10.

10. All the ancient testimony, therefore, points to Isaiah as being one book. It seems improbable, though the possibility cannot be totally ruled out, that that oneness consists simply in the bringing together of wholly disparate blocks of material, a merely accidental juxtaposition. Again, such theories as those which propose that the shortage of material in exile led to the reuse of existing scrolls, or that the prophet called Deutero-Isaiah was actually named Isaiah, and so had his work linked with that of his illustrious forebear and namesake, reflect more on the ingenuity of those who propose them than on any historical likelihood. There are, indeed, certain features which recur throughout the whole book of Isaiah (the characteristic description of God as ‘the Holy One of Israel’ is a case in point), which also make any suggestion of mere accidental linkage a most unlikely one. We are left with the conclusion that, though an authorial unity of the book of Isaiah, in the sense of it all going back to one individual, is most unlikely, there is a real sense in which we may view it as a redactional unity, that is, a work which has been brought together as a deliberately structured whole. It is to the nature and purpose of that redaction that much recent scholarly attention has been devoted.