Servant Songs: Textual Witnesses

Abstract

The following article looks over the textual witnesses from the co-called Servant songs. This name is used in Bible studies to refer to four texts from the Book of Isaiah (Isa 42:1–4; 49:1–6; 50:4–9; 52:13–53:12), which according to researchers was written in the Neo-Babylonian or early Persian era (6th or 5th centuries BCE). These texts are important for the Christian tradition since theologians saw them as prophecies about the death and resurrection of Jesus (especially in the case of Isa 53). The article particularly examines the textual witnesses written in Hebrew: scrolls that were found in the 1st (1QIsaa and 1QIsab) and the 4th (4QIsab, 4QIsac, 4QIsad and 4QIsah) Qumran caves as well as the text of the medieval Masoretic Bible (MT). Furthermore, the ancient translations of the Bible from Hebrew, i. e. the Greek translation of the Septuagint, Theodotion, Aquila and Symmachus, the Aramaic translation of Targum Jonathan, the Syriac translation of the Peshitta and the Latin translation of the Vulgate are also studied. The article gives a basic description of their texts. Information about the dating of the textual witnesses, the level of preservation, most important manuscripts, critical editions of the text as well as a list of the major publications regarding the description of these sources are also given in the article.

Keywords

• bible
• book of isaiah