The Polemics of Exile in Jeremiah 26-45

Description

Scholars typically view Jeremiah 26-45 as a collection of episodes constructed during the Babylonian exile that attempts to prove the authenticity of Jeremiah's prophetic status. But Jeremiah's prophetic legitimacy was already widely accepted during the period of the Babylonian exile. These chapters serve a different purpose, namely, to provide a response by the Deuteronomistic scribes to the rise of the Ezekiel tradition and the Zadokite priesthood that threatened their influence among the exilic population. By subsuming their work within an existing and earlier collection of Jeremianic literature, the ideology and political agenda of the Deuteronomists was fused with the literary legacy of a widely respected prophet, giving rise to a larger literary collection that left a profound and lasting impression on Israel's intellectual and social history.

Mark Leuchter is Professor of Bible at Hebrew College. His articles have been published in many journals and edited volumes and his first book, Josiah's Reform and Jeremiah's Scroll: Historical Calamity and Prophetic Response, was published in 2006.

'Leuchter is fully conversant with recent Jeremianic scholarship, and it is in his interaction with this scholarship that he generates new ideas about the text. The specificity of the evidence produced by Leuchter is impressive and will no doubt promote significant discussion among scholars and others interested in the development of the book of Jeremiah.' Jeoffrey Geoghegan, Boston College This book is well conceived, researched in detail, and carefully argued. Leuchter is largely traditional in refining the redactional features of the 'biography of Jeremiah,' and in demonstratnig its correlation with and impact on other scribal redactional efforts in the Second Temple. This book expands our possible understanding of the redactional history of Jeremiah, complicated of course by the shorter LXX text.' Leo Perdue, Texas Christian University