We’ve written on the bogus Deutero-Isaiah Hypothesis before, and noted you shouldn’t waste your time with it. However, some people don’t like simple and obvious conclusions, judging by a few comments on the article:
- it is patently obvious to me that you are no student of the text at all
- one of the silliest, most nonsensical arguments I’ve ever read.
- apparent that you’ve performed no scholarship at all
- I would have appreciated more insight
Since the deutero-Isaiah hypothesis idea is totally bogus, frankly I’ve got better things to do than waste time on something so obviously wrong, or as I said in a comment:
If someone said the moon was made of cheese, would you take the time to “honor the school of moon-cheese with a dignified, scholarly, and well-reasoned, honest approach”? I doubt it. Or would you briefly cite examples of how it’s impossible for the moon to be made of cheese (since we’ve been there and brought back rocks), and let the moon-cheese “scholars” blabber all they want?
The deutero-Isaiah has less credibility than the moon-cheese idea.
Nevertheless, let’s look at their method, which mainly involves vocabulary and style analysis.
Testing Deutero-Isaiah Hypothesis
We’ll do what “scholars” did — analyze style and vocabulary. The text used is something known coming from a single author (because I wrote it), but comes from different times. The first group will be recent writings, the second older.
Testing method
We’ll use a perl script to get some data from each group, and see if it’s the same. We took some old articles and some newer ones — these were less than two years apart. If vocabulary/style analysis is valid, these two samples should be almost identical.
Results
Style
| Old | New | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Sentence Length | 15.3 | 12.8 | 83% |
| Word Length | 6.2 | 6.3 | 1.0% |
Sentence length varies by about 20%, with word length roughly the same.
Vocabulary
Comparing words and how frequently they’re used.
| Old | New | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| the | 6.7% | 4.9% | 73% |
| to | 2.1% | 2.8% | 133% |
| Bible | 0.03% | 0.81% | 2700% |
Also, some words were used in one group, but not in the other. Surplus is used 0.5% in the old material, not at all in new. Post-modern used 27 times in new, not at all in the old.
Similar to style, vocabulary differs 20% or more new compared to old.
Those are facts from analysis, the question is: does a 20% difference over a short time prove multiple authors? Remember these samples were less than two years apart — fairly close together.
Conclusion
Wow, there are two of me! A similar method “scholars” use “proves” multiple authors. I sure wish my other self would pitch in around here — and that extra paycheck would be handy.
Or could it be their scholarship is 100% bogus, as said previously:
If you believe the inspiration of John as he wrote the authorship of Isaiah is settled (if you don’t believe in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of the Bible you’ve frankly got much bigger issues than the authorship of Isaiah).
Vocabulary and style can change over time and with subject matter. Anyone doing any writing notices this when they go back and look at older writings. It’s pathetic to use it to “prove” multiple authors. Why use such wrong methodology?
Many times you’ll find the reason surface that Isaiah couldn’t have foreseen the events he prophesied, thus the only explanation is multiple authors wrote at different times. By rejecting God, they grasp at straws to explain away the simplest and obvious conclusion: God exists, and told Isaiah future events, and Isaiah wrote it down.
Deutero-Isaiah Hypothesis — wrong on common sense, wrong on theology, wrong on scholarship, just wrong.