these few selected examples of the Christian perspective wesense a great hermeneutical gap between our time and that of the firstcentury. The first century exegesis of both Jews and Christians is notour historical-critical or post-critical exegesis. The manner of suchexegesis still divides Jews from Christians, yet it stands as part andfabric of the Incarnation story and its unfolding aftermath. Such analmost charismatic interpretive phenomenon reminds us that the Godof both Christians and Jews is and remains the final Exegete.Importantly, the use of Isaiah in the NT is almost withoutexception done on the basis of Greek text tradition rather than theHebrew. Astonishingly, the significance of the book of Isaiah forChristian theology is determined essentially on the basis of a famoustranslation, the Septuagint. If one had used the Hebrew text, not allof the points could have been made.In this particular collection of essays it turns out that not even allof Isaiah’s use within the NT via the Septuagint gets treated. Onlythose NT writings in which Isaiah played a major role were decidedto be included, that the collection might give an accurate overview of134 Consensushttp://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol33/iss1/19

Isaiah in the New Testament

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Isaiah in the New Testament

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