BOOK REVIEW
Within the worshiping community, the suffering servant
language from Isaiah 53 is so commonly interwoven throughout the Holy Week
tradition that many forget the rich history of interpretation has only recently
identified the servant as a Messianic figure. From as early as the writings of the early church, the servant has been identified as one of dozens of characters,
including Job, Moses, or one of Israel’s kings.
In Disability & Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, Jeremy
Schipper, PhD, associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Temple University, Pennsylvania and a
Summer Institute of Theology and Disability faculty member adds his voice to
the hundreds of critical scholars who have examined this passage. By re-examining the textual imagery within
the societal context of antiquity and the ethical culture of the early Jewish religious
community, he suggests that the suffering servant is not an able-bodied
individual who suffers temporarily, but a person with impairments and resulting
societal disability vindicated by God.
Schipper divides his 168 page monograph (which includes 56
pages of extensive endnotes) into four short chapters. The first chapter reviews different
conceptualizations of disability.
Schipper reminds interpreters to avoid reading disability passages of
antiquity through a modern western medical model. The author painstakingly reviews dozens of
time where the Hebrew Bible’s language is replete with descriptions of the
limits of bodies – those that do not work as expected for the cultural norms --
including a variety of skin diseases, speech impediments, injuries,
infertility, and even stature. While the ancient texts rarely reflect on
causation, it does illustrate each impairment as a lived social experience. He
further suggests that in antiquity, debilitating events were very rarely
temporary – a non-impaired body was not necessarily the norm. He cautions the modern reader to refrain from
making assumptions where the scripture is silent. Schipper critiques modern
scholars too intent on historical identification for glossing over disability imagery.
In chapter two, Schipper constructs his argument. Isolating
this servant song from others, he references other ancient Mesopotamian
literature to inform the visual imagery of impairment as it relates to the isolating
social experience of disability -- including Babylonian tradition of using persons
with intellectual disabilities to receive punishments on the king’s behalf). He
suggests that while God does ultimately vindicate the servant, there is no
textual support that any impairments were cured. Finally, through an extensive
analysis of textual morphology, he rebuts scholarship which claims this passage
is about an able-bodied servant killed or imprisoned.
Chapters three and four reviews the church history of
character interpretation in Isaiah 53 – from a person with a disability in a
Biblical poem morphing to the now normate understanding of an able bodied suffering
servant type of Christ and symbol of the collective exilic community. Schipper
suggests that early translations choice of words (i.e. anointed instead of
marred) helped create a consistent contextual theology for the early church,
but lost essential imagery in the process.
He praises Jerome’s fifth century Vulgate translation as an exception –
disability language was predominate, even though Jerome’s commentary downplayed
its influence. Schipper cautions readers
not to automatically turn disability imagery into either prophetic or kingly
imagery- neither are mutually exclusive.
In his conclusion, suggests that while a disability privileged reading
is necessary, it does not negate the importance of other thematic strands of interpretation;
yet it does compel us to rethink how we imagine the ancient Biblical world.
Schipper’s handling of the ancient texts reveals he is a Hebrew
scholar par excellence; yet he readily admits his training is not in Biblical
or systematic theology. His methodology places him within the historical
literary critical circles. At times his arguments seem circular and counter intuitive
as he attempts to argue from silence when privileging a disability perspective. While he appropriately illustrates that typological
and collective arguments can reduce the richness of a text, he tends to lose
perspective on the meta-narrative of unfolding revelation-- of course, that is not his task. The wonder of the closed canon is the themes
and types which unite the meta-narrative.
Yet, I cannot fault his endeavor – the story of God includes persons
with disability--which the church often forgets. One wonders about the both/and of anointed/marred
interpreted in typological context. Does
the Messianic typology leave room for the fully divine / fully human Christ to
have bodily impairments?
I would recommend this monograph to anyone interested in
what the Bible has to say on disability and suffering. Thankfully, the Hebrew
has been transliterated in a simple format; students with a Hebrew background will
find it easy to engage in additional study.
