Ecological narratives and tropes in the Book of Isaiah

Abstract

The thesis is a study of the Book of Isaiah, the Old Testament and is an attempt at exploring a striking coincidence of views between Isaiah s religious-moral ecology and secular social ecology. Isaiah of Jerusalem was a prophet of the 18th century BC. He was preaching to a nation that faced the threat of invasion by foreign powers, to be followed by deportation of people and captivity in a foreign land. Isaiah interprets the imminent danger as God s judgment against the people for a range of transgressions against the covenant obligations which their forefathers had acknowledged towards God. The focus in this study is the way the writer imagines and portrays the world of nature and its relationship to the prevailing social, political conditions. The critical position adopted for this study is that of social ecology, which lays particular stress on the impact of social, political conditions on the environment. The narrativization of events is studied along with their figurative constructions as pastoral, wilderness and apocalyptic tropes for their ecological import in the anthropocentric world of thought. The thesis has eight chapters including introduction and conclusion. The study is also an attempt at bringing the focus back to the point of human agency and responsibility for the environment newline