BOOK REVIEW — Rereading Isaiah 40–55
Professor Iskandar Abou-Chaar is an unassuming powerhouse in contemporary biblical studies. In fact, I would go as far to say that he is the foremost pioneer of a distinctly Antiochian style of the redaction criticism made popular by the likes of Willi Marxsen. The importance of redaction criticism cannot be understated. For those unfamiliar, it is essentially the attempt to read and study scripture as a work of literature. The goal is to underline the intention of the authors, which is discovered through the study of biblical leitmotif. While the Bible contains thematic imprints throughout its corpus, there are signs of different groups inserting their particular points of view and responding to their own historical contexts (or Sitz im Leben). The work of a redaction critic is essentially to determine where these sources are found, what the intention was behind them, and how they are incorporated into the finalized biblical text that has been passed down to us.
What makes Abou-Chaar’s exegesis so important is his expertise in Semitic lexicology. In the same way that Mitchell Dahood made breakthroughs in this field with his use of Ugaritic to parse out difficult Hebrew passages in the Psalms, Abou-Chaar utilizes his native Arabic as his semantic backdrop. This is a critical tool given the unparalleled closeness of the Semitic language family. My own studies, largely inspired by Abou-Chaar, are an attempt to prove how useful Arabic is in biblical exegesis. While that type of scholarship is overlooked by Western and Jewish scholars, it does find precedence with the likes of Ibn Barun, a Sephardic Jew from the twelfth century who also noted the closeness between Arabic and Hebrew. It is important to clarify that Abou-Chaar doesn’t merely use Arabic to parse Hebrew, but at times suggests that many of the character names are actually Arabic in origin. While many might find this disputable at first glance, it is important to realize that spoken varieties of Arabic have existed since at least 4th century BCE where the earliest inscriptions of Old Arabic are also found in the Southern Levant and Northwestern part of the Arabian peninsula, which corresponds with the locale of the Biblical narratives. This solves certain dilemmas where previous commentators, relying mostly on Hebrew, have made assumptions about some of the character names. One such example is the prophet Joel, which is generally thought of as a theophoric name meaning “Yah/Yahweh is God”. On page 230, he opts instead for the Arabic root وأل wal which as a noun means “beginning”. This corresponds the Hebrew verbal form יאל ya’al — to undertake a task. While he is not alone in linking Joel with this root, it is not what is typically presented by commentators.
A discussion of Abou-Chaar’s scholarship cannot proceed without a brief excursus into the work of his own mentor, Paul Nadim Tarazi (who I reference often). In fact Abou-Chaar is one of Tarazi’s oldest students and the two have influenced each other for the past fifty years. This volume benefits from a familiarity with Tarazi’s scholarship, and at many times it feels like an invitation to their own personal collaboration over the years. Some examples of Abou-Chaar’s influence on Tarazi’s scholarship includes the astute observation that the Hebrew names of the Pentateuchal books forms its own mini narrative: Bereshit (in the beginning) Shemot (there were names) Wayiqara (and he said) Bemidbar (in the wilderness) Debarim (words). This is detailed on page 168. Similarly, Tarazi has also echoed Abou-Chaar’s observation that the five books of the Torah likely represents God’s five fingers and thus his fist of power as discussed on page 171. Another notable example is the rendering of Abraham’s name as the father of the weakling/emaciated lamb (p. 42). This is parsed directly from the Arabic where اب ab — father and رهوم / رهام rahaam/ rahum — weak lamb combine to form Abraham’s name. This becomes striking when used as the backdrop of Abou-Chaar’s exegesis of Isaiah 40–55 and his study of the suffering servant in particular.
The characterization of the suffering servant is at the heart of Abou-Chaar’s presentation, and for him, the servant (or “raham”) is at the very heart of what he calls the “Joshua school”. The so-called Joshua school is the group of authors (a master and his students) who are the main creative forces behind Isaiah 40–55 and much of the Old Testament. They themselves are writing in the shadow of the original prophet Ezekiel, which Abou-Chaar in agreement with Tarazi, views as the father of scripture. See my article here where I break down the reasons why that hypothesis is so compelling. The existence of the Joshua school is seen as a group that sprung up as a response to a mishandling of Ezekiel by the royal/priestly caste, who attempted to use it to further their agenda in justification for the building and propagation of a palace-temple complex in Jerusalem. The tension between the Joshua school and the palace-temple party can be seen in its clearest form in the book of Jeremiah, where the prophet’s main opponents are not outsiders but the Jerusalemite elite. The Joshua school sees in its opponent the workings/ “toledot” of the so-called Adam-Jacob track. This is outlined in Isaiah 40–49, where Jacob’s sins are outlined. Next, we have the solution which is outlined in chapters 50–55 which Abou-Chaar calls the “Abraham part”. This is where the servant, beginning as Jacob, becomes the raham (because he is presented as Abraham and Sarah’s offspring in v. 51:2) who acts as a sacrificial offering to nullify the “vain” sacrifices of the priestly group and to usher in the project of the biblical corpus to replace the temple with the written Pentateuch. Abou-Chaar details extensively how this was accomplished through characters who channeled the raham, in particular Joseph and Joshua. Joseph’s bones are placed into an ark (aron) which is the same word used for the ark of the covenant, which holds the tablets of the commandments given at Mount Sinai. This is the very same ark that Joshua carries into the promised land. The connection is compounded by the holy of holies in the tabernacle being referred to as the “Debir” which is shares the triliteral root with the Hebrew word dabar, meaning “word”.
In a move that would likely scandalize many readers, especially the religious ones, Abou-Chaar presents his thesis that a chunk of the “ketubim” were actually written by two schools that were antagonistic towards the Joshua school, and were aligned ideologically with the Joshua school’s opponents. These two schools are the Johanan/ Maccabean school and the Chronicler. Starting with the Johanan school, Abou-Chaar views this group as being the main party of the Joshua school’s opponents. The school is named after one of the villains in the book of Jeremiah, Johanan ben Kereah. According to Abou-Chaar, they were responsible for Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, and books four and five of the Psalter. He even interestingly attributes to them what became the Masoretic version of the ending of Jeremiah, and that the LXX version of Jeremiah actually reflects the attitude of the Joshua school more. The Chronicler is responsible for Ezra-Nehemiah and 1–2 Chronicles. This later literary corpus reflects an attitude that is highly sympathetic and even supportive of the Jerusalem temple, the priesthood, and Jewish nationalism. The Joshua school, conversely, was characteristically open to outsiders and iconoclastic when it came to the physical socio-political and religious structures of Jerusalem. In Abou-Chaar’s thesis, the Joshua school ended their corpus with books 1–3 of the Psalter, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, and Ecclesiastes which is seen as an “inside look” into the mind of the “master” of the school. It is an interesting thesis and similar view is suggested by Tarazi in his first volume of Old Testament introductions (p 179). Again, it is easy to be scandalized by this, but we have to remember that the idea of a set biblical canon was something that evolved over time. It seems that the biblical canon proper was the Law and the Prophets, and the “other writings” were more nebulous as far as canonicity goes. There could, conversely, be another functional reason why the latter part of the ketubim seems to be in tension with the rest of the Bible. Only further study will elucidate this fact.
There are many other things that can be said about this book, but I would like to briefly touch on the ending because I found it to be incredibly powerful and a sentiment that is much needed in biblical discourse. On the question of the Bible’s “historicity” he aptly notes,
The historical circumstances that are discerned or conjectured are those of the redactional circumstances that can be inferred from the texts, they are not about the “events” described in the narrative; these are seen as pedagogical lessons, parables to inculcate the teaching. The characters and figures are seen as paradigms and types. The characters and elements of the narrative are regarded as narrative pedagogical components to be understood contextually as elements of the parable/paradigm. Their reality resides in the lesson they deliver. The lessons are “real” lessons, written and redacted by “real” people, addressed in “real” circumstances, to “real” people. The reality is established by way of the literary fiction. That is what literature is. It dissimilates reality in order to intensify and “condense” its reality through the addressed word/ narrative. (pp 276–77)
On the importance of redaction criticism he says,
It has been neglected for too long; thus the work done here, however much conjectural, is a challenge to broach this question in biblical studies and intended to provoke it. It is nonsense to assume that a body of literature gathers itself together; or that the heavens channel its collocation across centuries; or that writings “happen” to congregate because an ethnic group happens to be extant and “happens” to archive texts that it cannot quite comprehend. Some groups may do this, but the texts are not haphazard phenomena. A collector might imagine so, but not a literate person. The amazing thing is that the classification of these texts as “divine” in origin has nourished these approaches, especially by dynasts and investment minded people. The incarnate reality of these texts was denied, and the will-o’-the-wisp so-called “historical” reality replaced the flesh of this body of literature. The mind that was convened by it was dismissed under the pretense that it was “other-worldly”. As we saw, this contradicts the basic posture of Deuteronomy. It is this murderous void that this work wishes to arraign; to re-convoke the minds that have been dismissed in order to facilitate the excesses of dynasts; to allow the “words,” the debarim, to convoke again. This has been the task that Professor Paul Nadim Tarazi has devoted his pedagogical life to. (pp 278–79)
And finally, his incredibly challenging but pointed remark at the end about abusing the text with tribalism over ethnicity,
More specifically, to use terms such as “eastern tradition” and “western tradition,” and try to adjudicate between them and partition roles cannot but betray that we are still talking about private enclosures and not about an open arena; we are talking about our ego, or better, our superego, and not about the texts. When we do this, we bring to naught the convocation intended by the texts. This is particularly the case with regard to the texts of the Isa 40–55 school. They aspire to convoke a heteroclite group. (p 281)
Thank you Iskandar Abou-Chaar.
This has been a long review, but I had a lot to say. There is still more to be said and I will be citing this book for the rest of my life probably. Be sure to buy a copy here. It is a must have for anyone interested in biblical studies.
