which we will try to keep in mind during our inquiry, is that it begins in the book itself. All critical commentators on Isaiah agree that, in spite of the attribution of all 66 chapters to the one author named in the superscript, the book is a collection of miscellaneous material deriving from a number of anonymous (or pseudonymously Isaianic) authors, compiled over a long period of time, from the 8th century B.C.E. to perhaps as late as the 3rd century B.C.E., therefore about half a millennium.