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The book - the unathorized version - truth and fiction in the Bible by Robin Lane Fox got me hooked on the Hebrew Bible/Old testament. One of the things that I learned was about Isaiah. A "prophet" in Judah after the nothern kingdom was captured by the assyrians. The one thing that scholars say is that it is very likely that Isaiah chapters 1 through 39 was written by Isaiah but chapters 40 on were written by different authors and perhaps one hundred to two hundred years after Isaiah.

The problem with the Book of Mormon is that Isaiah 48 is reportedly on the plates that left with Lehi around 600 BC. But it appears that Isaiah 48 was not even written then. The key chapter is Isaiah 45 which mentions Cyrus who released the jews from Babylon. I agree with some people that chapters 40 were written at the end of the Babylon captivity but this demonstrates that Joseph Smith copied Isaiah out of the Bible.

I still have to read some more material and one part is I heard Joseph Smith changed some words which actually makes it bizzare and not does not make sense when translated back into Hebrew. I once read that Joseph Smith just saw that what was on the plates was the same as in the scriptures and just copied it but my question is then how did he know where to stop at.

Does anyone else have an issue with Isaiah in the Book of Mormon?

well here is FAIRS response:

http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/D ... ormon.html

but the way he makes assumptions is scary.

tumult wrote:well here is FAIRS response:
http://www.fairlds.org/Book_of_Mormon/D ... ormon.html
but the way he makes assumptions is scary.

At that page, Marc Schindler wrote:
If you accept the Book of Mormon as true, there is no Deutero-Isaiah "problem."

He is right.
If you accept the Book of Mormon as true, there is no problem at all.

If you make reality conform to your imagination, who needs reality?

At that page, Marc Schindler wrote:
If you accept the Book of Mormon as true, there is no Deutero-Isaiah "problem."

He is right.
If you accept the Book of Mormon as true, there is no problem at all.

But that is not the argument he makes.....

When the Deutero-Isaiah theory first became current, there was a lot of emphasis on the difference in vocabulary and word patterns between the various parts of Isaiah. However, as McKenzie points out above, this is no longer an issue. (Besides the study he refers to, there have been word pattern studies done by computer analysis of the Hebrew text at BYU that show no significant differences between the various parts of Isaiah.)

For my part, I would like to see some references on that. If there are some good ones, then the "Deutero-Isaiah theory" dimiinshes as a potential problem.

Seems to me like tumult and ludwigm didn't actually read the article.

I am a happy one.
There is somebody on the other end of the world who knows better, what did I do and what not.

I had not heard anything about the eclipse of the Deutero-Isaiah hypothesis. I would be very surprised if the dubiously valuable word-print studies conducted at BYU did much of anything to move scholarly opinion on that.

But, I am open to being surprised.

bcspace wrote:

At that page, Marc Schindler wrote:
If you accept the Book of Mormon as true, there is no Deutero-Isaiah "problem."

He is right.
If you accept the Book of Mormon as true, there is no problem at all.

But that is not the argument he makes.....

When the Deutero-Isaiah theory first became current, there was a lot of emphasis on the difference in vocabulary and word patterns between the various parts of Isaiah. However, as McKenzie points out above, this is no longer an issue. (Besides the study he refers to, there have been word pattern studies done by computer analysis of the Hebrew text at BYU that show no significant differences between the various parts of Isaiah.)

For my part, I would like to see some references on that. If there are some good ones, then the "Deutero-Isaiah theory" dimiinshes as a potential problem.

Seems to me like tumult and ludwigm didn't actually read the article.

I read the article and even printed it out because I remember reading it in parking lot at the gym and yelling "who is Mckenzie" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! looking or a McKenzie in the previous part of the document.

This is the very first Book of Mormon issue that jumped out for me. It's not just the prophetic call of Cyrus but rather a combination of many many other factors that shows Isaiah after chapter 40 to be distinctly different. For example, Deutero Isaiah uses a exilic vocabulary that no longer speaks of god's coming judgment but rather restoration and mercy as if the exile had already happened. The mood and writing style also change dramatically at Chapter 40 plus the name Isaiah suddenly stops being used at the same point.

The division is so clear there is no longer any serious discussion of a single Isaiah within the realm of Biblical Studies. So far LDS apologetic attempts to address this issue have fallen well short of convincing. The apologetic explanation was to argue for unity of Isaiah therefore making the issue irrelevant. However, the arguments for a division of Isaiah authorship are so numerous and compelling it's very rare to see a academic suggestion for unity. Those remaining in the single Isaiah camp seem to have a underlying religious belief that necessitates it. For example in Marc Schindler's Fair Article he quotes the Anchor Bible Isaiah volume:

The distinction between First Isaiah and Second Isaiah is so widely accepted in modern scholarship that the argument against it need not be examined at length. The distinction between Second Isaiah and Third Isaiah is almost as widely accepted

Regarding Deutero-Isaiah . . . these are the quotes that appear in the Book of Mormon but clearly shouldn't be there.

1 Nephi 20 - Isaiah 48
1 Nephi 21 - Isaiah 49
2 Nephi 7 - Isaiah 50
2 Nephi 8 - Isaiah 51
3 Nephi 17:18-20 - Isaiah 52:8-10


Phaedrus

I'm fascinated by this topic. Thank you for posting it. I spoke with my dad about it yesterday and he pointed to a book of his and an article in it by John Welch. I haven't had time to read it yet, but if anyone has ( I believe the article or chapter is titled The authorship of Isaiah in light of the Book of Mormon or something like that ) I'd love to hear your opinion.