The inscription in ch. i. has a general bearing upon the whole collection. Then follows the first portion, which contains, as it ,i,vere, the general prophetic programme. Thereupon follows a series of prophecies directly bearing upon Judah and Jerusalem, commencing again with a particular heading (ii. 1). To this succeeds a scries of pro phecies indirectly bearing upon Judah and Jeru salem, but directly upon foreign nations. The first of this series has again its own heading (xiii. r).
Gesenius, advancing in the direction to which Vitringa had pointed, although he grants the in tegrity of ch. i. 1, nevertheless maintains that this heading belonged originally only to chaps.
in which were contained genuine prophecies of Isaiah. To this collection, he asserts, were afterwards subjoined the anthologies contained in the following chapters, and the hcading was then misunderstood as applying to the whole volume. This opinion is more inconsistent than that of Vit ringa, since there occur in the first twelve chapters two prophecies against foreign nations ; one against the Assyrians, in ch. x., and another against Eph raim, in ch. ix.
Vitringa, Gesenius, and their followers, are also refuted by the parallel passage in the heading of Amos, The words of Amos, which he saw con cerning Israel.' The prophecies of Amos in gene ral are here said to be concerning Israel, although there are, as in Isaiah, several against foreign na tions, a series of which stands even at the com mencement of the book. To this we may add the similarity of the headings of other prophetical books. For instance, the commencement of Jere miah, Hosea, Micah, and Zephaniah.
Ewald spoils the argument of Vitringa still more than Gesenius, by extending the original collection to ch. xxiii., and thus introducing within the cycle headed by the inscription, whose genuineness he grants, most of the predictions against foreign na tions. Whoever subjoined the subsequent portions to the so-called original collection, did it only be cause he perceived that these portions could be brought under the general heading. He could only have been induced to make the so-called additions, because he perceived that the heading applied to the whole : consequently neither Gesenius nor Ewald rid themselves of the troublesome authority of ch. i. ; the words of which have the more weight, since all critics ascribe to the headings of the prophetical books a far greater authority than to the headings of the Psalms, and agree in saying that nothing but the most stringent arguments should induce us to reject the statements contained in these prophetical headings.
2. It cannot be proved that there ever existed au so-called prophetic anthology as has been supposed to exist in the book of Isaiah. We find nothing analogous in the whole range of prophetic litera ture. It is generally granted that the collections bearing the names of Jeremiah and Ezekiel contain only productions of those authors whose name they bear. In the book of the minor prophets, the
property of each is strictly distinguished from the rest by headings. The genuineness of only the sccond portion of Zechariah has been attacked ; and this with very feeble arguments, which have been refuted. De Wette himself has, in the latest editions of his introduction, confessed that on this point he is vanquished.
But even if it could be proved that the prophe cies of Zechariah belonged to two different authors, namely, as Bertholdt and Gesenius suppose, to the two Zechariahs, each of whom happened to be the son of a Barechiah, this identity of names might be considered an inducement for uniting the produc tions of the two authors in one collection : still this case would not be analogous to what is as serted to be the fact in Isaiah. In Isaiah, it is al leged not only that a series of chapters belonging to a different author were subjoined, commencing about chap. xxxiv., but it is affirmed that, even in the first thirty-three chapters, the genuine and spu rious portions are intermixed. Before we admit that the compilers proceeded here in a manner so unreasonable, and so contrary to their usual cus tom, we must expect some cogent proof to be ad duced. Gesenius declares that he would not attempt to touch this problem. This is as much as to admit the validity of our objection. Eich horn supposes that the spurious additions were made because the scroll otherwise would not have been filled up. But this fuga vactei, this abhor rence of a vacuum, does not explain the intermix ture of the spurious with the genuine. It does not explain why the additions were not all subjoined at the end of the genuine portions. Dcederlein creates for himself a second Isaiah, sun of Amoz, living at the conclusion of the exile. But even this fiction does not explain why the property of these two prophets was intermixed in spite of their being separated from each other by two centuries, and su intermixed that it is now difficult to say which be longs to which. Augusti supposes that the spurious pieces were added to the genuine on account of their being written entirely in the spirit and style of Isaiah. But in this he seems to contradict him self, since lie bases his attack against their authen ticity upon the assertion that they differed from Isaiah in spirit and manner. The style of Isaiah was certainly not the style of tbe age in which the pseudo-Isaiah is said to have lived. Justi supposes that the prediction concerning the Babylonian exile, in ch. xxxix. led to the addition of the whole of the second portion. But this hypothesis is improbable and without analogy, and it does not explain the intermixture of the genuine with the spurious in the first portion.