HISTORICAL PARTICULARITY AND BIBLICAL AUTHORITY

The purpose of this chapter is to examine one type of objection which has been raised against the canonical approach: Childs, it is often said, fails to take ‘historical particularity’ seriously enough. As we have already pointed out, it is especially the treatment of Second Isaiah in the Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture which has incensed reviewers. Bernhard Anderson is representative of this response when he claims that the

Anderson is, of course, referring to the historical situation of the Babylonian exile and arguing that Second Isaiah must be seen against that background of authorship.

One must ask Anderson to specify, however, exactly which ‘future generations’ read Isaiah 40–55 as exilic prophecy? Surely this original background was quickly forgotten. Our understanding of ancient Israelite prophecy is quite different to the Jewish perceptions of prophecy from the Persian period onwards. In other words, the origins of Second Isaiah were indeed swiftly eclipsed and did not play a decisive role in the meaning of the text for future generations. However, other critics have put the objection concerning particularity less ambiguously than Anderson.