Description: The latter half of the sixth century BCE found the Jewish community fragmented and under great strife after having been conquered by the Babylonian armies. As a response to a growing despair over life in servitude and exile, Isaiah 40-66 was written. Paul Hanson examines the writings of Second and Third Isaiah. What he discovers is a poetic argument for a loving and attentive God and the rightful place of God's creatures in the unfolding of history.
Brief description: Paul D. Hanson is Florence Corliss Lamont Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 1971.