Isaiah and His Audience: The Structure and Meaning of Isaiah 1-12 (review)

Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 141 Reviews against 166 subordinations, whereas the essay exhibits 239 subordinations as against 169 coordinations. Thus, coordination and subordination serve as clear stylistic markers. Another finding is that asyndetic coordination predominates in expressive-emotive texts. A similar analysis of a story and an essay by Y. H. Brenner (1881-1921), a very idiosyncratic stylist, shows more coordination than subordination in both story and essay, although it is much more pronounced in the story, as expected. From the lengthy excerpts from Feierberg, the reader cannot but notice the striking difference between Feierberg's Hebrew and contemporary Israeli Hebrew. It would be interesting and instructive to check if coordination and subordination still serve as stylistic markers in contemporary Israeli literature. This is a truly pioneering and important work. One drawback, though, is that sometimes too much new information and new concepts are introduced in too short a space. It is hoped that enlarging and elucidating in these areas in a future edition will help to make this book reach the larger audience it deserves. Readers disappointed that this book is too short, may now supplement it with an excellent collection of papers edited by the author and Menahem Zevi Kaddari, "Stylistics and the Literary Text," published as a special issue of "Hebrew Linguistics" (No. 28-29-30, January 1990, Bar-Ilan University Press). Shlomo Lederman University ofMassachusetts-Amherst Amherst,MA ISAIAH AND HIS AUDIENCE: THE STRUCTURE AND MEANING OF ISAIAH 1-12. By Yehoshua Gitay. Studia Semitica Neerlandica 30. pp. ix + 283. Assen, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1991. Paper, $29.50. In this book Gitay argues that Isaiah 1-12 is composed of thirteen public discourses of Isaiah delivered over a short period of time, addressing events connected with the Syro-Ephraimite War. The aim of the book is to offer a rhetorical analysis of Isaiah's addresses from an Aristotelian perspective in order to demonstrate how they have been crafted as persuasive speech addressed to an audience hostile to Isaiah's point of view that warfare is to be understood as a matter of divine causality. Such an analysis reveals Isaiah as a creative individual, as an artist (p. 8) and a "profound thinker" (p. 235). Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 142 Reviews While Gitay observes that "the speeches, as a rule, were not planned in advance in Isaiah's study" (p. 11), he maintains that they have an orderly arrangement. The first seven speeches (1:2-20; 1:21-2:5; 2:6-22; 3:1-15; 3:16-4:6; 5:1-30; 6:1-13) give the reasons for the Syro-Ephraimite War, that is, divine judgment occasioned by "the social-moral misbehavior of the leadership of Judah" (p. 235). The eighth speech (7:1-25) "deals with the question of Judah's political orientation during the Syro-Ephraimite War" (p. 235), that is, the stance vis-a-vis Assyria. The final five speeches (8:1-20; 8:21-9:6; 9:7-10:4; 10:5-32; 10:33-12:6) deal with the results of the War, especially the reasons for Assyria's success. According to Gitay, biblical scholarship during this century has failed to understand Isaiah as orator because it has viewed the basic form of prophetic speech as "a short dogmatic oracle of judgment" (p. 2), and this has led to "the sporadic and isolated reading of the material" (p. 121). In my opinion the major strength of Gitay's study lies in his alternative way of reading the book, that is, his understanding of smaller units in terms of their larger literary whole rather than as isolated units of earlier prophetic speech or as editorial additions. His rhetorical analysis, then, offers important insight into how to read a text that earlier scholarship judged to be unreadable in its present form. Isaian studies appears to be emerging as pluriform, replacing the uniformity of the past, and Gitay's study is welcomed in this cacophony of voices. Gitay critiques earlier source criticism and more recent redactional /canonical studies in order to substantiate his claim that Isaiah 1-12 contains actual speeches of an eighth-century Isaiah delivered in 734/3733 /2 B...