What must we know about the final editors or redactors of the Old Testament? Should we labor to undercover an agenda or psychological mindset present in the person(s) in order to understand why the final editors arranged and added to the received text in front of them? To what degree should we care about the final form of the Old Testament scriptures? Christopher Seitz writes on these issues in The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible.
The final editors do not have any moral superiority, and it is not for this reason that a canonical approach values the final form of the text.The final form of the text is a canonical-historical portrayal, and the final editors have never ceased hearing the Word of God as a word spoken through history. Their very nonappearance, moreover, is testimony to the degree to which they have sought to let the past have its own say and in the case of Isaiah, have deferred to God’s inspired Word as it presses ahead in all its accomplishing work. No morally superior, or balefully institutional, second or third Isaiahs get the final word. That would be far too thin an understanding of what a canonical approach has sought to comprehend when hearing the present sixty-six chapter book in its final form.
Christopher R. Seitz, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 53.
