PROPHECY AND
IDEOLOGY IN
JEREMIAH

Struggles for Authority in the
Deutero-Jeremianic Prose

Carolyn J. Sharp

T&T CLARK LTD

A Continuum imprint

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Copyright © T&T Clark Ltd, 2003

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of T&T Clark Ltd.

First published 2003

ISBN 0 567 08910 X

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

An earlier version of Chapter III, Section 2 was published as ‘The Call of Jeremiah and Diaspora Politics’, Journal of Biblical Literature 119 (2000), 421–38 and is reproduced by kind permission of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I. Redaction of Jeremiah and Kings: Theories and Problems

1. Jeremianic Prose and the Composition of the Book of Jeremiah

2. ‘Deuteronomistic’ Language in Jeremiah Revisited

3. Redaction of the Book of Kings

II. ‘My Servants the Prophets’: Exegetical Observations

1. Jeremiah 7

2. Jeremiah 26

3. Jeremiah 35

4. Jeremiah 44

5. Summary of Results

III. ‘A Prophet to the Nations’

1. Jeremiah 25

2. The Call of Jeremiah and Diaspora Politics

3. Summary of Results

IV. False Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah

1. Jeremiah 29

2. Divergent Traditions about False Prophecy in Jeremiah

V. Prophets in Jeremiah, Kings, and Deuteronomy 18

1. Functions of Prophets and the Prophetic Word

2. 2 Kings 17:7–23

3. Deuteronomy 18:15–22 and the Roles of Moses

4. Hermeneutical Implications

VI. Conclusions

1. Profiles of Two Distinct Ideologies

2. The Formation of the Book of Jeremiah

3. Theological Implications for Reading Jeremiah

Bibliography

Index of Extra-Biblical Citations

Index of Authors

Index of Subjects

Acknowledgements

The present work is a revised version of my Yale dissertation. To my dissertation director, Robert R. Wilson, is due my profound gratitude for many years of his astute comments, probing questions, and support. I have learned much from his willingness to wrestle with complex textual and hermeneutical issues and from his steadfast resistance to facile solutions. I owe thanks as well to two other scholars who have influenced my growth as a scholar. Early in my biblical training, Christopher R. Seitz led by example in his vigorous and unflagging enthusiasm for seeking creative ways to address interpretive problems in the Bible. Brevard S. Childs has with grace and uncompromising intellectual rigor demonstrated the urgency of pressing the question of the meaning of the biblical text for communities ancient and modern. It is this question that underlies the present study’s attempt to understand the ideological clash of the earliest readings of Jeremiah in the Deutero-Jeremianic prose.

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