Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Jesaia: innerhalb 2er Generation (Amos, Hosea) kultische Restauration ->metastatische Vision; keine Propheten nach Jesaia u. Micha; Deutero-Jesaia, Trito-Jesaia

Kurzinhalt: Iin the Egyptian crisis the cosmological form was not broken; the metastatic faith of the prophet precluded fulfillment through any pragmatic establishment

Textausschnitt: 102/13 When the metastatic experience had been explored to its limits by Isaiah, prophetism had arrived at an existential impasse. While Amos and Hosea could still envisage a restoration of the Kingdom after the Davidic model, Isaiah had thoroughly eliminated the cultic tension of institutional order from the sequence of darkness and light; within two generations, the pressure of historical form had driven the cultic symbolism against the blank wall of the metastatic vision. The prophet's situation was no longer that of an Egyptian sage in the breakdown of empire between the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Since in the Egyptian crisis the cosmological form was not broken, the expectation of a Savior-Pharaoh - "Ameni, the triumphant, his name," "the son of a woman from the land of Nubia" - could be fulfilled through the re-establishment of imperial order. The metastatic faith of the prophet, on the contrary, precluded fulfillment through any pragmatic establishment. Once the faith in the metastasis of social and cosmic order through an act of God had achieved the rigidity of full articulation, there was nothing one could do but sit down and wait for the miracle to happen. If it did not happen - and it has not happened to this day - the prophet would die while waiting; and if he had formed a group of disciples, who would transmit his faith to future disciples, generations might pass before the experience of their passing would become a motive of sufficient strength to reexamine the validity of what had become an article of faith. (481; Fs) (notabene)

103/13 Hence, it was perhaps not merely a question of suppression by the new regime under Manasseh that no prophets appeared in the generation following Isaiah and Micah. Moreover, an abeyance of prophetism as a consequence of the metastatic impasse is suggested by the peculiar structure of the Book of Isaiah. In the collection that goes in the Bible under the name of "Isaiah" one can distinguish between the Isaianic prophecies proper (Isa. 1-35) with its appendixes (Isa. 36-39); the prophecies of the anonymous Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 40-55), to be dated in the middle of the sixth century B.C.; and a collection of later oracles, of various unknown authorship, usually called the Trito-Isaiah (Isa. 56-66). If it is assumed that the three parts of the collection were not assembled by accident but that they represent the body of traditions preserved by a prophetic circle which in continuity derived from Isaiah and his disciples, there would be a gap of about a century and a half in the tradition between Isaiah himself and the Anonymous of the sixth century. If it be further assumed that the gap is not due to the accidental loss of the sayings of one or more great prophets but that indeed no prophet of note arose within the Isaianic circle during this time, the long silence would indicate the sterility of waiting for the metastasis. And finally, it is even doubtful whether the mere waiting and the lapse of time would have furnished a sufficient motive for the re-examination of symbols. For when prophecy is at last resumed in Deutero-Isaiah, the symbols of the anonymous prophet bear the imprint not only of the Isaianic tradition but distinctly of the work of Jeremiah. (481f; Fs) (notabene)