Joseph Blenkinsopp has established himself as a thorough, competent historian of Israelite religion. He turns his customary good judgement to the book of Isaiah in the three-volume series of the Anchor Bible. Unlike several other commentary projects, this one was conceived as a commentary on the entire book, to be written by one author.

Blenkinsopp, however, retains most of the classical critical instincts and this is reflected nicely in the decision to produce three volumes on the three parts of the book which, since Duhm at the turn of the previous century, have been thought to correspond to First, Second, and Third Isaiah figures. In the commentary on Second Isaiah Blenkinsopp made the argument for retaining a traditional break at chapter 40, and for highlighting the individuality of the work, and this is true as well for the final volume on Trito-Isaiah. This means that while he is conversant with newer efforts to comprehend the materials of 40–55 as a continuation or exegetical elaboration of chapters 1–39, he does not find this kind of approach persuasive for the purposes of his commentary project (he uses Williamson as his main interlocutor on this topic).

The same is true to a lesser degree for the final volume on 56–66 under review here, and this because the chapters have, even traditionally in critical circles, been viewed as an extension by disciples of the thrust of 40–55, though now in a changed historical-religious context of return from exile. (In the volume on 40–55 he described the argument for a Babylonian setting for Second Isaiah as stalemated, and so this eases some of the pressure on majoring on the distinctiveness of the final chapters 56–66).

The format of the Anchor Bible series is followed without major adjustment, and Blenkinsopp demonstrates his competence in assessing text-critical, translational, genre and religio-historical issues. It is evident that his interest lies in the religious world of the authors in their social-religious circumstances, arguing for this or that theological position over against their opponents. The text is a reflection of these arguments and this theologising is undertaken against the backdrop of post-exilic settings.

Blenkinsopp worries about an approach which would appreciate the chapters chiefly in respect of their inter-textual extension of previous Isaianic speech. He tends to think that this is too bookish a way to read Israel's prophetic discourse. The reason he sits lightly to this aspect of the Book of Isaiah can be found in the volume on chapters 40–55. There he assesses the internal (superscriptional, etc.) evidence for the book's own alleged self-assertion to have been authored by an individual, and he finds this view questionable. The book itself, moreover, never sought to be read as a unified vision, according to Blenkinsopp's view – that is, not even in some very unmodern sense, tightly connected to one authorial consciousness and intention, as conservative apologetic arguments for Isaianic authorship tended to formulate the matter.

Because his alternative to this passes by the newer efforts to describe a plenary inspiration at work, extending and hearing the older tradition pressing for a fuller ‘Isaiah’ vision, he is free to classify such readings as ‘literary’ or ‘bookish’ without wrestling with the hermeneutical dimension of Israelite prophecy in a book like Isaiah. Efforts to read the book as a unified vision do not argue for this simply because it might be fun to read Isaiah as one piece of literature, but because they want to account exegetically for obvious signs of inter-textual cross-reference, and to do so with an eye towards also understanding how inspiration and unified vision grow – historically as well as literarily – and find flower in the final form of the book.

So in some ways at stake in Isaiah commentary at present is the degree to which the final form of the material has used historical reference and religious context to a specific kind of end: the production of a literarily coherent account of that history, for the purpose of guiding a new generation of faith, outwith those same religious contexts and circumstances, and looking back to them, as refracted by the final form of Isaiah, for insight and direction. This is a hermeneutical dimension that tends to be minimised or bypassed in the name of using Isaiah to reconstruct historical contexts said to be generating the material.

It cannot be concluded that this approach is more historical than one focusing on the final form of the book, and how that book has come to be a unified vision (as the tradition has received it and interpreted it throughout the ages). It is simply a more restricted kind of historical analysis – something like the difference between knowing the mathematics of piston calibration and design, and being able to drive a sophisticated racing car skilfully and well.

Blenkinsopp focuses on one kind of historicality in this commentary, but he knows the secondary literature well and reads it competently enough that the reader will be aware of the range of newer approaches to reading Isaiah with hermeneutical sophistication. We will need to continue to press whether or not the newer hermeneutical readings can be justified by attention to a different kind of historical sense (reception history within Isaiah's own literary context and coming-to-be). Not all such readings will be persuasive and many will lose sight of proper historical proportion and reflection.

Blenkinsopp's commentary on Third Isaiah is a very welcome contribution to this discussion and brings to a close a fruitful engagement – three volumes long – with the Vision of Isaiah. Even if Isaiah cannot be understood as a coherent literary vision under constraint of some kind of unity, the same cannot be said for the three Isaiahs of the one Blenkinsopp.