In this article I contend that the conceptual categories utilized by many recent scholars engaged in analyzing the idea of election in the Hebrew Bible have led to a variety of interrelated misunderstandings, both of the idea of election in general and of specific texts invoked in such discussions. This article traces out the distortions in the scholarship on this central theological concept and shows how similarly problematic trends also occur in discussions of Second Isaiah, a text frequently cited in studies of election. I conclude by offering a brief sketch of both a new possible reading of Second Isaiah and the theological implications of such a reading for the contemporary situation.
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