Festal Drama in Deutero-Isaiah
Extract from a Review in Evangelical Quarterly (Volume 52, Issue 3 from 1980):
"For all its brevity, this monograph is one of the most important contributions to the study of Isaiah 40-66 to have emerged in recent years. It is not altogether easy reading; while it is perfectly well written, it is rather too concise, and one needs to ponder and weigh paragraph after paragraph. One would like to see the author go on to write a full-scale commentary on Isaiah 40-66.
Behind Eaton's thesis on these chapters lies a great deal of research on the Psalms. He acknowledges particularly his debt to Mowinckel, on whose work he built in his own monograph Kingship and the Psalms (1976). Mowinckel had argued that many psalms can only be explained on the hypothesis that a festival existed in pre-exilic Israel at which Yahweh was ritually enthroned as King. Some other scholars then argued that the Davidic king played a major liturgical role in this festival; and in his former monograph, Eaton both defended this hypothesis and sought to extend it, elaborating in particular the ideal of kingship to be found in the Psalter.
This same festival, with all its attendant rites and concepts, is now put forward by Eaton as the solution to the mystery of Second Isaiah. He maintains that this festal tradition is "determinative of the main ideas in Isaiah 40-55, including the Servant, and determinative also of the dramatic form in which they are presented" (p. 7). If Eaton is right, then there is a coherence to Isaiah 40-55 which few scholars have hitherto found; and the controversial figure of the "Suffering Servant" is firmly identified as the Davidic king. There is no doubt about the attractiveness of this thesis—not least to those readers who find a Messianic meaning in chapter 53! At the very least, it gives a powerful boost to this interpretation of the Servant, providing it with a setting which rival theories seem to lack; for all ambiguity in the presentation evaporates if the setting itself determines the role and identity of the Servant."
—
Extract from a review in Scottish Journal of Theology (Volume 33, Issue 1, from 1980):
"This is an important and exciting book. John Eaton takes his cue from Engnell's description of Deutero-Isaiah as a prophetic collection of traditions of a liturgical kind, 'not a cult liturgy, but a prophetic imitation thereof,' of which the passages usually designated the Servant Songs form an integral part. Building specially on his own previous work in Kingship and the Psalms, the results of which are summarized here, Eaton expounds Isaiah 40-55 and 60-62 on these lines. The Servant is seen as a form of Davidic hope in liturgical categories, a treatment which makes good sense of 55.3-5. The prophecies originate in a community rather than deriving from a single prophetic figure. The whole argument is set out lucidly in an eminently readable presentation, in which footnotes are abhorred and the biblical evidence clearly marshalled."
—
Extract from a review in New Blackfriars (Volume 61, Issue 720, from 1980):
"This study forms a sequel in its approach and argument to the writer’s earlier volume Kingship and the Psalms (SCM Press, London, 1976), and in fact forms part of an ongoing concern, set out in various commentaries and studies, with the nature of kingship in the Old Testament, the possibility of the reconstruction in some measure of religious celebrations, and particularly an autumnal festival, connected with the position of the king, and the exploration of the presence in Old Testament writings of the themes and language deriving from that festival.
It has long been recognized that there is an intimate relationship between the psalms, and especially the royal psalms, and that part of the book of Isaiah commonly designated ‘Deutero-Isaiah’, chapters 40-55. Here Eaton offers an exploration in a fuller form of the ways in which these chapters, taken seriatim, make use of the royal themes, themes of the autumnal festival. In one sense, this is not new; but it offers a fuller coverage of the material than has been previously given."
