And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias [Isaiah]. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. (Luke iv: 16-22).
One can scarcely think of Jesus being mistaken in respect of the authorship of the scripture from which he read, especially respecting a prophecy relating to himself. Furthermore, whoever wrote Isaiah 61: 1, 2, whether Isaiah, the admitted author of Isaiah chapters 1-39, or some other author a hundred and fifty or two hundred years later, and in the midst of the scenes of the Babylonian captivity, this much is true: he projected himself forward some several hundreds of years into the times of the beginning of the Christ's mission, (if we may believe the Christ when he applies the prophecy to himself and proclaims the fulfillment of it in the happenings of that day), speaks in the present tense, as if pleading with the men of his own day. So that if this power is admitted as being possessed by the supposed "unknown" author of chapters 40-66, it might as well be accorded to Isaiah as to him; and if that power be accorded to a prophetic writer, then all the difficulties conjured up by our modern critics, and to overcome which their theories were invoked, meet with easy solution.
As to the difference of literary style between the first and second division of Isaiah's book, urging as necessary the belief in different authors for the two parts. I am disposed to give considerable weight to such evidence, since I know how strong the tendency in expression towards individuation is, but those more competent to judge of that subject than I am, hold that of all the prophetic writers, Isaiah possesses the widest range of literary style, the largest richness in coloring and forms of expression. And this when the view of his style is confined to that part of his book of which all allow he is the author. As for example, the one author most assured that Isaiah did not write chapters 40-66 of the book that bears his name, the author of "An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament," speaking of Isaiah, and of course limiting his comment to the author of chapters 1-39, says:
Isaiah's poetical genius is superb. His characteristics are grandeur and beauty of conception, wealth of imagination, vividness of illustration, compressed energy and splendor of diction. * * * * * * Examples of picturesque and impressive imagery are indeed so abundant that selection is difficult. These may be instanced, however: the banner raised aloft upon the mountains; the restless roar of the sea; the waters rising with irresistible might; the forest consumed rapidly in the circling flames, or stripped of its foliage by an unseen hand; the raised way; the rushing of many waters; the storm driving or beating down all before it; the monster funeral pyre; Jehovah's hand "stretched out," or "swung," over the earth, and bearing consternation with it. Especially grand are the figures under which he conceives Jehovah as "rising up," being "exalted," or otherwise asserting His majesty against those who would treat it with disregard or disdain. * * * * * The brilliancy and power of Isaiah's genius appear further in the sudden contrasts, and pointed antitheses and retorts, in which he delights.
Isaiah's literary style shows similar characteristics. It is chaste and dignified: the language is choice, but devoid of all artificiality or stiffness, every sentence is compact and forcible; the rhythm is stately; the periods are finely rounded; Isaiah indulges occasionally—in the manner of his people—in tone-painting, and sometimes enforces his meaning by an effective assonance, but never to excess, or as a meretricious ornament. His style is never diffuse: even his longest discourses are not monotonous or prolix; he knows how to treat his subject fruitfully, and, as he moves along, to bring before his reader new and varied aspects of it; thus he seizes a number of salient points, and presents each singly in a vivid picture. * * * * No prophet has Isaiah's power either of conception or of expression; none has the same command of noble thoughts, or can present them in the same noble and attractive language.
Immerse such a writer as this into the spirit of the future, give him the theme of Israel's deliverance from Babylonian captivity, or the larger deliverance of Israel and the world from sin and death through the mission of the Christ; and what new coloring may he not give to his style? What greater depths of truth respecting God and man may he not sound, calling for new phraseology, new words and combinations to express the deeper knowledge of the enlarged "vision?" This I believe is what happened to the prophet. He was so immersed; and his style under the inspiration of God rose to meet the new environment and the enlarged views given by the wider vision.
One of the most forceful passages on this subject that I have yet found is one written by Professor Daniel Smith Talcott, D. D., of the Theological Seminary, Bangor, Maine. He contributes the Article on "Isaiah" to Hackett's edition of Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, and in the course of his treatise, referring to the diversity of style between the two alleged parts of Isaiah, says:
The array of linguistic evidence in proof of a diversity of authorship, which has gradually grown within the last century into the formidable proportions in which it meets us in the pages of Knobel and others, rests very largely upon an assumption which none of these critics have the hardihood distinctly to vindicate, namely, that within the narrow compass of the Hebrew literature that has come down to us from any given period, we have the means for arriving at an accurate estimate of all the resources which the language at that time possessed. When we have eliminated from the list of words and phrases relied upon to prove a later date than the time of Isaiah, everything the value of which to the argument must stand or fall with this assumption, there remains absolutely nothing which may not be reasonably referred to the reign of Hezekiah. Indeed, considering all the circumstances of the times, it might justly have been expected that the traces of foreign influence upon the language would be far more conspicuous in a writing of this date than they actually are in the controverted portions.
It is to be remembered that the ministry of the prophet must have extended through a period, at the lowest calculation, of nearly fifty years; a period signalized, especially during the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah, by constant and growing intercourse with foreign nations, thus involving continually new influences for the corruption of public morals and new dangers to the state, and making it incumbent upon him who had been divinely constituted at once the political adviser of the nation and its religious guide, to be habitually and intimately conversant among the people, so as to descry upon the instant every additional step taken in their downward course and the first approach of each new peril from abroad, and to be able to meet each successive phase of their necessities with forms of instruction, admonition, and warning, not only in their general purport, but in their very style and diction, accommodated to conditions hitherto unknown, and that were still perpetually changing.
Now when we take all this into the account, and then imagine to ourselves the prophet, toward the close of this long period, entering upon what was in some respects a novel kind of labor, and writing out, with a special view to the benefit of a remote posterity, the suggestions of that mysterious Theopneustia to which his lips had been for so many years the channel of communication with his contemporaries, far from finding any difficulty in the diversities of style perceptible to the different portions of his prophecy, we shall only see fresh occasion to admire that native strength and grandeur of intellect, which have still left upon productions so widely remote from each other, in the time and circumstances of their composition, so plain an impress of one and the same overmastering individuality.—Smith's Bible Dictionary, Vol. II., p. 1165.
Believers in the Book of Mormon have no occasion of uneasiness because passages from the latter part of Isaiah's book are found transcribed into the Nephite record. The theories of modern critics have not destroyed the integrity and unity of the Book of Isaiah. And after the overwhelming evidences for the truth of the Book of Mormon are taken into account; and it is found that on the plates of Nephi there were transcripts from the latter part of Isaiah's writings, taken from a copy of his prophecies carried by a colony of Jews from Jerusalem to the western hemisphere, six hundred years before Christ—men will discern in this discovery new evidence for the Isaiah authorship of the whole book of Isaiah.
Footnotes
[1]. Howe's "Mormonism," p. 56.