Lamentations, like other biblical texts, survives in a mostly decontextualized state. We have no external information about important issues such as date of composition, authorship, general provenance, or setting and nature of performance. So, if we are to know anything at all about these and other issues, it must be deduced almost solely out of the internal evidence of the text itself—aided of course by the kinds of questions posed. The indefinite nature
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