Isaiah 40-66 - Authorship

We now move into the final section of Isaiah, chapters 40-66. No, we are not going to look at all twenty seven chapters at once, but at the question of authorship. The first thirty five chapters dealt with prophecies concerning the Assyrian threat, then we had the record of what happened when Assyria threatened Jerusalem itself. This demonstrated the authenticity of Isaiah's words. Now we are concerned with the Babylonian exile. Most of it is written as though the Babylonian exile has happened and is nearing its end, this has led many scholars to conclude that this part of the book was written by someone other than Isaiah. I do not believe this to be the case, for several reasons:

1. No convincing alternative author or authors have been found.
2. The rest of the Bible makes no distinction between the first and second Isaiah.
3. There are many linguistic similarities between first and second Isaiah, ie it looks as though it was written by the same person.
4. The argument I find most convincing is that the book makes perfect sense. As indicated above, and in earlier comments, the Assyrian part demonstrates the validity of Isaiah's prophecies. So the predictions of the future in second Isaiah can be taken seriously. Moreover, we need to remember that the release from Babylon is only a partial fulfilment of the prophecy. The main goal of the prophecy is Jesus Christ, and these events happened several hundred years later (and well over two thousand years later for the things that have not been fulfilled yet, relating to the second coming!).