As someone who recently completed a dissertation on Linguistic Dating and the Book of Isaiah, I affirm the call for methodological caution in this article. During the course of my research, I perused several of your documents and derived considerable benefit from your invaluable contributions, which furthered my understanding of the subject matter.
In my study, I examined the extent to which linguistic data in Isaiah can meaningfully inform questions of dating. What emerged is that linguistic features cannot be interpreted in isolation: any diachronic claim must be tested against assumptions about the dating of other biblical books, the nature of editorial processes, and the role of genre, sociolect, or idiolect. Indeed, over two-thirds of the linguistic features proposed for dating the Book of Isaiah have not withstood rigorous examination. Nevertheless, there are some linguistic features that appear to support a pre-exilic or post-exilic classification of text blocks within the Book of Isaiah. These, of course, also vary depending on how other biblical books are dated.
In the fifth chapter of my work, I present a discussion of these linguistic findings in the context of various approaches to the Book of Isaiah. To achieve this, I have orientated myself along three principal lines of enquiry: the "traditional" approach, the redaction-critical/literary-critical approach and the synchronic approach.
It has been demonstrated that divergent assumptions concerning the Book of Isaiah can be accommodated by the linguistic data in different ways. Nevertheless, it is possible to evaluate which assumptions and dating models can be most effectively linked with the linguistic data.
I am in contact with a publisher and hope to be able to publish my work soon.
Hello everyone
As someone who recently completed a dissertation on Linguistic Dating and the Book of Isaiah, I affirm the call for methodological caution in this article. During the course of my research, I perused several of your documents and derived considerable benefit from your invaluable contributions, which furthered my understanding of the subject matter.
In my study, I examined the extent to which linguistic data in Isaiah can meaningfully inform questions of dating. What emerged is that linguistic features cannot be interpreted in isolation: any diachronic claim must be tested against assumptions about the dating of other biblical books, the nature of editorial processes, and the role of genre, sociolect, or idiolect. Indeed, over two-thirds of the linguistic features proposed for dating the Book of Isaiah have not withstood rigorous examination. Nevertheless, there are some linguistic features that appear to support a pre-exilic or post-exilic classification of text blocks within the Book of Isaiah. These, of course, also vary depending on how other biblical books are dated.
In the fifth chapter of my work, I present a discussion of these linguistic findings in the context of various approaches to the Book of Isaiah. To achieve this, I have orientated myself along three principal lines of enquiry: the "traditional" approach, the redaction-critical/literary-critical approach and the synchronic approach.
It has been demonstrated that divergent assumptions concerning the Book of Isaiah can be accommodated by the linguistic data in different ways. Nevertheless, it is possible to evaluate which assumptions and dating models can be most effectively linked with the linguistic data.
I am in contact with a publisher and hope to be able to publish my work soon.
Greetings
Samuel