What do Christians believe about Isaiah?

Answer 1

First of all, most Christians believe that the Book of Isaiah was written entirely by one author, although it is written as a personal record of events over a period of more than two hundred years. Scholars have studied the Book and now realise that it was written by at least two authors, separated in time by more than a hundred years.

Isaiah identifies himself in chapter 1 of the Book of Isaiah as the son of Amoz and says that he would write about what he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the reigns of Kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahazand Hezekaih. In this introduction he makes no claim to knowing anything about the Babylonian Exile, which occurred far off in the future and is described later in the same Book. Nor does he claim here that he would prophecy events or people in the long distant future. However, Christians see it otherwise.

Many Christians believe that Isaiah was important to Christianity because he is seen to have prophesied the birth and mission of Jesus. The most important of these is in Isaiah 7:14. This comes from a mistranslation in the Septuagint, an early translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language, which incorrectly translated this passage to say that a virgin would conceive and bear a child. The correct translation would have been "the young woman", and the young woman in question did have a child a few verses later in Isaiah. Taking a single verse out of context, the author of the Gospel of Matthew relied on this mistranslation to show that it was prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin. Various other passages in the Book of Isaiah, such as the "servant songs" are also seen as prophesying Jesus. In no case is Jesus mentioned by name, and there is nothing in any of the passages that indisputably identifies Jesus.