E-Book, Englisch, 465 Seiten
Maier / Dietrich / Berlin Jeremiah 1-25
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-17-043540-7
Verlag: Kohlhammer
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 465 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-17-043540-7
Verlag: Kohlhammer
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Prof. Christl M. Maier teaches Old Testament at Philipps Universität Marburg, Germany.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Especially in Jer 1–25, the prose speeches are clearly distinct, stylistically, from the speeches of figures; the latter are primarily poetic in form. Read synchronically, the prose speeches as monologues by a particular figure function to comment on the event taking place on the literary stage by depicting past events, explaining God’s action, warning the implicit readers, or predicting the future. While they retard the progress of the plot, they also strengthen the weight and thus the “point of view” of the dramatic text.
Also characteristic of the book of Jeremiah are doublets, from half verses to entire passages; these are at times absent from JerLXX.161 Likewise, recurring keywords (e.g., ??????, “lie, falsehood,” in 6:13; 14:14; 27:10; 43:2, etc., ???? ?????, “terror on every side,” in 6:25; 20:3, 10; 46:5; 49:29), and expressions (e.g., ??? ?????? ???? ????? ??? ??? ???? ???, “the sound of exulting and the sound of rejoicing, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride,” in 7:34; 16:9; 25:10; 33:11) create flashes of memory in the readers. They offer implicit models for interpretation and strengthen the impression of the constant repetition of arguments created by the stereotypical language. These keywords, doubled traditions, and other literary features will be noted and evaluated in the synchronic analysis.
On Diachronic Analysis
Every commentary is created in discussion with other scholars, thus drawing on the studies of colleagues and being located in a web of already-established theses. When, in what follows, I distinguish texts in source-critical terms and order verses or statements diachronically, in an overview and within the diachronic rubric, I am aware that I am only presenting a more or less well-founded proposal that is neither the only one possible nor Wisdom’s last word.162 The literary genre of a commentary privileges the voice of the author, who, while engaging intensively with the studies of her colleagues, is unable because of the limits of space to present that dialogue as fully as she might wish.
My interest in the diachronic analysis of the book of Jeremiah grows out of the idea that this text presents a literary discourse about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, one to which—when viewed diachronically—a variety of voices have contributed. In my view, the present text is the result of a struggle with that historical event over some three hundred years, and I am interested in how, over time, it was interpreted and sometimes reinterpreted by various tradents. I seek to illuminate this process of successive interpretation and to ground it in observations on text, semantics, rhetoric, and ideology.
What one understands to be authentic material in the book of Jeremiah depends essentially on exegetes’ concept of Jeremiah’s role in Jerusalem and Judah in the late preexilic period, and yet information about the prophet derives mainly from superscriptions, narratives, and the laments in chs. 11–20, whose authenticity is disputed. Hence the danger of circular reasoning about the question of what is typical of the prophet or what we might expect of him is quite serious. The diachronic analysis presented here is oriented first of all to grammatical and formal incoherences that classically were evaluated in source-critical terms. A further criterion for diachronic distinction lies in the “conceptual incompatibilities”—that is, in demonstrating the presence of different theological concepts. This criterion, applied by Konrad Schmid to Jer 30–33,163 is useful for recognizing revisions of chapters or books—for example, the so-called Deuteronomistic redaction, which I will refer to as historical-etiological redaction. This means that texts may be assigned to a particular redaction only on the basis of language usage and the theological concepts represented therein. Third, the diachronic analyses evaluate the literary references in a section of the text and their extent within a particular sequence of chapters, in the whole book of Jeremiah, and in other writings. This allows us to single out verses that develop a perspective extending over a chapter or the entire book. To enable a clearer overview, I will present the results of diachronic analysis in tables at the head of each segment.
Since research on Jeremiah is extensively documented in the summaries by Siegfried Herrmann, Georg Fischer, Robert Carroll, Claire Carroll, and Rüdiger Liwak,164 I can limit myself to clarifying my own position within the choir of current commentators. I will take a different route from that employed by the biographical-historical interpretation into the 1980s, most recently in William L. Holladay’s Hermeneia commentary of 1986, which sought above all to recover Jeremiah’s biography and inner life from the texts. In light of the traces of multiple redactions and recognizable brief additions extending into the pre-Masoretic version, and in view of serious challenges to source criticism coming from English-speaking scholars, it seems to me it is scarcely possible any longer to extract the ipsissima vox of the prophet. However, I do think that through a relative diachrony, it may be possible to find individual words or phrases in Jer 1–25 that reflect a preexilic perspective and thus are potentially traceable to the prophet. These will be pointed out as possibly authentic texts, in the knowledge that in these cases we are dealing with a well-founded but ultimately unprovable hypothesis.
Preexilic Passages
In my view, the oldest parts of the book of Jeremiah, probably preexilic in origin, include the announcements of a nameless enemy from the north (Jer 4:5–8, 11–20*; 5:7–11, 15–17; 6:1–7, 22–26), accusations against Judah, personified as a woman (2:14–37*; 21:13–14; 22:6–7), and laments by an anonymous individual. These last may be assigned, depending on the content or context, to the city of Jerusalem personified as female (4:19–21; 10:19–21; 22:20–23), to Jeremiah (8:14–9:1*; cf. 14:2–6), and to God (12:7–13*; 15:5–9a*) as speakers. In addition, we can recognize a series of sayings about Judean kings that judge Jehoahaz (22:10), Jehoiakim (22:13–19*), and Jehoiachin (22:24–28*; cf. 13:18–19a) negatively yet declare Zedekiah to be the bearer of hope for the Judean monarchy (23:5–6*). These were redacted after the destruction of Jerusalem so that all the kings and leading groups were equally condemned.
All these pieces are formulated poetically; at times they are hard to understand and, in the present version, are clearly redacted. Their addressees are mainly identified after the fact in introductions or comments. It is possible that these words, probably transmitted orally, were first written down in small collections. In the present text, they are primarily incorporated in a composition that laments the destruction of Jerusalem in a number of different voices and seeks reasons for the catastrophe.
The Early-Exilic Composition in Jeremiah 2–15*
As the synchronic analysis shows, chs. 2–15, incorporating preexilic elements, offer a dramatically stylized text whose different voices give expression to various aspects of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem. We are looking here at a composition from the Jeremiah tradition, mainly formulated as poetry. In its redactional sections, it comments on the preexilic announcements of an enemy, accusations, and laments, with further poetic statements that—for example, in 2:1–3*; 3:1–4*, 12–13*, 19–22—portray Judah, personified as female, and in 13:20–27* Jerusalem, with the aid of the marriage metaphor, as an unfaithful wife. In chs. 4–6, the comments emphasize that the fall of Judah and Jerusalem was brought about by Yhwh, and they justify the divine action. The question of the reason for the destruction is posed repeatedly, and it is sometimes answered in terms of Judah’s “whoredom” (3:2, 9), that is, turning away from Yhwh or placing false trust in the great powers. However, this pointing to Judah’s own guilt is less stereotypical and sweeping than in further exilic redactions. In the final text, this composition is restructured by the prose speech in Jer 7:1–8:3* and other prose texts in 11:9–13, 17; 13:1–11; 14:10–18*, and 15:1–4, so that its discursive character is easily recognizable in chs. 2–6, 8–10, but after ch. 11 it recedes into the background.
The Exilic Historical-Etiological Redaction in Jeremiah 1–25
The thesis that the book of Jeremiah experienced a thorough revision in the middle period of the exile (ca. 550 BCE), one that judged the end of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile as God’s just punishment for the failings of the ruling class as well as the population of Jerusalem, has enjoyed general consensus, at least among German-speaking Jeremiah scholars, since the work of Winfried Thiel.165 That redaction makes the sweeping accusation that the Judeans had turned away from Yhwh and toward other gods, which amounted to a violation of the first commandment of the Decalogue. They did not listen to the voice of their own national deity, they wrongly regarded the Jerusalem temple as a secure place of refuge, and they had continually grieved Yhwh. In particular, the cult at local sanctuaries and a cult site in the valley of Ben-Hinnom were branded as false. The collective, retrospective reckoning with preexilic Judah and its leadership groups is present throughout the book of Jeremiah and can be recognized by its stereotypical language, incorporating many...
