Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Polaski, Donald Charles

Titel

Authorizing an end: The Isaiah apocalypse and intertextuality

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1997

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The Jewish "proto-apocalyptic" literature has been understood both as a reflection of other texts, on which it depends for its authority, and as a reflection of its original social context. Such approaches are problematic. "Exegetical" approaches make broad assumptions regarding the authority of texts supposed to precede this literature, rendering the proto-apocalyptic literature derivative and epigonal. Social approaches assume that these texts reflect their social matrices in a relatively simple way. A rethinking of the relationship between text and context along the lines of intellectual historian Dominick LaCapra and the literary methods of "New Historicism" or "cultural poetics" recasts this discussion. This dissertation will attempt to break down the division between text and context, approaching one particular proto-apocalyptic text, Isaiah 24-27, intertextually. Early Restoration culture will be understood as an intertextual web in which texts interact and decenter each other. These displacements may provide indications of the Isaiah Apocalypse's relation to supposedly authoritative texts, as well as glimpses of its social and cultural matrix. Chapter 2 focuses on the "eternal covenant" (Isaiah 24:5), showing its role as an intersection for the variety of eternal covenants "in play" at that time. Chapter 3 addresses the banquet motif in Isaiah 25:6-8, using it as an entry point to discussion of the construction of Israel's identity amidst the nations. Chapter 4 introduces a different kind of construction, that of righteousness and wickedness, using Isaiah 26 as its basic text. Chapter 5 reads Isaiah 27 through the lens of Leviathan's defeat in 27:1, taken to indicate YHWH's final securing of order against chaos. This reading indicates that the Temple is the primary location where the Isaiah Apocalypse's construal of society and society itself intertwine. The text acts to make certain social arrangements (especially surrounding the Temple) appear natural, particularly through emphasis on continuity and order. This requires the management of boundaries; certain distinctions within Israel are emphasized while others are effaced. Finally, instead of being dependent on older texts for its authority, the Isaiah Apocalypse redeploys and controls other texts, actively participating in the securing of authority for those texts and its own vision of the end.