Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Deutero-Jesaia; Gottesknecht -> erste Hinführung

Kurzinhalt: Deutero-Isaiah, 4 Servant Songs; Exodus of Israel from itself; the drama as a whole is a unit of meaning. The Exodus has happened in the soul of the author

Textausschnitt: 116/13 The anguish of this last Exodus was lived through by the unknown prophet who by a modern convention is designated as Deutero-Isaiah, because he is the author of Isaiah 40-55. Since nothing is known about him except what can be inferred from his work, biographical preliminaries are not only unnecessary but hazardous, because they would prejudge the interpretation of the text. Even to speak of these Isaiah chapters as a "work" with an "author" involves commitments with regard to a series of much debated questions. This debate itself must remain outside the range of our study; but the commitments have to be set forth: (491f; Fs)
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... If the assumption is correct, both the component oracles and the chains will have to be dated in the years between Cyrus' conquest of Lydia in 546 B.C. and his conquest of Babylon in 538 B.C.
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(3) The chapters Isaiah 49-55 still have the structure of chains of briefer oracles and songs, but the tone has changed. Cyrus has disappeared, together with the hopes set in him; and other sources of disappointment make themselves felt. The oracles of this later part probably were spoken and written during an indeterminate number of years after the fall of Babylon. (492; Fs)
(4) In Deutero-Isaiah are embedded the four Servant Songs distinguished by Duhm: Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; and 52:13-53:12. We assume that the songs have the same author as their context but that they represent the last phase of the prophet's work. (492; Fs)
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(6) We assume the prophet to have been a member of a circle which derived through the generations from the immediate disciples of Isaiah. In his self-understanding the prophet was one of Isaiah's limmudim entrusted with the secret of salvation. (492; Fs)
117/13 These commitments must not be understood as assertions with a claim to certainty. They formulate probabilities as they are emerging from the exploration of details and the improvement of methods in the course of the last half century. (493; Fs)
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118/13 The text of Isaiah 40-55 is an accomplished literary composition sui generis which expresses certain experiences by means of the symbolic language developed in classical prophetism from Amos to Jeremiah. In the experiences expressed, clusters of motives can be distinguished. A first one is furnished by the historical events: the exile, the liberation through Cyrus, the fall of Babylon, and the vicissitudes of empire in general. A second cluster stems from the heritage of the great predecessors: the contraction of Israel into the solitary suffering of the prophet, the message to a mankind that embraces both Israel and the nations, and above all the Isaianic secret of the kabhod that will fill the earth. A third cluster, finally, is formed by the motives to which the author himself refers as the "new things": the message of salvation; the self-revelation of God in three stages as the Creator of the world, as the Lord and Judge of history, and as the Redeemer (goel); the consciousness that the present is the epoch between the second and third stages; the suffering of the second stage as the way to redemption; redemption as the existential response to the third revelation of God as the Savior and Redeemer; the role of Israel as the representative sufferer for mankind on the way to the response; and the climax in Isaiah 52:13.-53:12, in the recognition of the Servant as the representative sufferer. (494; Fs)

119/13 While the distinction and classification of the motivating experiences is so amply supported by pieces of a meditative nature that the results are reasonably certain, the book as a whole is not a treatise in oratio directa on definite "doctrines." It is a symbolic drama which does not permit the separation of a contents from the manner of its presentation. Moreover, while the single motives can be distinguished, they have merged in the comprehensive experience of the movement that we have briefly characterized as the Exodus of Israel from itself. The text does not consist of a series of symbols expressing successive states of experience, so that it would be left to the reader to reconstruct from them a spiritual biography of the author. The construction is done by the author himself, to whom the movement is given as completed in the retrospect of his work. Beyond the component symbols, the drama as a whole is a unit of meaning. The Exodus has happened in the soul of the author, and his work is the symbol of a historical event. (494f; Fs)