the evangelical prophet, one of the earliest and most celebrated of the Jewish seers whose utterances have been committed to writing. Of his personal history very little is known. He was the son of Amoz (not Amos the prophet, as the fathers erroneously supposed); was married, and had two sons. The place of his abode was Jerusalem, and his dwelling near the temple. His long prophetic career included the reigns of Uzziah (partly), Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

During Uzziah...........1 or 4 years (B.C. 763 or 759.) ... Jotham..............16 ... Ahaz.................16 ... Hezekiah.............14

47 or 50 years (B.C. 713.)

The arguments adduced to show that he lived till the reign of Manasseh are of little weight. The sublime passage in the sixth chapter is not to be interpreted simply of Isaiah's call to be a prophet. This he had received before, but was now solemnly consecrated to a very lofty and im- portant display of his office. The extent to which he was absorbed by the solemn duties he had to perform may be seen in the few notices which we have of himself and his family, as well as in the exalted strains of his seraphic utterances. His wife is called a prophetess, not simply because she was married to him, but because she possessed the gift of prophecy, like Miriam, Huldah, &c. In the names which he bestowed upon his two sons may be seen the leading centres of judgment and mercy round which all his utterances were clustered.

That the prophecies of Isaiah emanated from one man has been but little doubted till the last quarter of the eighteenth century, when it became fashionable to view them as an anthology of gleanings from various quarters. A summary of the ever-varying and mutually-destructive opinions on this subject is given by Professor Alexander, in his Prophecies of Isaiah, Earlier and Later. "It is commonly agreed among them that the first six are genuine productions of Isaiah, to which it can hardly be considered an exception that chap. ii. 2-4 is supposed by many to be still more ancient. The only observable dissent from this general judgement seems to be the paradoxical opinion of the Dutch writer Roorda, that chap. ii. 2-4 is the only portion written by Isaiah, and that all the rest of the first five chapters is the work of Micah. Chap. vii. 1-16 is regarded by Gesenius as probably not the composition of Isaiah, who is mentioned in the third person. This opinion is refuted by Hitzig, and repudiated by the later writers. Koppe's idea that the twelfth chapter is a hymn of later date, after being rejected by Gesenius, and revived by Ewald, has again been set aside by Umbreit. The genuineness of chap. xiii. and chap. xiv. 1-23, is more unanimously called in question, on account of its resemblance to chaps. xl to lxvi., which this whole class of critics set aside as spurious. Chaps. xv. and xvi. are ascribed by Koppe and Berthold to Jeremiah; by Ewald and Umbreit to an unknown prophet, older than Isaiah; by Hitzig, Maurer, and Knobel, to Jonah; by Hendewerk, to Isaiah himself. Eichhorn rejects the nineteenth chapter; Gesenius calls in question the genuineness of verses 18-20; Koppe denies that of verses 18-25; Hitzig regards verses 16-25 as a fabrication of the Jewish priest Onias; while Rosenmüller, Hendewerk, Ewald, and Umbreit vindicate the whole as a genuine production of Isaiah. The first ten verses of the twenty-first chapter are rejected on the ground of their resemblance to the thirteenth and fourteenth. Ewald ascribes both to a single author; Hitzig denies that they can be from the same hand. Ewald makes the prophecy in chap. xxi. the earlier; Hitzig proves it to be later. Koppe, Paulus, Eichhorn, and Rosenmüller look upon it as a ratiocinium ex eventu; Gesenius, Ewald, and the other later writers, as a real prophecy. The twenty-third chapter is ascribed by Movers to Jeremiah; by Eichhorn and Rosenmüller to an unknown writer later than Isaiah; by Gesenius and De Wette to Isaiah himself; by Ewald to a younger contemporary and disciple of the prophet. The continuous prophecy contained in chap. xxv. 27, Knobel shows to have been written in Palestine about the beginning of the Babylonian exile; Gesenius, in Babylon, towards the end of the captivity, and by the author of chaps. xl to lxvi.; Umbreit, at the same time, but by a different author; Gramberg, after the return from the exile; Ewald, just before the invasion of Egypt by Cambyses; Vatke, in the period of the Maccabees; Hitzig, in Assyria, just before the fall of Nineveh; while Rosenmüller, in the latest editions of his Scholia, ascribes it to Isaiah himself. Chaps. xxxviii. to xxxix. are supposed by Koppe to contain many distinct prophecies of different authors, and by Hitzig several successive compositions of one and the same author; while most other writers consider them as forming a continuous whole. This is regarded by Gesenius and Hitzig, notwithstanding the objections of preceding critics, as a genuine production of Isaiah; but Ewald doubts whether it may not be the work of a disciple. Most of the writers of this school join chaps. xxxiv. and xxxv. together as an unbroken context; but Hitzig no less confidently puts them asunder. Rosenmüller, De Wette, and others set these chapters down as evidently written by the author of chaps. xl. to lxvi.; while Ewald, on the other hand, maintains that this identity is disproved by a difference of style and diction.

Although such a host of conflicting opinions springs more from a determination to rid the text of every thing supernatural, than a desire to expound it, and rests more on metaphysical arguments, which are adduced to prove all prophecy impossible, than on the philological considerations, which are rather their pretext than their reason, still, on philological grounds alone, the plea for the dismemberment of the Isaiah prophecies can be successfully refuted. For example, we may urge the title of the book itself in chap. i. 1, where Isaiah is mentioned as the author of the following writings. Nor can it be said that, from the use of the word vision, only a small part of the prophecies can be referred to in the title, for the period involved is expressly mentioned as extending over four reigns, and the word vision is used to mean a whole series of prophecies.

To regard the collection as an anthology is a purely gratuitous assumption, destitute of foundation in the history of prophetic literature, and resting on a series of assumptions equally invalid, such as the existence of two authors of the name of Isaiah, who lived 200 years apart, and whose writings somehow became hopelessly intermingled. Besides this, the assertion of Josephus, that the prophecies of Isaiah induced Cyrus to pass the edict allowing the restoration of the Jews, referring, as it does, to parts of the book eliminated by critical taste as spurious, would prove that the false Isaiah prophesied truly; for the supposition that the prophecies are ex post facto, and palmed off upon the true Isaiah, involves too many impossibilities.

A fatal objection to the creation of a pseudo-Israel is found in the fact, that though he is placed subsequent to Jeremiah, yet this latter often imitates him! The expression, Holy One of Israel, often used by Isaiah in reference to Jehovah, is also found in Jeremiah i. and li., and so striking is their coincidence, that De Wette and Von Collin are driven to the desperate extremity of declaring the passage in Jeremiah spurious! The texts in Isaiah thus imitated are in the chapters (xl. to lxvi.) deemed spurious and of later date, which we here see cannot be the case. This view is further corroborated by a passage in Ecclesiasticus, where Jesus Sirach, in the third century B.C., passes a high eulogium upon Isaiah, and gives obvious reference to the chapters which the eighteenth century has doomed to be cut out of his prophecy. No prophet in fact existed in the iron age towards the close of the Babylonian Captivity, who could have penned the classic passage from chaps. xl. to lxvi., that part of the book usually assigned to a later hand.

In attempting to show the spuriousness of parts of Isaiah, great use has been made of the fact, that a few Aramaic words and expressions are occasionally to be met with, which they regard as proving a later origin than that ascribed to Isaiah. This whole argument, the main support of Bertholdt, Umbreit, and others, has been proved by Hirzel to be fallacious. Chaldaisms occur in the most ancient of the Hebrew records; and this is accounted for by the fact that the patriarchs were surrounded by nations who spoke Chaldee. It is also curious enough, that the earlier or admittedly genuine prophecies in the collection contain more Chaldaisms than those supposed spurious and therefore of later origin. The usual plea of variety of style has little foundation, and if it had, it has little force. The same author may vary his style according to his subject, as Jeremiah does in his prophecies against Judah, when contrasted with those against other nations. Who would dream of discarding the Ars Poetica of Horace, because it contains numerous words and forms of expression not to be found in any other Horatian composition? Isaiah is admittedly one of the greatest men in Jewish literature; and an important part of this greatness consists in the versatility of his genius.

In regard to the origin and arrangement of the collection little is known. It has been urged, that Isaiah himself could not have arranged the present collection, as it contains no prophecy which can be referred to the reign of Jotham. But this may have been owing to the fact, that there was nothing to distinguish this reign from the previous one, so that chaps. i. to v. may embody the substance of such revelations as took place during Jotham's time. Some have tried to show from the headings that the work of a later hand than that of Isaiah is visible in the collection. But the only case that requires notice is chap. xvii. 1. It begins, "The oracle (or burden) concerning Damascus," but the prophecy which follows refers rather to Samaria. It is urged that a mistake like this would not have been made by the author; but there is no mistake. All prophecy is primarily for the church, and it is by reason of the relation which they may happen to bear to the church that foreign nations are noticed at all. Damascus is mentioned in the example quoted, because of the connection between it and Ephraim. The Talmudists say, that the men of Hezekiah collected the writings of Isaiah, but this is a mere conjecture founded on Proverbs xxv. 1. According to Hengstenberg, the prophecies are in the main arranged in a chronological order. The few exceptions which occur, are found, he says, upon examination, to be prophecies grouped together on account of the similarity of their contents.

Looking at his writings generally, Isaiah stands in the first rank of the prophets by the simplicity, clearness, sublimity, and freshness of his compositions. The very comprehensiveness of his writings have misled more critics, so as to suppose that several authors were necessary for what he singly accomplished. His threatenings are like a tempest, and his consolations are as the gentle words of a mother comforting her child. His authority was great in his own day, his writings were continually referred to by our Lord and his apostles, the fathers are full of his praises, and he will stand high in the Christian world when the mists which German criticism has gathered around his prophecy shall have long been cleared away and forgotten.

ISRAURIA, in Ancient Geography, a tract of country in Asia Minor, on the northern side of Mt. Taurus, which separated it from Cilicia, and bounded on the E. by Lycaonia, on the N. by Phrygia, and on the W. by Pisidia. Practically it may be considered as forming part of Pisidia, especially as strong affinities subsisted between the inhabitants of the two countries. The Isaurians were a wild and half-barbarous race, who lived by rapine and plunder. When resisted by superior numbers they fled to their mountain strongholds, where few either cared or dared to follow them. On sea they were equally formidable. Along with their Cilician neighbours they ranged the eastern seas as pirates, and at one time nearly swept the Roman flag off the Levant and adjoining waters. So formidable did they now become, that in B.C. 78, the Romans set on foot a special campaign against them, and reduced them into a kind of temporary submission. When Pompey put an end to piracy in the east, the Isaurians, though surrounded on every side by the Roman power, were still unsubdued, and by their incessant raids and forays kept their more peaceful neighbours in constant alarm. The Romans then proceeded to surround their country with a chain of fortresses, but the Isaurians broke through them and remained as untameable as before. Under the empire, army after army was sent against Isauria, which stood to Rome, and afterwards to Constantinople, very much in the relation that Circassia now does to Russia. In the 5th century their national vanity was gratified by seeing a countryman of their own appointed to the throne of the Eastern empire in the person of Leo III. From this date they gradually ceased to be formidable. The only city of importance in Isauria was Isaura, its capital. It was a large, rich, and well-fortified place, at the foot of Mt. Taurus on its northern slope. The country itself was rocky and barren. The only useful plant that throve in it was the vine, which was cultivated with care.