Isaiah Reads The Book of Mormon
Consider this bit of prophetic rhetoric. (Now if this were a game of Name That Quote someone would say, “I can name that quote in four words,” and someone else would say, “I can name that quote in two words.” So name that quote.)
I told
(got it?)
the brethren
(go ahead, finish it)
that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding its precepts, than by any other book. (History of the Church, 4:461.)
This quote is so common to us that we don’t think of it as rhetoric, and most of us have seen some kind of demonstration of what happens to an arch when you take out the keystone, so we think of it as a statement of the importance of The Book of Mormon, a statement that calls forth a picture of what The Book of Mormon means to us.
We also may not think of it as rhetoric because we think of rhetoric as insincere speech, and don’t even need a phrase like Hugh Nibley’s Victoriosa Loquacitas: The Rise of Rhetoric and the Decline of Everything Else to point us in that direction. Just consider the list of 19 synonyms at thesaurus.com, which starts with hyperbole, ends with hot air, and passes through balderdash, pomposity, and rant.
Of course, the list contains more neutral words, like address (to All Believers in Christ) and (Journal of) discourse(s), and the entry includes
Word Origin & History
rhetoric c.1300, from O.Fr. rethorique, from L. rhetorice, from Gk. rhetorike techne “art of an orator,” from rhetor (gen. rhetoros) “orator,” related to rhema “word,” lit. “that which is spoken,” from PIE *wre-tor-, from base *were- “to speak” (cf. O.E. word, L. verbum, Gk. eirein “to say;” see verb).
“That which is spoken,” so rhetoric is related to the act of speaking, and as a technical term a rhetoric is a long list describing the ways people combine sounds, ways that include alliteration, assonance, and asyndeton; enallage, polyptoton and polysyndeton, and, of course, zeugma. Henry Peacham, in 1577, pictured this list as a Garden of Eloquence. Reworking it four centuries later Willard Espy concentrated on the animals you would find in The Garden of Eloquence, adding the subtitle, A Rhetorical Bestiary. Gideon Burton, who delights in the same kind of verse Espy uses to illustrate his bestiary, enlarged the garden into The Forest of Rhetoric.
Broadly, the purpose of rhetoric is to make speech memorable (and delightsome, don’t forget “memorable and delightsome”), so that if I say capstone I can expect many of my readers to think Doctrine and Covenants, and the Lord has approved both the keystone and the capstone, without even stopping to think, “Wait a minute, that quote must be a lot more than 20 years old, he’s been gone about that long, and I remember hearing President Benson say,
The Book of Mormon is the “keystone” of our religion, and the Doctrine and Covenants is the capstone, with continuing latter-day revelation. The Lord has placed His stamp of approval on both the keystone and the capstone. [“The Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants,” Ensign, May 1987, 83]
That long ago, 1987? That was the year I got married. So for almost 30 years Ezra Taft Benson’s piece of prophetic rhetoric has been memorable, even though it isn’t quoted as often as Joseph Smith’s. But this memorability of rhetoric can also be problematic (how’s that for a mush-mouthed word?). Memorable phrases share a feature with metaphor (another rhetorical device, discussed in #34 ) which can make them stop thought, or at least make them sound like a matter is settled, like there’s nothing more to be said.
That feature is common sense, transparency. An effective metaphor seizes common sense, so that we don’t have to stop to think whether we believe the metaphor. The metaphor is transparent to us. We begin to see through the metaphor, that is, the metaphor becomes the lens through which we see, which may stop us from seeing through the metaphor to what’s behind it.
So, for example we don’t ask a question like, “Would the Church really collapse without The Book of Mormon? Isn’t the atonement both the keystone and the capstone of Christianity? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say something like,
The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it .
But this piece of rhetoric is itself so commonsensical, so authoritative, that the rhetor (or writer, since it was an editorial–though likely dictated) immediately qualified it:
But in connection with these, we believe in the gift of the Holy Ghost, the power of faith, the enjoyment of the spiritual gifts according to the will of God, the restoration of the house of Israel, and the final triumph of truth. (Elders’ Journal, July 1838, p. 44; reprinted in History of the Church 3:30, and quoted in Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith)
So here’s the point we’ve been making our very roundabout way to. Rhetoric is not simply the province of prophets or politicians, and not simply a list describing how people use sound to express themselves, but also describes the reasoning scholars use in laying out the principles of their work, whether those principles involve saying we should look at the Book of Mormon itself as evidence of an ancient culture instead of looking to the remains of ancient cultures for evidence to support the book of Mormon (thanks Terryl Givens); or whether those principles lead scholars to conclude that Isaiah was written by a Primo, a Deutero, and maybe a Trito or more.
I became aware of this fracturing of Isaiah maybe 35 years ago, after returning from my mission. It was presented as a challenge to the authenticity of The Book of Mormon, since the scholarly consensus was that the second half of Isaiah was written during the Babylonian exile–material which would not have been available to a pre-exilic writer like Nephi or Jacob, but which nonetheless they quote.
A year or two later I took Avraham Gileadi’s Old Testament part II class. (I don’t know whether he wasn’t teaching Isaiah that semester, or I just wasn’t aware of what he was doing with Isaiah.) The day we started discussing Isaiah, he walked into class and told us Isaiah was a unity, the work on one author, not two or three.
He didn’t say why other scholars thought Isaiah was not unified, just demonstrated the unity–a very complex two-fold (bifid, his word) structure of mirroring, repetition, and parallel phrases and images. (Fully worthy of Seamus Seoyce at his seoycest, and maybe more awake to the architectonic possibilities of his words than Finnegan at his finnegast.) I read the first 27 chapters of Gileadi’s translation, The Apocalyptic Book of Isaiah in 2002 during the Gospel Doctrine Old Testament study year. During the most recent Old Testament year, 2014, I read the whole book, apreparing to teach Isaiah.
Gileadi appends “An Interpretive Key” to lay out the bifid structure, which I plan to use as a reading guide–rather than reading straight through–when I read the revision, The Book of Isaiah: A New Translation with Interpretive Keys from The Book of Mormon (bless you American Fork Library sales room.)
But why do scholars think Isaiah is not unified? The volume of The Interpreters’ Bible that contains Isaiah is missing from American Fork’s collection. Orem has the Anchor Bible volumes, but is not as easy to get to as American Fork, and is not part of the reciprocal lending agreement that lets me check out books from American Fork. Hmm, maybe I can find what I need in the introduction to the orange Jewish Publication Society Isaiah I found as someone’s discarded textbook around the time I took Gileadi’s class.
Indeed, H. L. Ginsberg’s introduction is quite useful. Without going into a lot of detail, and at the obligatory-to-mention risk of vast oversimplification, reasons for dividing Isaiah include vocabulary, style, and culturo-historical fit.
VOCABULARY: The word Chaldeans as a synonym for Babylonians in passages like 48:14, 20 (I Nephi 20:14, 20) dates those chapters to the Babylonian exile because that area wasn’t called Chaldea in Isaiah’s time.
But strictly speaking the presence of Chaldeans in a text only dates the word Chaldeans as coming from the exile. An exilic prophet/scribe/steward-of-records could have updated the word to help his audience understand the text better. Or Chaldeans might be a gloss for whatever word Isaiah used originally, a gloss which found its way into the text.
Wondering about why Ginsberg doesn’t raise the possibility, it occurs to me that he doesn’t have any reason to see Isaiah as a whole. He stresses that seeing Isaiah as the product of two authors does not invalidate the book as scripture or take away its inspiration.
There might also be an assumption that ancient scribes would not have deliberately altered a sacred text. But it’s possible they could have. The Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants both treat scribing as a sacred work, a stewardship, and a steward of the records might well have the authority to make changes. Joseph Smith made thousands of changes to The Book of Mormon when he revised two new editions, and made changes to the revelations he received as he prepared them for book publication. We ought to assume he had the authority to make those changes in sacred texts.
STYLE: Isaiah uses a more elevated style than Deutero-Isaiah. I’m not sure how to think about this argument. Joseph Smith’s later revelations, like Sections 84 and 88 are considerably more elevated than some of the earlier sections, but some of them, like 114 are fairly prosaic, and there are elevated passages in some of the earlier revelations. My newspaper-writing style is different from my style to brighten someone’s dawn, and most of the writers I know have more than one style.
CULTURO-HISTORICAL FIT: Ginsberg says that when scholars are trying to date a prophecy they look at events “which could be pointed to with every prospect of being accepted as evidence of foreknowledge,” that is as fulfillment of the prophecy, and they date the prophecy as coming from the time of those events (p. 18, see In Tents 60 for an expanded version and context for this quote.)
In other words, date Deutero-Isaiah from the end of the exile because it fits that time, especially the naming of Cyrus in 44:28 and 45:1, and because there is no such thing as prophecy–prophecies are written after the events they describe.
There are some deeply troubling implications in the idea that prophecies are written around specific events and only around those events–at least if you take it as a general principle for dating prophetic texts after the events that fit them. Long-time readers of this column will know, and even those who have read thus far in this entry could guess, that I love puns. I love the play of words and meanings. Puns allow us to see two things happening simultaneously. For a pun to work well the various meanings of a word or phrase have to present at one time. In a really good pun there’s no primary and secondary meaning. For greatest light and delight, structure and instruction, the meanings have to be there together, not superordinating or subordinating, but coordinating in their conjunction, equal and present together at one moment (to use Scott Bronson’s pun on atonement in his play Tombs).
All of my literary training and inclination leads me to delight in multiple meanings, to see works–especially sacred works–as shapes in a fire, shapes that shift as we look, so that the three shapes we see bound in the fire become four loosed shapes, “and the fourth is like the Son of God.” I joy in, as Theodore Roethke said (after his shadow had been rehinged?) “The shapes a bright container can contain!”
But I can hardly expect scholars to treat a highly creative writer’s celebration of a highly creative prophet inspired by a highly creative God as a founding principle for dating biblical texts, so let me suggest that the question may not be whether there is such a thing as prophecy, but whether the stewards of the revelations believe there is. If they believe in likening the words of the scriptures to themselves, that is, in seeing their situation in earlier writings, in earlier history, then they may (in the sense of having permission as stewards, and in the modal sense, might) annotate or update the scriptures.
One of the things I learned in preparing to teach the afore-mentioned Gospel Doctrine lessons on Isaiah is that Josephus says Cyrus saw his name in the scriptures and wanted to help fulfill the prophecy.
It is possible, surely, that the stewards of the records recognized that the words in Isaiah 44 and 45 fit their situation perfectly and they put Cyrus’s name into the scroll to emphasize that, and then showed him the results. Or maybe they made a marginal gloss that was later incorporated into the text. Their stewardship over the records could well have authorized either.
When I was thinking of other examples of people seeing themselves as part of a prophecy, part of a prophetic time, I thought of how David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris likened themselves and their situation to scripture when they asked if they could be the ones to fulfill the prophecy in II Nephi 11:3.
But I came across a more poignant example of living out a prophecy when I was reading I Nephi 22:3-5 in Royal Skousen’s The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text. Nephi has just read to his family from Isaiah (chapters 48 and 49) and offers this commentary:
3 Wherefore, the things of which I have read are things pertaining to things both temporal and spiritual; for it appears that the house of Israel, sooner or later, will be scattered upon all the face of the earth, and also among all nations.
4 And behold, there are many who are already lost from the knowledge of those who are at Jerusalem. Yea, the more part of all the tribes have been led away; and they are scattered to and fro upon the isles of the sea; and whither they are none of us knoweth, save that we know that they have been led away.
5 And since they have been led away, these things have been prophesied concerning them, and also concerning all those who shall hereafter be scattered and be confounded, because of the Holy One of Israel; for against him will they harden their hearts; wherefore, they shall be scattered among all nations and shall be hated of all men.
(I have not reproduced Skousen’s sense lines because Yale University Press’s copyright notice forbids reproducing the “formatting of the text (with its punctuation and line breaks), in any form.” Yes, I know about fair use, but for now I’ll just be satisfied fairly tweaking the press’s nose.)
What struck me about the commentary is why Nephi is reading these chapters. He has started to realize that he and his family are part of the exile. They could be part of the return Isaiah promises in these chapters and 50-52:2, which Nephi quotes later. That is, they could be part of the return until they get on the boat (I Nephi 18) and set sail. At that point return can only happen lifetimes later.
Nephi is reading Isaiah to comfort the family after traumatic losses, first the loss of the possibility of their return to Jerusalem, then the loss of their prophet and patriarch.
Here’s part of the note I made on this passage:
Deutero-Isaiah may have found a fulfillment in the Jews’ return from Babylon, but from the perspective of I Nephi 22:6-8 it’s a partial fulfillment. If this chapter is a record of someone realizing he’s living in a time when the prophesied scattering is coming to pass, maybe Ezra-Nehemiah is about someone realizing all the conditions are right for fulfillment of a prophecy and he can help the fulfillment along.
So I don’t think the people who wrote down prophecy saw it as something to observe passively and write down after the fact, I think they saw it as a lovely fire, living in their bones.
There’s more to muse on about Isaiah’s visit to the Land of Promise. Part of that more involves a typo in the printing of the KJV that Joseph Smith used as the basis of the Isaiah translation in The Book of Mormon.
Hey, maybe I’ve found the controversial statement I was looking for in #61.
What think ye?
I said:
“There are some deeply troubling implications in the idea that prophecies are written around specific events and only around those events–at least if you take it as a general principle for dating prophetic texts after the events that fit them. Long-time readers of this column will know, and even those who have read thus far in this entry could guess, that I love puns. I love the play of words and meanings. Puns allow us to see two things happening simultaneously. For a pun to work well the various meanings of a word or phrase have to present at one time. In a really good pun there’s no primary and secondary meaning. For greatest light and delight, structure and instruction, the meanings have to be there together, not superordinating or subordinating, but coordinating in their conjunction, equal and present together at one moment (to use Scott Bronson’s pun on atonement in his play Tombs).
“All of my literary training and inclination leads me to delight in multiple meanings, to see works–especially sacred works–as shapes in a fire, shapes that shift as we look, so that the three shapes we see bound in the fire become four loosed shapes, ‘and the fourth is like the Son of God.’ I joy in, as Theodore Roethke said (after his shadow had been rehinged?) ‘The shapes a bright container can contain!’”
Oh, dear. The second paragraph is supposed to explicate the first, to show why the idea that prophecies are written around specific events is so troubling, but instead I’ve left those implications implicit and given a poor example of the allusiveness and richness I see in scripture. So, lest I implicate my ability to explicate, and cause someone to explete something that ought to be deleted, I’ll say I see prophecy, and scripture generally, as multi-layered, and applying to many different situations.
Browsing one of Gileadi’s books (The Last Days?) I found a statement that all prophecies have a double focus, the prophet’s own time or a near-future, and the end-times. He says he learned this from a rabbi he studied under during his rabbinical training. (He may have told us the same thing in class as well.)
And we needn’t see just a double fulfillment of prophecy. There can be many fulfillments. Think of the people who see the Jews’ return to Palestine in 1948 as fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies of return. (And for the darker side of that sense of fulfillment see Palestinian Lutheran pastor Mitri Raheb’s Faith in the Face of Empire.)
The idea that because one particular event can be fitted to a prophecy the prophecy must therefore have been written to reflect that event violates this sense that prophecies are multi-layered and admit of many fulfillments. That’s the short of it. I’ll work out some of the long of it in my upcoming column.