The Double Text of Jeremiah Revisited

From the time of the Church Fathers, it has been recognized that the Greek translation (LXX) of the book of Jeremiah is shorter than the received Hebrew text (MT). Modern assessments of this textual situation have viewed the LXX as between one-eighth and one-sixth shorter than the corresponding Masoretic text of the book of Jeremiah. Since manuscripts have been found at Qumran that seem to confirm the antiquity of the shorter LXX recension, many explanations for this editorial discrepancy have focused on the phenomenon of editorial expansion within the Masoretic tradition. This chapter presents a range of counter-evidence demonstrating that the LXX has been subjected to a sustained process of editorial concision.

Textualization and the Book of Jeremiah

Textualization implies the emergence of the concept of a “text” as a specific object that needs to be handled in a specific way: an object that is conceptualized as part of a tradition of reading and interpreting—indeed, an object that is constituted by the desire to preserve and make available a specific utterance (irrespective of whether that utterance was originally produced orally or in writing). Written texts therefore are the results of the desire of an individual or a community to establish a tradition for a speech act that the individuals or the community intend to preserve. As is the case with oral texts, written texts can give rise to ritualized or otherwise significant uses of the text-object. This is the key to the understanding of prophetic collections in the Bible, and especially in the book of Jeremiah. While “tradition” (Überlieferung) is the aim of textualization, that tradition comes in various shapes and forms. The growth of prophetic books is an excellent illustration of Konrad Ehlich’s analysis of the characteristics of textualization and its purposes, especially with regard to the fact that prophetic oracles were, in ancient Israel and Judah, textualized for the purpose of being preserved and performed and of serving as the basis for Fortschreibungen.

Playing with Death

The task of identifying a single rationale for the violence on display in the book of Jeremiah may end with a coherent answer, but perhaps not a satisfactory one. That violence serves a reforming purpose seems satisfactory to theological readers in search of theodicy, as well trauma analyses that find the violence problematic but understandable. Other interpreters of Jeremiah, such as feminists and postcolonialists, struggle with the gratuitous and seemingly arbitrary nature of the violence. While not an attempt to rationalize the violence, this chapter engages the arbitrariness of the violence through a systematic analysis of four targets of violence in the book of Jeremiah: the prophet, the feminized Israel/Judah as adulterous wife, foreign nations, and the earth. By distinguishing these separate targets, the chapter examines how gender, sexuality, nationality, and speciesism intersect in the enactment of the rhetorical violence in the book. These delineations also set the stage for a central claim of the chapter, that of exceptional violence. Building upon Carl Schmidt’s notion that exceptional violence stems from exceptional vulnerability that requires the state of exception to use unrestrained violence, the chapter considers how the violence as narrated in Jeremiah not only performs this exceptionalism but also has exceptions. By examining who/what dies from the violence in the book, the chapter points out how the politics of death is played out upon different targets.

Jeremiah and Prophetic Authority

The book of Jeremiah provides a fitting opportunity for dealing with the issue of prophetic authority. While many scholars are inclined to focus on the ways in which the book of Jeremiah construes prophetic authority, to lay bare the patterns that turn Jeremiah into the authoritative mouthpiece of YHWH, in stark opposition of those who speak falsehood, the author’s query in this chapter is different. The author’s key interest is in prophetic authority as a sociohistorical phenomenon. What did the interaction of prophets and their public look like in late monarchic Judah? And how was authority bestowed on a prophet?

Jeremiah

This chapter explores the various dimensions of the narrative portrayal of Jeremiah as a traumatized prophet. The author proposes that the book of Jeremiah could be considered as an extended trauma narrative with the prophet as one of its leading characters, seeking to make sense of the exceedingly traumatic events associated with the Babylonian invasion and exile that threatened to subsume Jeremiah and his fellow Judeans. Particularly what have been called the Confessions of Jeremiah (Jer 11:18–20; 12:1–6; 15:10–21, 17:14–18; 18:18–23; 20:7–13) seem to be particularly suited to be read in terms of the rhetorical strategies identified by Laurie Vickroy, according to which characters in trauma narratives are shown to react to wound-inflicting circumstances. The author argues that these various dimensions of Jeremiah as Traumatized Prophet are not only central to an understanding of the book of Jeremiah, but also may help readers, both then and now, deal with the reality of trauma that includes the various options for sense-making amidst trauma.

Two Ancient Editions of the Book of Jeremiah

The book of Jeremiah has been handed down from antiquity in two separate editions that differ markedly from each other: MT and the Alexandrian version (JerAlT), which is represented by the original Greek translation (JerG*) and certain Qumran fragments. The Alexandrian edition is about one-seventh shorter than its Masoretic counterpart, and it deviates from JerMT both in its macro-structure and in some traits of its microstructure. A growing and well-founded consensus holds that the two editions derive from a common ancestor, with JerAlT still closely resembling this predecessor, whereas JerMT has been enlarged and restructured. This chapter characterizes the translation technique of JerG* and the value of that source as an access to its Hebrew Vorlage. Further, the essay discusses the most important reasons for the text-historical priority of the Alexandrian edition and the secondary nature of the Masoretic Sondergut (the material specific to the Masoretic edition), with the strongest probative force accorded to the pre-Masoretic idiolect, an extended set of linguistic properties distinguishing the Sondergut from the remainder of the book and, to a major part, from the entire rest of the Hebrew Bible. Finally, the chapter summarizes the particular features of the Sondergut, it reflects on the intention guiding the scribes who created this corpus, and concludes with an estimate of its date of origin.

Jeremiah’s Non-Burial Refrain

The non-burial refrain in the book of Jeremiah is often overlooked in favor of the repeated Jeremian verb pairs “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” introduced in Jeremiah 1:10. This chapter argues that the non-burial refrain serves as the book’s dominant metaphor for exile from the perspective of those left behind. The non-burial refrain testifies to conditions on the ground in sixth-century bce Judah, including beliefs about the dead and shifting burial practices, while encoding traumatic memories from the siege and fall of Jerusalem. Furthermore, the non-burial refrain functions as a vehicle by which the text of Jeremiah suggests, refutes, and revises its claims about the role of the God of Israel in the Babylonian exile. Specifically, Jeremiah explores the idea that God is responsible for the slaying and scattering of Judah, then moves to a belief that God is the one who will ultimately consecrate, inter, and gather a fallen people after cataclysmic military defeat.