Isaiah and the Computer

AS early as the 12th century, Hebrew scholars began to question whether the entire Book of Isaiah was written by the same author. Liberal Scripture scholars have long agreed that there are at least two distinct collections in Isaiah, one comprising the first 39 chapters, the other the remaining 27. Now modern technology has ratified that thesis.

Using an Elliott 503 computer, Yehuda Radday, a lecturer in biblical studies and Hebrew in Haifa, produced a 175-page statistical linguistics analysis of Isaiah. He applied 18 standard tests to measure such features as word length and vocabulary eccentricity. An additional test, devised by Radday, measured Isaiah's war idioms and metaphors. In the first 39 chapters such terms accounted for 8.65% of all nouns, v. only 5.72% in the next 27 chapters --which supports the theory that the first author or group of authors lived during the violent period of the Assyrians, the second during the peaceful reign of the Persians, 200 to 250 years later. All 19 tests turned up significant differences between the two parts. Radday's conclusion: the probability that one prophet wrote the book is one in 100,000.

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