Isaiah class 1

Thoughts from the first of ten classes, Thursday, October 8, 2009

Somewhere about 45 minutes into our class, the teacher looked up at the clock, and it was already five minutes after nine. Time to quit. And we had actually been at it for two hours, since seven o'clock.

Based on this first session last Thursday, this is going to be a good class that my oldest son, Michael, and I are taking in Provo every Thursday night over the next few months. We paid $90 apiece to go hear Avraham Gileadi, a religious historian and Hebrew scholar, who also happens to be a Mormon, teach a ten-week course on Isaiah.

What follows in this blog post is my attempt, from the meager notes I took, to make sense of what he was teaching and what I was learning. I am fulfilling requests from at least two of my daughters who live in opposite corners of the country. Eliza asked from Atlanta, "Are you going to blog everything you learn?" And Camilla added from Everett, "I like Eliza's idea. Best way to learn something is to teach it!"

The book of Isaiah holds the key to reconcile the Old and New Testaments. If you had a great tapestry of all the scriptures, Isaiah would be at the center.

The Ben Asher Codex, dating from about 800 A.D., is the earliest, best manuscript of Isaiah that exists. (There is an Isaiah manuscript among the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from approximately 200 A.D., which is some 600 years earlier, but it is somewhat corrupted.) "The plain and precious parts" and "the covenants of the Lord" were both lost when the text passed through the gentiles.

The Book of Mormon throws a lot of light on Isaiah and bridges a lot of gaps between the Old and New Testaments. Hebrew literary structures, such as chiasmus, are very prevalent in the Book of Mormon, which was one of the things that intrigued Avraham, when he first read it in Israel as he was converting from Catholicism to Mormonism.

Isaiah was one of those who saw the end from the beginning. We are aware of some other prophets who did also, such as Moses, Nephi, the brother of Jared, John the Revelator, and Joseph Smith.

Studying Isaiah is like learning a new language. It takes two years of diligent study to become fluent, for the book to become plain. Two things, according to Nephi, help us to understand Isaiah: the spirit of prophecy (see 2 Nephi 25:4) and the manner of the Jews (see 2 Nephi 25:1–2, 5–6). Searching diligently is a necessity. In fact, other than general commands to study the scriptures, Isaiah is the only one the Savior singled out by name as a prophet we are to study (see, for example, 3 Nephi 20:11 and 3 Nephi 23:1).

After such introductory discussion as above, we spent much of the two hours reading from and discussing three chapters of 1 Nephi in the Book of Mormon: chapter 14 (which is "a very informative chapter"), chapter 20 (in which Nephi quotes Isaiah chapter 48), and chapter 21 (in which he quotes Isaiah chapter 49).

What exactly is the "great and marvelous work" that Nephi refers to in 1 Nephi 14:7? We have to put together all the pieces of the puzzle—from different places in the scriptures. For example, Nephi speaks of the church of the devil, which is the great and abominable church, the mother of abominations, the whore of all the earth. Isaiah equates all of this with Babylon.

It is good to have a clear idea about what the various labels used (such as Zion, Israel, Babylon, etc.) actually mean. It is also important to know who you are so you can understand and properly fulfill your role.

Near the end of chapter 14, remembering that both Nephi and John had seen the end from the beginning, Nephi says that he was stopped from writing more, that he cannot tell us what John will later write, that John is commissioned to reveal the final part of the story (see 1 Nephi 14:19–28). So, Nephi spends the next five chapters finishing his journey narrative, telling of Lehi's people leaving their homeland and traveling to the promised land. He then quotes Isaiah 48 and 49, which also constitutes a journey narrative out of Babylon. Nephi knows full well that Isaiah saw the whole thing too, so why not quote someone else who is already published to tell more of the ending of the story. John won't be published for another 600 years or so.

Israel's latter-day restoration is a theme of everything Nephi quotes from Isaiah. Indeed, that theme is a preoccupation of all Book of Mormon writers.

Brother Gileadi referred to, but did not particularly elaborate on (or at least I did not take notes on), the Abrahamic covenant, the Sinai covenant, and the Davidic covenant, except to say that each of these covenants were permanent and would continue to the end of time. We speak a lot in the Church concerning the Abrahamic covenant, less so about the other two.

I suspect the Sinai covenant has to do with what is related in the book of Exodus, wherein the Lord says: "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation" (Exodus 19:5–6). And a little later when He says: "And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them: I am the Lord their God" (Exodus 29:45–46).

In relation to the Davidic covenant, a proxy role is involved. David stood in for his people. Well, I guess Moses did too when he interceded with the Lord in their behalf when Jehovah wanted to destroy the children of Israel and make of Moses a great nation (see Exodus 32:7–14). Moses on this occasion stood as a mediator between God and rebellious Israel.

I hope in future classes we explore this path (the notion of proxy roles) further. Just as class was ending, Brother Gileadi observed that whenever we encounter the word "sake," such as occurs in 1 Nephi 20:9, a proxy role is involved. And then he noticed the time was gone, and the class ended, and nothing more was said.