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  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53: in his death?
  • Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 16:58:44 -0500

Liz:

Where do you get this kvatsch that
Isaiah 53 was during the Persian period?
The Persian period didn’t begin until
well after a century later!

Before you flame, I deliberately
overstated the above to make a point.
:-)

Yours is a theological position (some
call it a philosophical belief) that not
all on this mailing list subscribe to.
Therefore, I find your confident
assertions to be a little out of place.

Yes, we all understand this passage
according to our preconceptions. But here
our preconceptions are driving how we see
even Biblical Hebrew grammar and lexemes.
I see a place for your claims if you were
to show directly how it affects your
understanding of Biblical Hebrew, but are
you doing that?

I suspect that you would agree with Peter
Kirk that ‘the present is the key to the
past’, i.e. that present processes are
the same as have happened in _all_ of the
past. Therefore, because telling the
future is something that is not happening
today, past records purporting to be
telling the future had to have been
written after the “fulfillment”. Those
who don’t agree with your theology find
your posts a bit tiring at best, absurd
at worst. Except where they directly
affect understanding Biblical Hebrew
language, should they be on this list at
all?

On another issue, I wouldn’t put too much
stock in the term “messiah”. King Saul
was one, so was David. There wasn’t much
of an issue made of it, but Solomon was
one too. Therefore in Isaiah 45 where
Isaiah writes that God anointed Cyrus,
that should not be that much of an issue.

As for the judges, I suspect you are
reading more into their identities than
can be historically verified. Those who
would be appointed were most likely upper
level judges, not one for every little
township. As long as a people did not
rise up in rebellion against Persian rule
(there is no record that I know of that
Judea did so) there would be no reason
for Persian judges appointed to that land
or people. The evidence I see is that
Judea continued to be ruled by Jewish
law, the same for Jews living in the
Diaspora in Jewish enclaves, until the
Roman period.

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>

>
>… I'm talking about the
> Persian period, which is the period of Isaiah 53. During the
> Persian period there were royal judges in Egypt which were
> appointed by the Persian king (or his agent) in Susa.
…
> … I only stick in my article on Cyrus the Messiah.
> I think it is worthwhile to remember tho that it is Cyrus who is
> the Messiah in the book of Isaiah, not the servant.
> Everyone conveniently forgets that in their effor to see Jesus
> as the servant. That is what happens when passages are read
> out of the context of the entire book. The key to the book is to
> remember that Cyrus is the Messiah, no one else is called that
> in the entire book. Cyrus is the Messiah because he fulfills the
> Messianic role : he rebulds the temple and returns the Jews to
> their land.
> Best,
> Liz
>
> Lisbeth S. Fried, Ph. D.
> Visiting Scholar
--
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