The continuity in the prophetic visions in First Isaiah (1-39)

In this essay I will raise some thoughts about the continuity of writing in First Isaiah (Isa. 1–39) . Isaiah started to prophesy during the last year of Uzziah. His last datable activity was recorded during Sennacherib’s campaign against Judah in 701 BCE. Yet, it is clear that not all the material found in First Isaiah should be dated to his time. It is possible to find additions of a later date in the text. No scholarly consensus exists today regarding the appropriate methods by which the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, including the book of Isaiah, are to be analyzed. The diachronic classical methodology employed by the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century critics sought to distinguish, by means of literary-historical considerations, between a given prophet’s actual words and later additions to and revisions of that prophet’s message added by scribes and exegetes, in order to reconstruct...