Isaiah Class Recap
-February-
Literary and Poetic Isaiah
Next Class: Apocalyptic Isaiah
March
15th
7
pm
Teresa
Vincent’s home
Our class in
February focused on the literary style of Isaiah. Melissa reminded us how accomplished and
educated Isaiah was, making him very well versed in complicated styles of
writing. Additionally, it appears that
many prophetic utterances seem to fall into these poetic styles, and can be
found throughout scripture. For
instance, Melissa pointed out that the entire Book of Jonah, as well as many verses
in the Book of Mormon are written as “Chiasmus”, which is a form of inverted
parallelism used as a poetic structure.
Isaiah used this style throughout his writings. Perhaps this was one way scripture could be easily
preserved, as much ancient scripture had to be memorized and passed down
orally. Having the scripture in poetic
form perhaps allowed for easier memorization.
A simple
explanation of Chiasmus is that the text follows a top to bottom flow, the main
point in the center, and then reflected in a mirror image. An example that Melissa shared was this verse
from Isaiah 6:10 –
(a) Make the heart of this people fat,
(b) and make their ears heavy,
(c) and shut their eyes;
(c') lest they see with their eyes,
(b') and hear with their ears,
(a') and understand with their heart,
and convert [return], and be healed.
and convert [return], and be healed.
Being able to
have the basic (very basic!!) understanding of the literary styles Isaiah used
to express his revelations, we can look for patterns, ponder on the symmetry of
the ideas, and receive personal understanding as to the layers of the meaning.
Melissa
stressed the importance of having a commentary to study with, as it would be
almost impossible to understand the complicated styles without a more studied
guide. She suggested Victor L Ludlow’s Isaiah, Prophet, Seer and Poet.
