The Isaiah Problem

[_Willy Law]

Can anyone point me to thread where the Isaiah problem has been discussed?
Just reading a little about it and the apologetic response. I'm sure there has been a thread about it already but my searches are not turning up much.

Seems the most damaging arguments to the Book of Mormon are ones that had no intentions of discrediting the Book of Mormon (i.e. Guns Germs and Steel).

[_jon]

Can anyone point me to thread where the Isaiah problem has been discussed?
Just reading a little about it and the apologetic response. I'm sure there has been a thread about it already but my searches are not turning up much.

Seems the most damaging arguments to the Book of Mormon are ones that had no intentions of discrediting the Book of Mormon (i.e. Guns Germs and Steel).

Try searching Deutro-Isaiah

[_Willy Law]

Can anyone point me to thread where the Isaiah problem has been discussed?
Just reading a little about it and the apologetic response. I'm sure there has been a thread about it already but my searches are not turning up much.

Seems the most damaging arguments to the Book of Mormon are ones that had no intentions of discrediting the Book of Mormon (i.e. Guns Germs and Steel).

Try searching Deutro-Isaiah

Thanks Jon, found one started by...You!

I shall return and report

[_Willy Law]

Here is the previous thread.
Good stuff. To me this issue ranks above Horses, Chariots and New Testament quotes. If I had to come up with a list of the top 10 reasons why I believe the Book of Mormon is fiction Deutro Isaiah would be #1.

http://mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/vie ... tro+Isaiah

[_Buffalo]

Here is the previous thread.
Good stuff. To me this issue ranks above Horses, Chariots and New Testament quotes. If I had to come up with a list of the top 10 reasons why I believe the Book of Mormon is fiction Deutro Isaiah would be #1.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=19258&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=Deutro+Isaiah

It's number 1 for me too. They have no honest or rational defense against it. Deutero-Isaiah could not have been on the brass plates. But that's exactly where the Book of Mormon says it was.

[_bcspace]

Well, so far you have St. John quoting from both "halves" of Isaiah in the New Testament and attributing them to the same author (John 12:37–38 => Isaiah 53:1 and John 12:40–41 => Isaiah 6:9–10). Don't we also go back to as far as 200 BC and no indication of separate texts? And isn't Deutero-Isaiah an outgrowth of Doederlein's 19th century notion that Isaiah couldn't have predicted the fall of Jerusalem?

It would seem that Deutero-Isaiah remains just a hypothesis, not even a theory. I'd say Nehor is right in the other thread when he says you'll only convince LDS who don't believe the ancients could prophecy.

[_Willy Law]

Yeah, FARMS brought up that argument as well. You are just going to have to explain to me why that matters to the argument of the Book of Mormon? John was written when? Like 80AD? I can buy that the Deutro had been unified by then. Again, not sure how that matters to the argument that events described after ch. 40 had not yet happened when Nephi lobbed off Laban's head and made off with the brass plates.

Imagine the boon to the church this would have been had Joseph stopped quoting Isaiah at ch 39.

[_sock puppet]

Imagine the boon to the church this would have been had Joseph stopped quoting Isaiah at ch 39.

Yes, if JSJr had concocted his fiction with more consistency to the context he claimed for it, it would have lent great deals of credibility where there are, in face, gaping holes in the 'truth claims'.

[_bcspace]

Yeah, FARMS brought up that argument as well. You are just going to have to explain to me why that matters to the argument of the Book of Mormon?

No evidence for a disunity.

John was written when? Like 80AD? I can buy that the Deutro had been unified by then.

Over a 2600 year period we're as close as 400-500 years (200 BC) and still no separation. Not overwhelmingly in favor but it's certainly not going your way.

Again, not sure how that matters to the argument that events described after ch. 40 had not yet happened when Nephi lobbed off Laban's head and made off with the brass plates.

If I recall correctly the Book of Mormon only quotes a couple of chapters from the area identified by the Deutero-Isaiah hypothesis.

[_Chap]

From another thread:

What is the take home message from this thread? Well, in part it seems to be this:

According to the majority of Biblical scholars nowadays, only part of the present Book of Isaiah predates the departure of Lehi's party from the old world shortly before the fall of Jerusalem. Part, but not the whole, of their reasons for so thinking is that the second part of Isaiah refers by name, as if he was present, to Cyrus, who liberated the Jews from the captivity in Babylon that the first Isaiah had described as imminent but still in the future.

However the Book of Mormon quotes from this second part of Isaiah, which (so the argument goes) could not have been in the scriptures that Lehi's party took to the New World. In order to avoid this problem, it is necessary to accept that the whole of Isaiah predates the exile to Babylon, so that the whole of the present book of Isaiah could have been carried with them by Lehi's party. That implies a belief that the references to Cyrus as liberator were true prophecy, in the sense of true predictions of the future (names and all) made well before the event.

So accepting the Book of Mormon means accepting that such simple prediction does occur years before the event.

OK, if that is the way you want it ... but shouldn't that mean that the second part of Isaiah would get important things about Cyrus right, if it even gave us his name long before he was born? Isaiah chapter 45 tells us that he will liberate peoples exiled by the Babylonians after conquering their empire, which which is what Cyrus in fact did. Isn't it clear however from Isaiah chapter 47 that the writer is also predicting the destruction of Babylon at Cyrus's hands - which is exactly what the LDS scripture chapter heading says it is about;

Babylon and Chaldea will be destroyed for their iniquities—No one will save them.

But although the hope that Cyrus would be a liberator was fulfilled, Babylon surrendered peacefully and continued to be a prosperous city under his rule for years to come. A secular scholar sees this as a sign that the second part of Isaiah was written during the rise of Cyrus, when his policy towards exiled peoples was becoming clear, but before his conquest of Babylon, which (disappointingly for some Jews no doubt) he did not destroy. A believer in prophecy has to take the line that as a prophet Isaiah got one thing right:

1. A conqueror called Cyrus would overthrow the Babylonian empire, thus allowing the Jews to return home.

And got one thing wrong:

2. That conqueror would destroy Babylon.

No doubt Isaiah was only 'speaking as a man' when he got the destruction of Babylon wrong?