How do we know Isaiah was written by only one author?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. We’re continuing our Christmas prophecy series. This last week we looked at a passage um from Isaiah that says, prepare the way before the Lord. The Lord will, you know, make roads through the desert, uh valleys raised, mountains lowered, that he is he is going to provide a bright future for us if we are in him. Um in the course of the sermon, I mentioned that um Isaiah’s change in tone between verses, I mean, between chapters

39 and 40, um is so drastic that it has actually caused some people to believe that Isaiah was not written by one man, but was written by many different authors over a long period of time. And I just casually mentioned that’s not true. It’s just written by one guy. Um and there is a way to unify all of his different changes in tone, um really through the cross. Um but the question for this week is how do we know that Isaiah was only written by one author? Um how how can we be confident that it was

not written by several authors over a long period of time? Um and so I might caution uh to to us first, whenever we’re talking about a historical event, for us to like, you know, say with absolute certainty that we quote know. Um not everything in history is uh as clear as that. But we can we can be pretty confident um that Isaiah was written by um one person. Um for for a few reasons. Um first, um Isaiah comes to us as one book. Um the oldest manuscripts that we have of Isaiah are a complete

work. Um the oldest one that we have found comes from when we uh discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, but that scroll um was was older than Jesus. Was uh you know, by dating the scroll, it looks like it comes 100, 150 years before Jesus. Um and we think Isaiah was written around the year 800 uh BC. And so we’re we’re talking 700 years after it was written, the oldest scroll that we have, it’s still one complete manuscript. Um so if somebody altered it, they altered it before that point, um because

that’s the oldest scroll that we found. Um second, um uh ancient rabbinic scholars all believe unanimously that Isaiah was one book. As far back as we can go into the rabbinic tradition, those guys, those ancient scholars thought it was written by one guy. Um the oldest ones of those that we have are about 200 years after Jesus.

But even then, they were saying Isaiah is one book. We have no ancient record of anyone um uh saying that Isaiah was more than one author. And so I would just I would I would always just point out that the people closest to the event probably have a better idea of what’s happened than, you know, people 2,500 years later like we are from Isaiah right now, um or 2,800 years later.

I think, you know, like the people at the Battle of Gettysburg probably have a better idea of what happened at that battle than we do all these years later. And we have a better idea of what happened at Gettysburg than, you know, people that live 2,000 years from now. The closer you are to the event, probably the more credibly you can speak to what happened.

And so the most ancient sources we have, um all say Isaiah is one book. The first time um that somebody even gave a hint that maybe Isaiah was written by more than one person, um is the 12th century. Um a scholar was saying, hey, this kind of looks like these are different settings in different parts of the book.

He did not propose that Isaiah was written by more than one author. He just proposed, um hey, the different parts in the book kind of look like they might be from different viewpoints. Okay, that’s the 12th century. It was not until the late 18th century, the late 1700s, before somebody finally said, um hey, Isaiah must be written by multiple authors because of change in tone, um because of things like, you know, Isaiah specifically prophesies that the king who will issue the decree uh to rebuild

the temple, his name will be Cyrus. And that’s long before Cyrus was ever born. So we say, hey, this prophecy is so specific, it couldn’t have possibly been written before it happened. Um and I always say, or, you know, maybe God is real. And God told Isaiah that there would be Cyrus who would uh you know, issue issue the decree to rebuild the temple. Um so starting in the in the 18th century, late 18th century, 19th century, we really started uh literary criticism.

And from there, people have just added to it and said and found all different other kind of reasons throughout the book of Isaiah that um we think they think now that it’s written by more than one um author. Um and so I I’m most most literary scholars uh now believe that it’s written by more than one. Um you know, evangelical Christian scholars still believe that it’s written by one author. Um and I’d say the historical evidence for that um is just it’s the oldest tradition we have.

So I think those people back in time probably knew what was going on better than what we know uh all these years later. So we hope that helps. Um we’ll see you next time.