The Formation of Isaiah 40-55
Roy F. Melugin
Walter de Gruyter
This thorough and judicious study is both a critical compendium of twentieth century form criticism of Isa 40-55 and a constructive contribution to the understanding of its literary shape and purpose. There are enough new suggestions here to stimulate the veteran critic of Second Isaiah, while for those just undertaking serious literary analysis of the book, this is clearly the place to begin.

After an introductory chapter which defines the literary problem and describes the history of its treatment, the remainder of the book is divided into two, roughly equal parts. The first is an analysis and identification of the literary genres found in the book, and the second is an examination of the way in which the genre units have been arranged in the canonical text, and of the kerygmatic implications of this arrangement.

Melugin agrees with Westermann against Muilenburg that many of the basic components of the book are traditional genres, which can be isolated from their context both by form and content. At the same time he agrees with Muilenburg and Westermann, against Begrich and the earlier form critics, that the poet has reshaped and combined the traditional, oral genres to create new poetic compositions, many of them of considerable length and complexity. Thus his treatment of the book is closest to Westermann's among his predecessors. However, he disagrees with Westermann at many points in the analysis of the genre units, and he goes beyond Westermann in dealing with the arrangement of the units into larger complexes. Here he employs rhetorical criticism, much in the manner of Muilenburg, to expose the relations among the components and, by inference, the intentions of the arranger. But unlike Muilenburg he concludes that this arranger was not the original poet/prophet but a second person, a compiler. The kerygma of the book is therefore to be viewed on two levels, that of the component poems taken severally, and that of the final composition. The resulting perception of the book's message is not radically different from Muilenburg's, but it recognizes greater diversity of emphasis within the larger unity, or, to put it another way, greater ambiguity in the message of the book.