The Polemics of Exile in Jeremiah 26-45

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.

• Shows how scribes emerged from the shadows of the prophets and how scribal methods inherited prophetic authority • Reveals how Biblical texts consciously respond to each other • Makes a strong case for explaining the reasons why the ancient Greek version of the book of Jeremiah differs dramatically from the traditional Hebrew version

Contents

1. The hermeneutics of citation: Jeremiah 26; 2. The identification of legitimate Israel: Jeremiah 26-32:15; Excursus 1. The redaction of Jeremiah 1-25:13+OAN; Excursus 2. The re-engagement of the royal line in Jeremiah 33:14-26; 3. The standards of faith and intermediation: Jeremiah 34-36; 4. The fall of Judah, the descent into Egypt, and Baruch ben Neriah: Jeremiah 37-45; Excursus 3. The 'words of Jeremiah' and Seraiah’s colophon in the MT and LXX traditions; 5. The polemics of exile; 6. The exilic coalition between the Shaphanides and Levites.