How Isaiah became an author : prophecy, authority, and attribution / David Davage.

PART I. FRAMING THE TASK AT HAND -- 1. On books and elusive authors -- The author that did not die -- Death to the prophet? -- Native constructs -- 2. Functions and geniuses -- The author function -- The romantic genius --

PART II. SEARCHING FOR NAIVE AUTHORSHIP THEORIES -- 3, The Mesopotamian trajectory -- Dying authors birthing texts -- Naming authors anew -- Commenting on texts -- Locating the author -- 4. The Greek trajectory -- Interpreting the author -- Competition and theft -- Echtheitskritik and pseudepigraphy -- Centralized authors -- Hellenistic negotiations --

PART III. THE PROPHET ISAIAH AS A MESOPOTAMIAN AUTHOR -- 5. The first one -- Prophets without books -- Written down for life -- Writing as symbolic action -- Authorizing new carriers -- Writing as a witness forever -- Between the old and the new -- 6. The subsequent ones -- Voices intertwined -- Sidelining the "First One" -- Adding voices -- The past and the present -- Anonymity and authority -- 7. Paratextual framings -- Surveying the paratexts -- Prophetic words and nighttime visions -- Decentralizing genitives -- Leaving anonymity --

PART IV. NEGOTIATIONS IN THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD -- 8. Texts attracting names -- A change is coming -- Kings and Chronicles -- Becoming literate -- Naming as fencing -- 9. Setting the stage -- From rivalry to biography -- Reframed authorship -- 10. Dead sea discourses -- More subsequent ones -- Explicit pennings -- Small steps only --

PART V. THE PROPHET ISAIAH AS A GREEK AUTHOR -- 11. Leaving Mesopotamia behind -- Claiming the whole book -- Asking why -- 12. Searching for the real author -- Origen and Echtheitskritik -- Eusebius and authorial intent -- Jerome and Hebraica veritas -- Filling biographical blanks -- 13. Not leaving after all -- Ascription and authority -- On who wrote the Bible -- On Isaianic authorship -- The anonymous tradent --

PART VI. THE BOOK "OF" ISAIAH -- 14. The story once again -- Rehearsing native concepts -- How Isaiah became an author -- 15. Looking ahead.

Traditionally, biblical studies has been an academic discipline with roots deeply embedded in historical inquiries about the genesis of texts. It should come as no surprise that a significant amount of scholarly attention has been on the formation of the "book" of Isaiah, especially since the compelling imagination of Isaiah comprises an anthology of prophetic voices, each with its own historical context. At the same time, it is well known that the chasteness of ancient texts discloses precious little specific information to aid with this reconstructive task. How Isaiah Became an Author tackles this historical irony head-on. David Davage begins by describing two contrasting ways authorship was conceived in antiquity: Mesopotamian and Greek. He next analyzes the processes through which Isaiah ben Amos came to be imagined as an author of the "book" of Isaiah. In doing so, Davage changes the question from "Who wrote the 'book' of Isaiah?" to "How, and in what ways, was the relation between the prophet called Isaiah and the book that came to bear his name conceived in the Second Temple period?" Davage shows how a prophetic anthology that originally circulated anonymously eventually became transmitted together with a name. Although that name originally did not convey any notion of penning, but rather portrays Isaiah ben Amos as a tradent of divine revelation transmitted by many agents over time, it came to be reimagined as a statement about the origins of the book. This transformation is, then, explained as the result of negotiations between the Mesopotamian and the Greek author concepts in the late Second Temple period, negotiations that have continued even to this day.

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