Isaiah and Post-Exilic Prophecy

The prophetic book of Isaiah has been enormously influential in shaping Judaism and Christianity. The course considers the various ways in which the role of prophecy evolved in the post-exilic period, with Isaiah as a test case. The course will focus on the exilic and post-exilic expansion of the book of Isaiah and the deployment of Isaiah traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. Several questions will provide a central focus: How is authorship, whether written or oral, related to prophecy during the Persian and Greco-Roman eras? How do understandings of the figure of Isaiah change over time? What difference does it make whether Isaianic discourse is cited explicitly as opposed to alluded to implicitly? Which aspects of Isaiah made it particularly popular at Qumran and in the New Testament?