12.

12. The existence of such a school is certainly possible, but other scholars have not been slow to point out some of the difficulties of this view. Clements, for example, notes that we know little of how such a school of authors (for whose existence there is, in any case, no certain testimony in the book of Isaiah and no independent evidence from other sources) would have evolved, or what kind of connection between different parts of the book is implied. His own proposal is that the material in chs. 40–55 was ‘intended to develop and enlarge upon prophetic sayings from Isaiah of Jerusalem’ (Clements 1985: 101). He then illustrates this point by drawing attention to a number of themes which are common to different parts of the book, in which it is possible to see a development throughout. We are in the world of redaction criticism; less interested in authors and precise historical circumstances, more concerned with the way in which particular themes and motifs developed within a specific literary tradition.