Date

4-29-2026

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Bible Exposition (PhD)

Chair

Richard Alan Fuhr Jr.

Keywords

Environmental archetypes, Kingship polemic, Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty, Civilizational imagery, Cosmic symbolism, Terrestrial motifs, Isaiah’s rhetoric

Disciplines

Religion | Rhetoric and Composition

Abstract

This dissertation examines how Isaiah employs environmental archetypes to advance a comprehensive kingship polemic that asserts Yahweh’s unrivaled sovereignty over all creation. The study addresses a gap in scholarship by offering the first systematic analysis of Isaiah’s environmental imagery within a unified rhetorical and theological framework. Drawing on historical, literary, and comparative ancient Near Eastern backgrounds, the study argues that Isaiah’s civilizational, cosmic, and terrestrial archetypes function as strategic instruments that dismantle rival claims to power and reorient the audience toward covenantal fidelity. Civilizational archetypes reveal the fragility of human empires and the futility of political trust. Entities such as Jerusalem, Assyria, Babylon, and the City of Chaos become symbolic constructs that expose the instability of human authority and the transient nature of imperial ambition. Cosmic archetypes elevate the polemic to a universal scale by overturning astral and mythological claims to divine kingship. Imagery of stars, heavens, and cosmic ascent is inverted to demonstrate that Yahweh alone orders creation and governs history. Terrestrial archetypes ground the polemic in the lived environment of Israel. Vineyards, mountains, rain, and wilderness landscapes serve as covenantal witnesses that reveal both divine provision and human failure, while also affirming Yahweh’s authority over land, fertility, and restoration. These archetypes form a coherent rhetorical architecture that spans the full range of human, cosmic, and environmental experience. The dissertation contributes a new taxonomy for analyzing Isaiah’s imagery, clarifies how environmental archetypes function polemically, and offers a methodological model for future work in prophetic literature and biblical theology.

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