title: Free will and determinism in first Isaiah: secular hermeneutics, the poetics of contingency, and Emile Durkheim's Homo duplex.
abstract: Are human beings the sovereign authors of their own thoughts and actions? Or are thought and action determined by external forces beyond their comprehension and control? For the biblical document known to exegetes as First Isaiah (chapters 1-39 of the Book of Isaiah) the answer to both queries seems to be yes. In this article various solutions are advanced to explain why this text equivocates on the question of free will and determinism. One possibility is that the document's collective, transhistorical composition may have scrambled its once coherent message beyond all recognition. Following Emile Durkheim's discussions of homo duplex, it will also be suggested that First Isaiah's confusion may be a manifestation of a deeper contradiction inherent to human consciousness-one that thus recurs across sociological time and space. Both solutions are united by their rejection of traditional theological approaches that have been brought to bear on First Isaiah and the Hebrew Bible in general. It is the movement away from such apologetic exegesis that characterizes the inchoate interpretive orientation that I call "secular hermeneutics."
authors.affiliation: Hofstra University.
authors.forename: Jacques
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Berlinerblau
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living / Q000523:psychology; D001633:Bible; D003243:Consciousness; D049690:History, Ancient; D040821:Human Characteristics; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D010684:Philosophy / Q000266:history; D012067:Religion / Q000266:history; D035621:Secularism / Q000266:history; D012919:Social Behavior; D012945:Social Values / Q000208:ethnology; D028722:Virtues