Mordecai M. Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel on biblical prophecy

In 1926 Mordecai M. Kaplan proposed what he thought was a new interpretation of Isa 6. As interesting as is Kaplan's demonstration that Isa 6 is not an inaugural vision, is Kaplan's wrestling with his own inability to take seriously the prophet's distinction between his point of view and God's. A decade after Kaplan's seminal study, Abraham J. Heschel published »Die Prophetie«. Here Heschel called the ideal Hebrew prophet homo sympatheticus. Ironically, Heschel's essential message was that the exegete should not be a sympathetic but rather an empathetic reader. Now that empathic listening is an accepted mode of listening, it is possible to correct the eisegetical flaw in Kaplan's reading of Isa 6.