Sawn in three

The Christians owned a prequel to Matthew in a "Martyrdom of Isaiah": so Warren Campbell. This was subsequently expanded by Apocryphon-of-John gnostics. On 12 April 2019, a former me mused that the core of its first five chapters, wherein Isaiah is sawn bodily in twain, be a rhetorical attack upon those who might slice the manuscript into sections. Modern scholars cut Isaiah, today: there's Isaiah up to chapter 35, then from ch. 40 Deutero-Isaiah the poet of return from Babel; and many scholars split the latter into Trito-Isaiah, also.

I don't want to get into Isaiah 36-39 tonight - and as we shall read, this post doesn't have to. Refer to Dan'el Kahn 10.1017/9781108856416.012... for now.

Latter-me now has evidence for this speculation - in Upper Egypt, where that Johannine apocryphon found its home. Some Sahidic monks found convenient to divide Isaiah - not into two, but into three. Thus, that international treasure Alan Siciu.

I still don't know that any Isaiahvic editor had a division at chs. 39/40; Siciu posits a division after verse 30:5, and then (with better evidence) after ch. 46 (but this was just to make the remainder of the text, manageable). I further know not if a multivolume Isaiah was remembered by any Jewish and oral sources, before the Christians composed the Martyrdom. Last I looked, most scholars today consider chs. 28-35 a thematic unity by the authentic Isaiah; verse 30:5 is not the best place to break the book we got. It looks, though, that the Egyptian multivolume version, which the Copts may have come up with by their own selves, be sufficient to explain the sawn-in-twain trope.

I'd thought that the trope was Greek - from the Aegaean littoral of Asia, or perhaps Antioch. Now, seeing how the Copts dealt with this Prophet, I am pondering Alexandria. Cyril himself saw no break in chapter 30.

UPDATE 1/27: Might this trope strike out, instead, against Dyophysitism...? It may at least explain its popularity alongside the second edition of ApocJas. HEBREW/GREEK 4/13/23: Qumran had split Isaiah at ch. 33 - in twain. Looks like Peshitta followed suit (at first). Is Isaiah's martyrdom a commentary upon early Jewish practice...?