reading Isaiah

a month or so ago I shared the lament that I was struggling to read Scripture on my own, as part of what is an important ongoing discipline in the Christian faith. I was reading as part of Sunday worship, but beyond that it was definitely challenging to either find the time when I thought about it, or I just didn't think about doing it, getting caught up in life in general.

but praise be to God, as I started reading from the prophet Isaiah over this past week, and have, but for a day, read at least one chapter a day over these last several days. it is refreshing to read consistently - something I know in my mind and know from my studies in school - and yet to do it purely for my self and my own faith is something like a breath of fresh air.

I think Isaiah is one of the most important Old Testament books for Christians to study and be familiar with for two reasons. 1) it is one of the books of the Bible that Jesus quoted most often, not the least of which was during what is referred to as His inaugural sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth, as recorded in Luke 4, for instance. 2) there is some disagreement among OT biblical scholars as to whether Isaiah is the work of one prophet, or three distinct sections, where the chapters 1-35 or so were written by the prophet Isaiah, chapters 36-55 or so and then chapters 56-64 were written by two other groups of prophets writing in the tradition and school of Isaiah. But this last point is merely the opinion of scholars who first off have an anti supernatural bias, i.e., there's no way that one man named Isaiah could possibly have "known" such things, and there's no way God is real, and therefore God could not have communicated any information to Isaiah. Peronally, I find such a bias as nonsense. I believe that one Isaiah very well could have written the entire book, with later generations of that line or school of prophets (post-exilic) editing the book in some minor ways (per its canonization, for instance).

But I'm excited, and I hope you will be inspired to read along, or read another book of the Bible. God's richest blessings in Christ to you!