Isaiah Unbound: The Transfiguration of Zion in Tobit 13-14

This thesis wades into the recent debates over the composition and redaction of some of the latter Zion oracles in the Book of Isaiah. More specifically, it probes the reception of Isaiah 60 and Is 54:11-15 in the hymn of Tobit, and in light of that early relecture calls into question some of the more extravagant claims for redactional layering that are put forward under the rubric of the Fortschreibung or gradual supplementation of the prophetic word across a series of chronologically successive contexts, taking the mature work of Jacques Vermeylen as the standard-bearer for this tradition. These strata are held to be recoverable primarily via attention to the contradictions within the final form, though stylistic features like the use of Numeruswechsel also play a role. I argue for a more parsimonious approach to these redactional and historical questions that is grounded in a broader critical perspective in dialogue with early reception history, linguistic dating, and the ANE background to these oracles.

To that end, after a brief introduction in my second chapter I trace the imprint of Isaiah on the hymn in Tobit 13, which serves as the vehicle of the prophetic tradition that depicts Zion in metahistorical terms and thus relativizes the current building in Jerusalem. Tobit makes this latter point explicitly in his final testament, and so in my third chapter I take his reflections as the point of departure for a broader survey of restoration eschatology within Second Temple literature. Despite their theological differences, this array of texts perceives that the dramatic imagery in the prophetic corpus compels them to anticipate a fuller restoration. The fourth chapter offers a brief genealogy of modern scholarship on Isaiah 40-66 from the Fortschreibung angle before critically engaging the redactional theories and ideological metanarrative of Vermeylen in light of the reception of these oracles in Tobit, though I also bring to bear the philological and comparative ANE evidence. I conclude with some reflections on the hermeneutical implications of this study.