Review of Joseph M. Spencer, The Vision of All: Twenty-Five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016). 318 pages. $59.95 (hardback); $29.95 paperback.

 

Abstract: This review makes a case, briefly, for the unmistakable presence of Jesus Christ in Isaiah’s text, which case is based on a corpus linguistic-based description of the Hebrew Bible, equivalent designations of deific names, self-identification declarations by the Lord, and more. And, importantly, one can never set aside the multiple teachings and testimonies of our modern prophets and apostles regarding Isaiah’s prophecies of Jesus Christ. Moreover, in my view, a knowledge of biblical Hebrew helps us to penetrate the very depths and heights of Isaiah’s text.

 

I have been invited to review Joseph Spencer’s The Vision of All.1 Before moving on to the review, I extend appreciation to Joseph Spencer for researching and writing a book that deals with Isaiah’s text. Spencer and anyone who wholeheartedly seeks to understand Isaiah deserve sincere gratitude and due recognition.

Because the words of Isaiah are so important and expansive, any book about his prophecies — let alone a review of the same — can call to attention, in abbreviated terms, only a handful of factors. The book under review comprises 25 lectures (spanning 298 pages), a three-page bibliography, a one-page subject index, and an eight-page scripture index. Dealing only with Isaiah in 1 and 2 Nephi, its chapter titles include “Nephi’s Vision,” “The Nature of First Nephi,” “Approaching Jacob on Isaiah,” and “Nephi’s Plain Prophecy.”

[Page 246]In my own personal view, Spencer’s work presents certain challenges and problems, especially for Christians who maintain that Isaiah’s text contains numerous Jesus Christ-focused elements. On this, see the section of this review titled “Searching for Jesus Christ in Isaiah’s Text.”

Because the chapters in Spencer’s book were developed as informal lectures, their prose is consciously “chatty” (viii), pervasively using diction such as “cute beginning” (2), “here’s the weird part” (4), “take a stab at Isaiah” (11), “yikes” (23, 116, 141, 237), and “ack” (58). This chatty approach, according to Spencer, has “forced [him] to leave off using footnotes and other distracting scholarly tools” (viii). Spencer’s work, then, is admittedly not scholarly; he explains that the bibliography is the “only piece of scholarly apparatus in the whole volume” (viii). But even the bibliography lacks a scholarly comportment: titled “Resources Mentioned along the Way,” it lacks dozens of bibliographic entries by scholars and writers who have investigated Isaiah’s writings recorded in the Book of Mormon. I am concerned that these omissions may signify to some readers a disregard of previous works in particular or a disrespect for the normal academic process in general. The Vision of All may help some readers attain their objectives in trying to get through the Isaiah sections in the Book of Mormon; however, in my view, all readers deserve to know more about previously published insights and approaches and how Isaiah’s ancient prophecies were understood and used by Nephi in the Book of Mormon.

Rather than reviewing The Vision of All by commenting on its contents line upon line, here a little and there a little, I accept the expansive invitation extended by the book’s title to step back and reflect more widely on the long-developed artistry of conducting scholarship on the book of Isaiah. In my experience and considered opinion, academics (particularly those who belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints) who intend to explicate Isaiah’s text in books or media would do well to possess the followin...