John Meade has posted the first of a four part series discussing an important textual problem associated with Isaiah 40:7-8. He doesn’t communicate with the world via the Twitter bird, so I thought I would post a notice here and tweet for him. If you are interested in textual criticism, this series will be a helpful example of how to think through the issues. If you have questions or disagree with John on some point, feel free to leave a comment on his posts. He is a nice guy, ready and willing to interact.
Concerning his plan for the series, he says in the first post,
I will present the texts in this post and the two theories used to explain the textual situation. In a second post, I will present the interpretation of Eugene Ulrich, “The Developmental Composition of the Book of Isaiah: Light from 1QIsaa on Additions in the MT,” Dead Sea Discoveries 8,3 (2001): 288-305. In a third post, I want to convey some of the main ideas in a recent article by Drew Longacre, “Developmental Stage, Scribal Lapse, or Physical Defect? 1QIsaa’s Damaged Exemplar for Isaiah Chapters 34-66,” Dead Sea Discoveries 20 (2013): 17-50. In a fourth post, I will offer my own conclusion to this textual problem.
Brian W. Davidson 