Jesus Murks a Tree

Dan McClellan Out of methodological necessity, critical scholarship cannot accept real prophecy, at least in my opinion. Which means that, no, if the text says there's this dude named Cyrus, that text was written after that dude named Cyrus was on the scene. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of that pernicious misinformation about the same. How go things, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things go well. We're going to kill some foliage today.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher We're going to murder a tree, among other things. So, that's exciting. That's always fun.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And I have high hopes that you'll help me to understand what the heck's going on with that story. So, that's where we're going to start out. We're going to start out with a chapter and verse on that.

Dan McClellan Awesome.

Dan Beecher And then you're going to help us out with a what does that mean? Because I have heard you use the phrase Deutero-Isaiah before, and I have no idea what we're talking about.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, that'll be fun to get that all covered.

Dan McClellan Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun. It's something that has been controversial for a long time, so we'll clear the air a little bit and explain what's going on with that.

Dan Beecher Excellent. Well, let's start with chapter and verse. And we're picking up, I guess in Mark 11. Is that where we want to pick up?

Dan McClellan Yeah. Mark's the earliest gospel, so scholars are in widespread agreement that this is the earliest iteration of this story.

Dan Beecher Now- Okay ...

Dan McClellan it's likely that there is some tradition that preexisted the Gospel of Mark. There might even be some sayings in an earlier sayings gospel that Mark might have used as a source, but the first access we have to this story is in Mark 11.

Dan Beecher I've got to say, I feel like whatever the precursor things that Mark was drawing on, they must have made more sense than this, because I am wildly confused by this story. Should we just dive in? Okay, so here's what happens. Jesus has just made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And there's a whole thing about him riding in on a colt, and people throwing down leaves in front of him, and all this sort of stuff.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And then, the next day, Jesus is out for a walk and sees a fig tree in the distance. It's got leaves on it. He meanders over there. It is not the season for figs.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher This fig tree is not fruiting currently.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And Jesus talks to it, which I think is weird, and says, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And then they take off. Which I feel like vindictiveness against a tree is odd.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Okay. So, that's part one.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Then there's this whole thing where Jesus, and we remember this, Jesus cleanses the temple, right?

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher There's several verses where Jesus goes in and turns over the table of the money changers and scolds- Mm-hmm ... the people who are buying and selling things and- Mm-hmm ... makes some people very angry, and they want to kill him, and then that's that little thing. And then we're back to the tree.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, picking up in verse 20. The next morning, the disciples go back to the tree, and it has withered away to its roots. And Peter said to him, "Hey, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered." And Jesus says, "Have faith in God."

Dan McClellan Now, okay.

Dan Beecher He says, "Have faith in God." I'll just read it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "Truly, I tell you, that if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and you do not doubt in your heart, but you believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Now, I can see saying, if they're amazed by what he did to the fig tree, yes, I can see how it follows to say, "You can move mountains if you believe." But why did he kill a fig tree? I'm so confused by this. So, walk us through the whole thing. The whole thing just baffles me a little bit. It's a bit of a head-scratcher.

Dan McClellan So, what we've got here is one of Mark's sandwich stories, where we have kind of the introduction and the conclusion, and in between, we have a separate story. But usually, these stories are kind of bookending whatever's in between, and they relate to each other. And so, the fig tree is a metaphor surprise, surprise.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And we hear talk in the New Testament and elsewhere in the Bible, this notion of bearing fruit, and particularly in relation to Jesus. This has to do with good works. This has to do with producing results, doing the things that are expected of you. And we have, right before they go and see the withered tree, is the threat that we see in verse 18. And I finally got the digital version of the updated edition of the NRSV. So I'm up to date now. And it says in verse 18, "When the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching." And he's just gone into the temple, and the temple is not bearing fruit.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan The temple has become, in the eyes of Jesus, through the eyes of the gospel authors, a den of thieves. The chief priests, who are supposed to be the ecclesiastical authority of the day, the scribes, who are supposed to be the learned men of the Jewish tradition, are also not bearing fruit. They're trying to kill their Messiah.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so, this is a metaphor for Jerusalem, for the temple, for the Jewish leadership. He shows up as the Messiah. He's been up north, he's been in Galilee doing his thing, and he comes down to Jerusalem to enter triumphantly into his city. There are leaves everywhere, and he wants fruit, and they have none to offer him. And this is one of the indications that Mark was written when either the destruction of the temple was imminent or had already happened.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Because the idea here with the cursing of the fig tree is Jesus says, "Hey, I showed up looking for fruit. I didn't see any. Guess what?

Dan Beecher Boom.

Dan McClellan Roasted. No more fruit ever." And this is a symbol, or this represents the destruction of the temple, the scattering of the leadership of early Judaism. Now, later on, toward the end of the first century CE and into the second and third century CE, we're going to have the development of rabbinic Judaism, which is going to be carrying on the Pharisaic tradition. It's organizing around the traditions that are going to develop then. But when Mark is written somewhere around 70 CE, either immediately before or shortly after the destruction of the temple, they have no understanding that Judaism is going to come back together and organize, and carry on. And so, from the perspective of the author of the Gospel of Mark, the tree is cursed and has withered. The temple is gone. The idea is basically, yeah, that's never bearing fruit again. I see your problem. You're cursed. You're not going to bear any fruit ever again. But this is an issue because Jesus's followers are, at this point in time, all Jewish folks, and so it's kind of frightening. Well, what's going to happen now?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And look, the tree has withered from its roots. The temple is gone. The leadership is gone. And so the response from Jesus is, "Have faith in God." And then goes on to explain that through their faith, they can accomplish all these great things. So they're going to be able to move mountains going forward. They don't need those things that were not bearing fruit. And it says that when Jesus went looking for the figs, it was not yet the time for them to be bearing fruit. And so he shouldn't have expected to find fruit on there. So it seems a little callous for him to go zap- Yeah ... because it wasn't doing anything wrong.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher It's not fig season.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The tree's like, "I'm just...

Dan Beecher What?

Dan McClellan How did I do to you?"

Dan Beecher "I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be."

Dan McClellan I think of Steve Martin in his little mask in Little Shop of Horrors with the little bubbles filling up with air- ... and then emptying, going, "What did I ever do to you?" And then Jesus goes, "It's not what you did to me. It's what you did to her." And so it's, in my opinion, this is Mark's kind of like, Jesus is killed at the Passover in March/April, which is too early for the fig season. So he's like, "Well, I got to get it in there somehow." So, in my opinion, he's just fitting the story in where he can. Although there are some scholars who will argue that Jesus's arrival, showing up to Jerusalem, is before the messianic fulfillment is supposed to take place. But I don't know about those timelines. But in short, this is a metaphor. This is condemning the scribes and the high priests, the chief priests.

Dan Beecher The dove sellers.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The money changers.

Dan McClellan This is condemning the leadership there in Jerusalem for not bearing the fruit that should be expected.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And then saying, "But don't worry, we don't need them, because you're going to have power to do all these things moving forward."

Dan Beecher Okay. To me, yeah, that makes more sense.

Dan McClellan A little bit, but it is unique. It is the only miracle of Jesus' that is destructive- Yeah ... where he's like, "Check this out."

Dan Beecher And very much so.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It just feels mean- ... to a tree that ain't did nothing. Just- Just to be a metaphor.

Dan McClellan Well, and yeah, I don't know how they thought about the personhood of trees anciently. They obviously use Jesus referencing it in the second person.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Kind of like, "Look what you made me do." But I don't know if they had sympathy for trees back then.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah, that's what a lot of people these days are like, "The tree didn't do nothing to you?" It doesn't make sense.

Dan Beecher And then when they asked Jesus if he had cut down the tree, he said, "I cannot tell a lie." Talk a little bit about the temple, because is it a metaphor for the temple, or is it a metaphor for sort of Judaism as a whole?

Dan McClellan It's both and.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It's encapsulating the temple, and the people running the temple, and the other folks who are supposed to be representative of the best of Judaism of that day. And so there is an anti-clerical and anti-Jewish, all at the same time. They rejected Jesus. They rejected their Messiah, according to the authors of the Gospels. And so, this is the author's opportunity to take a little rhetorical jab back at them and say, "You're like a withered tree."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Suck it.

Dan Beecher We've talked about the temple, about the destruction of the temple.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But we've never really dug into what the temple was about, what happened in the temple. Clearly, there's commerce going on there.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Is it a building? Is it an area? What is the temple?

Dan McClellan Well, by the time of Jesus's day, we have the Second Temple. The First Temple was destroyed in 587 BCE by the Babylonians and was rebuilt about 70 years later. And this is when, according to the biblical text, Cyrus the Great allows the Judahites, after conquering Babylon, who had taken them captive, Cyrus the Great allows them to go back and allows them to rebuild their temple. And so the Second Temple, also referred to as the Temple of Zerubbabel, was rebuilt. It was probably on a smaller scale, not as grand as it was before. And later on, this gets supplemented even further during the Hasmonean Kingdom. So when the Maccabees run off the Seleucids, who have come in and have desecrated the temple and have destroyed parts of it, they're rebuilding parts of it. And then the Romans come in and they annex Judea, and then they put a client king in charge of Judea, Herod the Great, and he rules for decades. And part of what he does is engages in these large-scale building projects. He wants to build up cities. He wants to create new centers of commerce and culture, like Caesarea Maritima, and he wants to expand the temple. And so the temple complex was a large courtyard enclosed in walls that had gates in it. And then inside, you would've had the temple proper, which had a courtyard and an inner sanctum, and then the Holy of Holies. So it's what's known as a tripartite temple. And there are a few different styles of temple in that time period, but significantly expands that courtyard to the south, which requires building a bunch of underground supports so that it can extend out over a hill that's actually going down quite a bit.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And if one visits Jerusalem today, there are parts of the wall that was constructed by Herod, which is characterized by what's called ashlar masonry, where they create a kind of textured look for the face of the stone, but then there's a trim around the outside that is cut smooth. And so if you go there, you can see some of the lower levels of the wall, particularly on the south, that are remains of Herod's temple, but it was rebuilt to some degree in later periods. Not the temple itself, but just the platform and the walls and things. And I think one of the coolest parts of the whole temple complex that you can still see today, if you go to what's known as the Robinson Center, it's the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. You can see the southwest corner. You can see some of the layers of the wall as constructed by Herod, and you can see large sections of the wall scattered around the base of that wall, as well as the sidewalk, the base that is cratered in. Because when the Romans destroyed the temple, one of the things they did was had their soldiers push a lot of the stones off of the top of the wall.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And they came tumbling down and just cratered the stone sidewalk and platform area below. And so when you go visit, you can actually see these craters in the stone, and then all the pieces of large stone scattered all around. And so there's just enough cues there to give you a sense of this just enormous destructive force- Hmm ... and to imagine what would've happened at the time. And this is something that the historian Josephus personally witnessed.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And so, when you read some of Josephus's history, he talks in some detail about what went on during the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.

Dan Beecher And so this- Does he talk about the fig tree situation at all?

Dan McClellan I think he overlooks the fig tree. Ostensibly, this is happening decades after Jesus's life and death. So the fig tree, if it had been withered, at some point, somebody came along and went, "We got to get this thing out of the way."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so I don't know how big it was. Probably not incredibly big.

Dan Beecher They probably could've just yanked it out by hand, but- Now, Mark is not the only place that we find this story. We also find it in Matthew. It feels like it gets a little bit more streamlined in Matthew.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher It's not separated, it's not sandwiched, as you say- Mm-hmm ... that Mark did. So this is Matthew 21. And basically, it just has the story, and it all happens at the same time. It doesn't have the intervening day. It just says that- Yeah ... that Jesus saw the tree in the morning, said, "May no fruit ever come from you ever again," and then the fig tree withers right there in front of them. It's basically the same thing. And the disciples are saying, "Wow, that's amazing." And he says, "If you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to the mountain, 'Be lifted.'" Here's the thing. Nobody ever does the mountain thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And none of the disciples ever seem to be able to do the fig tree trick either. I guess part of me, when I read the, "You'll be able to move mountains if you have enough faith" thing- Mm-hmm ... if it's in the context of a story that is metaphor, I'm much more comfortable with it because he's speaking metaphorically.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But so many people have attempted crazy things, believing that their faith would be enough to make it happen or to keep them safe or whatever. Can we just make it the policy of the "Data Over Dogma" podcast that you should not try things that are physically impossible- ... even if your faith is really, really strong?

Dan McClellan Yeah. As Jesus said, "You shall not tempt the Lord your God." And frequently, people try it in contexts that render what they're doing tempting to God. They're trying to say, "Oh, I'm going to..." People have died because they've done silly things believing that God was going to save them, and which is really inviting a sign, tempting God, exactly as Jesus said when he was like, "Yeah, jump off the temple. Come on, man. You can do it. Everybody else is doing it."

Dan Beecher In fairness, though, it does seem like Jesus is saying here, "If you have faith and do not doubt, you can just do anything."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So that seems like it's in conflict with the "Don't tempt God," but again, you must see this as a metaphor.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, and Matthew has Jesus saying things that conflict with themselves, as do the other gospel authors. And I would argue that Matthew probably does because Matthew's like, "Hey, you can do the same thing as I just did to this fig tree and other things as well. But wait, there's more." And so it seems to me that Matthew has kind of missed some of the metaphorical message that Mark was using.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Or at least understands it in a different way, because I think the message is a little harder to get from here than it is from the Gospel of Mark. And so it seems like it's a story that Matthew was like, "Well, we got to include this silly little story." "We're going to work this in here."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And he didn't want to split it up with the cleansing of the temple like Mark did, and so he has to have it happen immediately.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan He's just like, zap, and then immediately the tree desiccates and withers up.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which makes for an even more peculiar story.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the disciples are not like, "Why the hell did you do that?"

Dan Beecher Point of order. Why did you- Yeah, yeah ... kill the tree? Luke does an interesting thing. I think by the time this gets around to Luke, is Luke after Matthew?

Dan McClellan I think most scholars would probably say Luke is after Matthew, yes. Because Luke- In fact, more and more scholars are arguing that Luke may be early second century.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay. Because Luke skips Jesus killing the fig tree altogether, but has a fig tree moment.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He has a parable of a fig tree.

Dan McClellan It's just a vibe at this point.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan At this point.

Dan Beecher And Jesus isn't even involved, and it's very clearly a parable. It's labeled as a parable, which is nice. When something's labeled as a metaphor as opposed to just like, "I'm saying this metaphor. Maybe you'll get it, maybe you won't."

Dan McClellan But yeah.

Dan Beecher The parable of the fig tree is much more, it's about a guy who plants a fig tree. For three years, it doesn't bear fruit. Dude's pissed off. He says, "Why?" I love the idea of why should it be wasting soil? And then a dude says, "Give it another year. I'm going to dig around. I'm going to put some manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, that's good. If not, you can cut it down."

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm. I don't know what that's a parable for.

Dan Beecher Do you?

Dan McClellan Well, I think this is a little more clearly a metaphorical reference to the house of Israel- Okay ... bearing fruit for God.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan However, yeah, Luke's probably like, "These idiots." "They're not going to get this." And probably also is trying to- He was thinking of me.

Dan Beecher Luke was thinking of me. I appreciate it.

Dan McClellan And is probably also wanting to distance Jesus from a destructive act.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Doesn't want to represent Jesus as doing this, because the tradition of Jesus has developed a little bit more. Jesus is probably a little more lovey-dovey by this time period. Luke is certainly one who's on more concern for the more vulnerable and marginalized of society. He's championing women, and he's championing the Gentiles more. And so I think he's probably like, "We don't want to hurt no little tree. We'll put it in a parable so it's not even history. It's just metaphor explicitly." And they don't represent them destroying it. That's the end of it.

Dan Beecher And it's the first time we get the idea of, "Let's try to make this okay. Let's see if we can actually salvage this tree and have it bring fruit."

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Which I think is interesting, because the other two are just like, "Oh, no fruit? You're dead, forever."

Dan McClellan And then it looks like there's the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is one of the Gnostic gospels probably written in the mid to late second century CE, has a quotation, "Behold, now you also shall be withered like a tree and shall not bear leaves nor root nor fruit."

Dan Beecher So- What is going on with the trees in ancient Southwest Asia that they are withering? I don't see that many withered trees. Do you see withered tree? Anyway, go on.

Dan McClellan Well, I'm trying to remember where this is, but I think you have figurative language where fruit can also, in addition to being a reference to good works and productivity and progress and things like that, can also be used to refer to offspring and descendants.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Sure. And so a withered tree or a withered root or something like that is somebody who does not have any children, any offspring.

Dan Beecher Shooting blanks.

Dan McClellan Well, yeah. If you want to get clinical about it, I think that's the technical term. But I'm trying to think of a... There's a reference somewhere to somebody being like a withered tree.

Dan Beecher And- I'm just saying they're using this metaphor a lot, and it just seems like maybe the trees there were not doing great.

Dan McClellan Well- Horticulturally, it seems like they need arborists in- There were not a ton of trees in the area. The soil is pretty rocky, for one. And historically, there were a lot of trees further north. The cedars of Lebanon, for instance.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan A lot of people are familiar with that. But a lot of those trees were, there was a lot of deforestation. A lot of those trees were used in earlier periods. And so by the time of the first century CE, there was not really a ton for them, and this is why a lot of scholars think that Jesus wouldn't have been a carpenter, but a stonemason or something like that, because the wood would've been at quite a premium. And so most of the construction and things like that would have been in stone. And you even have, right around this time period, within Judaism, the use of stone utensils, like stone cups and pots and things like that- Oh, wow ... is, for a brief period, very popular. But this has to do primarily with purity. Because stone, unlike clay, would not transmit or maintain or retain impurities. So a clay dish- Mm-hmm ... if it was rendered impure, it would transmit the impurity to whatever was in it, but stone, the impurities would bounce off, and then whatever was put into it could be purified. So stone was more important than wood in that time period, in part because trees were not abundant. Although you do have a lot of olive trees in the area. In fact, in the story in Mark and in Matthew, he's spending the night in Bethany, which is down the valley, up the Mount of Olives, and heading to the other side of the Mount of Olives is Bethany.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan It doesn't say where exactly this fig tree is, but if he was going from Bethany to Jerusalem, it might have been located overlooking what's called the Kidron Valley, and so it would've been directly opposite the temple, on the other side.

Dan Beecher Which is- There you go ...

Dan McClellan you can go there today. There's a lookout point, a platform and a railing, and a place where people go to take pictures, because you have the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mounts directly opposite.

Dan Beecher All right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan And Jesus- It's a lovely area ...

Dan Beecher and Jesus said unto them, "This is good for Insta if you guys want to stop." "Get your phones out."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I love- Well, they were living in the now. They were living in the moment back then.

Dan Beecher That's right.

Dan McClellan It was, "Let's kill this tree," rather than, "Let's think twice."

Dan Beecher Yeah. I love that you pointed out that he was theoretically a carpenter, because you would think that a carpenter would have more respect for a tree. At very least, don't wither it. Cut it down. Make something out of it. Have something.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Make a nice box or something.

Dan McClellan Honor it.

Dan Beecher Honor it.

Dan McClellan Turn it into something productive.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Give it a second life.

Dan Beecher That's right.

Dan McClellan But yeah. And then, yeah, every time I think of Jesus as a carpenter, all I can think of is, "That's the cup of a carpenter."

Dan Beecher Well, yeah. There you go.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, thanks for that. The story now makes some sense to me. I'm going to allow it to have some sense.

Dan McClellan It's not maybe meaningful, but it is- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Well, not to me.

Dan McClellan I- It's coherent.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I have no personal, what am I trying to say? Connection to the temple.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Or to the structure of Judaism or Israel at the time, but I get it. So, that being said, let's move on to what does that mean?

Dan McClellan What's that mean?

Dan Beecher Dun-dun-duh.

Dan McClellan We're talking about Deutero-Isaiah for this segment, and if you speak modern Greek, you're thinking δεύτερο. But Deutero-Isaiah means second Isaiah, basically. And this is a theory that sees the Book of Isaiah as a multi-stage composition, as something that came together over a long period of time, not just the work of one author, but of at least two, and the main theory has three authors. They call them First Isaiah, Second Isaiah, and Third Isaiah. And Deutero-Isaiah is the more common designation for Second Isaiah. And this runs from Isaiah 40 to 55.

Dan Beecher Okay. So Isaiah as a book in the Hebrew Bible goes to- Mm-hmm ...

Dan McClellan chapter 66.

Dan Beecher 66. So there's a lot.

Dan McClellan I'm sorry. I'm just full of movie references today, but- You are, man ... when you said 66, I thought, "66 times." Which is, you don't know that one?

Dan Beecher You lost me on that one.

Dan McClellan Okay. That's "The Great Outdoors."

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan I know that one. It's when, "How many times you've been struck by lightning?"

Dan Beecher "66 times."

Dan McClellan All right. Okay, so yeah. Isaiah is a prophet writing in the mid to late eighth century into the seventh century BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So would have been a prophet that was there in the courts to see the reigns of a couple different kings. But Hezekiah is the main king that is associated with Hezekiah, with, in Isaiah.

Dan Beecher And do we believe, let's just say that we're going to accept, for purposes of this discussion, the Deutero-Isaiah theory.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Do we believe that the first part of Isaiah was actually written by a dude named Isaiah?

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes. Critical scholarship is in agreement that there was a dude named Isaiah- Okay ... who probably was a core prophet for perhaps King Hezekiah. Now, we see some stuff about, so Isaiah would've been ministering, prophetizing, however you want to say that. That's not correct, but that's what came out.

Dan Beecher It's good enough by me.

Dan McClellan Before the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel around the year 722 BCE at the hands of the Assyrians. And then would've been around for Sennacherib's invasion of the Northern Kingdom and then siege of Jerusalem, which ultimately was called off, leaving Hezekiah to declare victory, even though in the Sennacherib prism, an Akkadian text written a little bit later, Sennacherib crows about having trapped Hezekiah in his capital city like a bird in a cage. But Isaiah, for a long time, people have noticed there seem to be different segments of Isaiah. You have chapters one through 12 talking about judgment and salvation for Israel and for Judah. Chapters 13 to 27 are a bunch of oracles against the nations, or woes. You have 10 woe unto's- Oh, wow ... that run from chapter 13 to chapter 23. Chapters 24 through 27 represent Isaiah's kind of apocalypse. We have chapters 28 through 35, which we come back to some woes, but they're leading up to the Sennacherib narrative. And then chapters 36 through 39 are the Sennacherib/Hezekiah narrative. So we're kind of zooming in on the story that's told in 2 Kings chapters 18 and 19, where Sennacherib comes up against Jerusalem, and lays siege to it. And we have a slightly different telling of how that all went. And then we have chapters 40 through 55, Deutero-Isaiah, and this tells the story of the fall of Babylon and the restoration of Zion. And then chapters 56 through 66 kind of represent a concentric arrangement where you have the earliest and the latest chapters talking about gathering the people to God's holy mountain, and then you move into next latest and next earliest chapters. There are complaints about the nature of the deliverance, and there's a divine response. And then you move in, there's a theophany to punish the wicked, and then the very center of this concentric arrangement is about restoration, the restoration of Israel. And around the year 1800, scholars began to take seriously this notion that There were multiple authors responsible for what we know as the Book of Isaiah, and that at least a part of it was probably written during the exilic period. So centuries after the historical Isaiah would have lived and preached and prophetisized. And this is thanks to a series of Johanns. So Johann Benjamin Koppe, Johann Christoph Dederlein, and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn are authors in the late 18th century who are kind of developing a theory of, "Hey, some of this looks like it's coming from a later time period." And then we have a scholar named Bernhard Duhm in 1892, who published a commentary and argued for a first, a second, and a third Isaiah.

Dan Beecher And talk about the clues that led to these conclusions.

Dan McClellan And this is important because a lot of people think that there's this kind of cynicism about authorship, where critical scholars are like, "I'm beginning from the presupposition that none of this happened, and none of this was written by who claims to have written it." And this just simply is not the case. This is critical scholars coming to the text, accepting it at face value until given a reason not to. So these earliest scholars weren't like, "Every chance I get to say something is not Isaiah, I'm going to say it." Because the first people were like, "Oh, it's just chapter 50, and it's just chapter 42, and it's just chapters 13 through 16 that seem like they were probably written by somebody much later." And then the theory gets refined, and the theory gets refined, and the theory gets refined. But the biggest division is between Isaiah 1 through 39 and Isaiah 40 through the rest of Isaiah. Because here's something interesting. Isaiah's name is mentioned over a dozen times in chapters 1 through 39. "The word of the Lord, which came to Isaiah, the son of Amoz," and, "The Lord said to Isaiah," and, "Isaiah said to Hezekiah," and all this. And you have it occurring four times in Isaiah 37, three times in Isaiah 38, three times in Isaiah 39, and his name is never mentioned again.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan In 40 through 66, there's no reference to Isaiah at all. So one thing, the language shifts. The topics shift, and the timeframe seems to shift, because Isaiah 1 through 39 are talking about the future destruction of Israel by Babylon. It is prophesying about this. "This is coming, this is coming, this is coming. I'm prophesying that this is coming." And then you get to chapter 40, and all of a sudden, we're no longer prophesying. It's now saying, "That happened, that happened, that happened." It's in the past. It's not the prophetic perfect. It's not this speaking about it with such confidence that you speak about it as if it already happened. They're just saying, "Hey, this thing happened." None of it's speaking prophetically. None of it is attributing anything to Isaiah. It is all talking about, "Here's how we are picking up the pieces, and here is what's coming." And so scholars are like, "What do we do with this? We got to figure something out." And then you have some other clues. So Isaiah 45 calls Cyrus the Great, explicitly refers to Cyrus by name- Mm ... who is someone who conquered Babylon, the Persian emperor who conquered Babylon in the year 539 BCE, so a good 200 years after Isaiah. And it says that Cyrus is my anointed one. And in the Greek translation of this, it is my Christ, literally.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan And this is because Cyrus conquered Babylon and then allowed the Judahites who had been exiled to return.

Dan Beecher And according to- This is who we referred to earlier in the show.

Dan McClellan Right. And so they're like, "Well, it kind of seems like whoever wrote this section that's very, very different and is looking back on the whole Babylonian exile as something that happened in the past, maybe is referring to Cyrus because they're writing after this all happened."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, and a lot of people will-- I get accused of this a lot. A lot of people will say, "Well, that's your anti-supernatural bias. You just don't allow for the possibility of real prophecy." And that's not what the scholars who developed these theories were doing. Now, I will argue that it is a methodological necessity to reject the possibility of real prophecy if we want to function as scholars at all.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Because when you say we have to allow for the possibility of real prophecy, there is no circumstance then where you can interrogate or question a claim to real prophecy. Because when you say we have to allow for real prophecy, you're saying the normal critical scholarly methodologies and frameworks and lenses, we're going to exempt this story right here. They do not apply.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But to say anything is not real prophecy requires the imposition of those very frameworks and lenses and methodologies. And so you pick and choose which story gets to be exempt and which does not. And so if you say, "Well, you have to allow for the possibility that Isaiah really prophesied about Cyrus," but then you turn around and say, "Well, no, Joseph Smith obviously didn't predict the coming of the Civil War." You're imposing historical critical methodologies on one place, and you're saying, "No, this gets to be exempt in the other place." So whether it's the Book of Mormon or the Bhagavad Gita or the Quran, or anybody else who has claimed to prophecy- Hank Kunneman talking about Donald Trump being definitely reelected in 2020 or whatever.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Or even the failed prophecies. The people who say, "Well, this has to be real prophecy," make excuses for failed prophecy. And so even the folks who said, "Yeah, that comet over there, we're going to be riding that thing next week." Even those folks, you don't have a way to consistently apply the same approach and wind up at, "That's real prophecy, that's fake prophecy."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So out of methodological necessity, critical scholarship cannot accept real prophecy, at least in my opinion. Which means that, no, if the text says, "There's this dude named Cyrus," that text was written after that dude named Cyrus was on the scene.

Dan Beecher It does certainly seem like an Occam's razor moment, right? The simplest explanation for it is clearly that they knew. Because even if nothing else, most of the prophecy throughout the Bible that I've encountered, it's not specific like that.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher It doesn't name names. And it's usually metaphor. It's usually like a giant statue is erected and it has blah, blah, blah for feet, and it has blah, blah- Yeah ... gold for head or whatever it is. It's not saying, "And the gold head is Julius Caesar," and da, da, da. It's not because prophecy isn't specific in that way.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's not naming names.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And- Unless it's about two weeks from now or whatever.

Dan McClellan And you see this in all of the different ways that attempts at prognostication and prophecy manifest. They're always vague.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The palm readers who will say, "I'm sensing the letter M." "Oh, I live on Maple Street. That's the one."

Dan Beecher So- There you go.

Dan McClellan Boom.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You have a lot of vagaries, but when it's like it was the guy Cyrus, specifically Cyrus the Great, the first one, the Persian. He was in- That's specific enough that it's not even claiming to be prophecy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It is just saying, "Hey, Cyrus, my anointed one, he did this thing for me." And so it's not even claiming to be prophecy at that point. And so when you gather up all the data, and there are a number of other things. There are Aramaic loan words in the Book of Isaiah, and the Judahites picked up Aramaic, including the Aramaic script, while they were exiles in Babylon. So when you have Aramaic loan words in the text, or at least a higher concentration of them, that indicates this text was written when they were in much closer proximity to the use of that language. All of this combines to make it far more likely that Isaiah 40 through 55, at least, were probably composed after the Babylonian exile. Most scholars would say somewhere around 520 BCE. So after the return, right around the time that the Second Temple is being rebuilt, is probably when you have the first layers of Deutero-Isaiah being produced. And then Trito, or Third Isaiah, is coming even later than that, probably in the Persian period.

Dan Beecher But- Is there any theory as to why these were tacked onto Isaiah rather than just presented as their own books?

Dan McClellan Well, there are lots of theories. Because since the late 20th century, there's been a big concern for trying to drill deeper because a lot of people thought, "Okay, the real Isaiah wrote Isaiah 1 through 39, and then the next guy came through and wrote 40 through 55, and then somebody later on came through and wrote 56 to 66." But then scholars are like, "Well, I don't know about this." Like Marvin Sweeney, I think his dissertation and then some of his early work was talking about how Isaiah 1 through 4 fits much better thematically with Deutero-Isaiah.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And so he was saying, "We've got literary layers still from later periods in First Isaiah." And now scholars are trying to piece together how exactly Deutero-Isaiah and First Isaiah and Third Isaiah came together. And so there was even a paper published in 1998.

Dan Beecher M.

Dan McClellan Coggins, I believe, was the author, and the paper was, "Do We Even Need Deutero-Isaiah?" Or something like that. And the argument was, if this is not a coherent single source, do we even need to treat it as its own segment? Because it seems like parts of Isaiah 1 through 4 are probably from the same or even a later author.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And then we've got parts of some of the other segments within Isaiah 1 through 39. And so, some scholars are like, "The original Isaiah only wrote these six and a half verses in this one chapter." And that's on the extreme end. I think most scholars would say the majority, half to the majority of Isaiah 1 through 39 is probably the work of an eighth-century prophet who went by Isaiah. And then as it accumulated more layers and was redacted, and you bring in this post-exilic work- You have people kind of adding introductions and you have people writing other things into some of the later layers and earlier layers. And so it has a very complex compositional history- Yeah ... that scholars are still working on trying to come to some kind of agreement on. But what the overwhelming majority of scholars agree on is that Isaiah 40 through the end of Isaiah were absolutely not written in the eighth or even the seventh century BCE, but were written much later, and much of Isaiah one through 39 was probably written later as well.

Dan Beecher Can you confirm for me, when I was looking this up, doing a little bit of research, I, of course, found articles that were, we'll call it skeptical of this claim.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Can you confirm that as gotquestions.org says, "The theory of multiple Isaiahs is one example of skepticism from those who want to call into question the Bible as God's inspired word." Can you confirm that it's just scholars trying to ruin it for all the believers out there?

Dan McClellan So that's a value judgment- Right ... and that is making some pretty irresponsible assumptions about where these theories are coming from, because these don't originate in people who are like, "The Bible's dumb."

Dan Beecher This is not Sam Harris asking- Got Questions would beg to differ, sir.

Dan McClellan Yeah. These are people who are just trying to honestly engage with the data they're finding in the text. And we've talked about when we had our friend, Aaron, on to talk about the star of Bethlehem. He was saying- Yeah ... "I wanted to know more. As a believer- Yeah ... I wanted to know more, and I got to the point where I was like, 'I can't sustain this position anymore,' because I got to know more." And there are scholars who then leave the traditions they grew up with, abandon them, and continue to have a lot of interest in studying this kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then there are others who stay in the traditions and treat the text from an emic inside perspective. "Hey, I consider this to be authoritative literature. I consider this to be important. I use this to guide my life, but I'm also engaging it as honestly as I can," because a lot of them feel that that's really the best way to try to apply it, is to try to better understand it, even if it means being critical about it. So yeah, I've said this before, apologists begin with the conclusion in mind.