Isaiah and the computer: A preliminary report

Abstract

In the eighth century B.C.E. there lived in Jerusalem a prophet of royal descent whose name was Isaiah ben Amoż. His oracles, mostly in poetry, are concerned with the contemporary political scene dominated by the Assyrians, with the fate of the Jewish people in history in general, with the mutual relationship between God and Man, and with the ultimate fate of Mankind in the fullness of time. For Jews, these oracles are perhaps second in importance only to the Pentateuch. For Christians, they are of greatest relevance because no other book influenced Jesus to the same extent. And for humanity they are so much the expression of an idealistic Weltanschauungthat they are quoted wherever educators and statesmen try to imbue their audiences with the vision of, and the hope for, a better world. They are collected in sixty-six chapters, constituting the first and longest book of the “Latter Prophets.”