14.

14. Even in those chapters, however, the tendency has been to discern a radical process of development. Kaiser at the outset of his commentary makes it clear that only ‘the earliest prophecies, contained in chs. 28-31, should be identified with sayings of Isaiah’ (Kaiser 1983: 2). The remainder of this material only began to be collected in the fifth century, that is, at a time later than the traditional date for Deutero-Isaiah! Vermeylen engaged in a detailed study of the stages by which the book reached its present form, and suggested that the influence of those responsible for chs. 56–66 can also be traced in 1–39, again reversing the conventional order of composition (Vermeylen 1977–8: 757). The subtitle of Vermeylen’s work gives a good indication of his view of the process of composition: ‘I saïe I-XXXV, miroir d’un demimillénaire d’experience religieuse en Israël’. An analogous approach is that of Ackroyd (1987), who examines some of the issues involved in the gradual development of the complete book of Isaiah, and then goes on to look in greater detail at chs. 1–12, in which he is able to discern 'the presentation of a prophet’—the reflection of a later generation on how the ideal prophetic figure should be delineated.