Faculty of Theology
Department of Old Testament Studies
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
The objective of this project is governed by the aims and goals as outlined by the editors of the series Historical commentary on the Old Testament. In this commentary, the relationship between the genesis of the text of Isaiah 1 to 12 and its final form is examined: between the centuries-old history of exegesis of these texts and their contemporary expressions. Explicit attention is devoted to the history of the interpretation of the book of Isaiah and specifically chapters 1 to 12 – as can be discerned in the Hebrew canon itself and as has continued subsequent to the close of the Old Testament canon. This commentary’s research question is thus twofold: it is firstly of a literary nature, and secondly of a historical nature. The research found that this research question has led to the formulation of the following hypothesis: the text of Isaiah 1 to 12 is the product of a multi-stage redactional-compositional process. A thorough text-immanent (intra-textual) analysis, combined with an inter-textual and extra-textual analysis, indicates a developmental history of the text of Isaiah 1 to 12 in different layers. In spite of the fact that chapters 1 to 12 of the book of Isaiah are presented as a single block of literature that occurs at the beginning of the book of Isaiah, a detailed analysis of its content demonstrates that it is a composite work written over the course of some centuries. The many interrelationships between the various parts of the book of Isaiah indicate successive re-readings of the Isaianic tradition in the light of later historical circumstances
Contact person: Dr A Groenewald.
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