Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 4/11/07, K Randolph wrote:

> > The whole point of the passage in Isaiah 56 is to look forward to the time
> > when God's house would be called the house of prayer of all peoples. At the
> > time when the text was written the temple had been destroyed by Babylon and
> > newly rebuilt.  The writer of Isaiah 56 is hoping for a more benign world
> > than the world which existed then, and exists today.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Liz
>
> Here you have used your theological beliefs to inform how your should
> read the Hebrew.
>
> According to the historical references embedded in Tanakh, these words
> were written roughly a century before the destruction of Solomon's
> temple

Not necessarily.  Have you read what I posted a few days ago in the other
thread?  Ibn Ezra, widely credited by being the first to recognize the exilic
nature of the ending chapters of Isaiah (but he himself seems to credit Moses
ben Samuel Gikatilla) did not have the theological beliefs which you seem to
think are held by Lisbeth Fried.  Most likely this involves the idea that a
prophecy cannot be true.  Ibn Ezra believed that prophecy is true.  (Peter and
especially Rolf should have known that -- I posted on Ibn Ezra's commentary
regarding the prophetic perfect recently, in a correction to another of Rolf's
claims).  In fact, Ibn Ezra's analysis of the Talmudic passage on authorship
shows that Ibn Ezra felt a duty to show that his interpretation is consistent
with Talmudic statements.  For Ibn Ezra, not just prophecies, but also the
Oral Law is true!  Ibn Ezra used grammar alone in concluding that the later
chapters of Isaiah were composed centuries later.  Here is the introduction
to Ibn Ezra's views on the matter, again:
http://www.hashkafah.com/index.php?showtopic=6473&mode=threaded
and: http://darklordsblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/ibn-ezra-on-two-isaiahs.html

Ibn Ezra's commentary is available in English: http://worldcat.org/oclc/569728

Incidentally, the Talmud is rather ambiguous as to the authorship of the book,
ascribing it to "Hezekiah and his court."  This is probably why Ibn Ezra is 
not
content with showing the book of Samuel had two authors but also deals with
a case where the Talmud ascribes multiple authorship to a single book,
showing that even this is not the final word.

Yitzhak Sapir