30 March 2022

Isaiah: Part 7

In this blog entry we finish focusing on the most complex structure diagrams in the Book of Isaiah.

Isaiah 55:3 in Acts 13:34

(If you click on a structure diagram, you can change the numbers into Greek/Latin texts and back.)


In this quotation Luke adds the word “Δωσω” (“I will give”) and skips two words that might play just a secondary role. The added word helps shortening the text, but it summarizes the meaning of the passage in Isaiah. We can find that this quotation is a mixture of class 4/5 quotations and the short addition does not introduce a new concept.

Isaiah 56:7 in Luke 19:46


We already detected the two other quotations that are based on Isaiah 56:7 (and Jeremiah 7:11) in Mark 11:17 and Matthew 21:13. Interestingly enough, Luke quotes two more words from Isaiah, “και … εσονται” (“and … will be”) with a slight modification for the second word (“εσται”). This increases accuracy, but the structure diagram becomes more difficult. At last, this quotation is a mixture of class 4/5 quotations. The added words by Luke, “υμεις δε αυτον εποιησατε” (“you however it have made”), are required to quickly explain the contrary connection between the two quoted texts. In fact, the other two passages in the New Testament (Mark 11:17 and Matthew 21:13) use very similar words to make the same connection between Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Isaiah 58:6 and Isaiah 61:1-2 in Luke 4:18-19


This quotation seems to be a mixture of class 4/5 quotations at the first glance. Some words from Isaiah 61 are skipped, however, in some text variants (see the Interlinear version from Biblehub, for example) the first missing 35 characters from LXX are shown in 37 characters (note the two added “ν” letters): “ιασασθαι τους συντετριμμενους την καρδιαν” (“to heal the broken in heart”).

The 7 letters added by Luke are actually a repetition of the formerly cited word “κηρυξαι” (“to proclaim”), so nothing new is added here. (The diagram is somewhat inaccurate from this point of view.) Maybe Luke jumps back to Isaiah 61, after the insertion from Isaiah 58, and by repeating the word “κηρυξαι”, the formerly used quoted text gets a new highlight. In this interpretation the quotation can also be identified as a class 4 entry.

Conclusion

Now we are ready to draw some conclusions. The next, final entry on Isaiah is going to discuss what we have learnt through the analysis of these 16 difficult quotations.

Continue reading…

See also a filtered list of the entries on topics GeoGebra, technical developments or internal references in the Bible.

Zoltán Kovács
Linz School of Education
Johannes Kepler University
Altenberger Strasse 69
A-4040 Linz