The Temple Sermon and the term in the Jeremianic Corpus

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 93-109

  Leuchter, Mark ^a  

^a Hebrew College   (United States)

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EID: 64949116686     PISSN: 03090892     EISSN: 14766728     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0309089205057780     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. See D.F. Murray, 'MQWM and the Future of Israel', VT 40 (1990), pp. 298-320 (314-15).
2. For the Shilonite pedigree of Elohistic literature, see R.E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: HarperCollins, 1987), pp. 70-88.
3. It appears, though, that the Jerusalemite inheritance of the term derives from Shilonite circles in the earliest period of the formation of the Zion tradition, when Shilonite tropes were deployed to legitimize David's taking of Jerusalem. See M. Leuchter, 'The Literary Strata and Narrative Sources of Psalm XCIX', VT 55 (2005), pp. 20-38. The reign of Solomon created the rift between the Shilonite and Jerusalemite tradents (1 Kgs 11-12), though it is clear that measures were later taken by Josiah to mend the fences through scribal redaction of older Solomonic materials. A particularly strong example of this maybe found in 1 Kgs 6.11-13, where the Temple is cast as legitimated only through standardized Ephraimite (Shilonite) type prophetic lexemes relating to the dominance of law.
4. For the Ephraimite dimensions of the language in this critical passage, see R.R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 145-46.
5. For the Josianic appropriation of the term, see M. Sweeney, King Josiah of Judah: The Lost Messiah of Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 137-69.
6. For a thorough analysis of the Deuteronomic hermeneutics concerning the reworking of the terminology from earlier contexts, see B.M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 23-52, 98-143.
7. See also W.S. Morrow, Scribing the Center: Organization and Redaction in Deuteronomy 14.1-17.13 (SBLMS; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), pp. 221-22.
8. Though scholars have typically seen the division of judicial roles in Deut. 17.8-18.22 as separating the role of Mosaic prophet from the role of the judge in the central sanctuary, the relationship is far more organic and follows upon the apodictic/casuistic structure of Deuteronomic rhetoric (Sweeney, King Josiah, pp. 145-46)
9. with the Mosaic and Levitical figures in Deut. 18.1-8, 15-22 providing the casuistic elaboration for the apodictic prototypes of Deut. 17.8-13 (M. Leuchter, 'Jeremiah: The First Jew' [PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2003], pp. 58-69). See below for further discussion.
10. Leuchter, 'Jeremiah', pp. 33-36.
11. For a thorough examination of this process and its broader theological implications in subsequent exegetical traditions, see B.D. Sommer, 'Revelation at Sinai in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Theology', JR 79 (1999), pp. 422-51.
12. See R.E. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative: The Formation of the Deuteronomistic and Priestly Works (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), p. 8;
13. For Jeremiah's activity during Josiah's reign, see N. Lohfink, 'Der jungend Jeremia als Propagandist und Poet. Zum Grundstock von Jer 30-31', in P.M. Bogaert (ed.), Le Livre de Jérémie (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997 [reprinted from the 1981 edition]), pp. 351-68;
14. signaling the end of the Jerusalem-centric ideology that empowered his early career. This passage employs a rhetorical form that S.A. Kaufman has termed 'antithetical chiasm' which appears throughout the Jeremianic corpus; see his 'Rhetoric, Redaction and Message in Jeremiah', in J. Neusner et al. (eds.), Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 63-74 (71).
15. For an overview of scholarship representing the range of opinions, see W.M. McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah. I. Introduction and Commentary on Jeremiah I-XXV (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986), pp. 158-69.
16. See C. Westermann, Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech (trans. Hugh Clayton White; Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1967), pp. 100-15.
17. See J.R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20 (AB, 21A; New York: Doubleday, 1999), pp. 455-59, who discusses the features of the text that resonate with scribal reflexes.
18. W. Holladay (Jeremiah 1 [Hermenia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986], p. 241)
19. and H.G. Reventlow ('Gattung und Überlieferung in der "Tempelrede Jeremias"', ZAW 81 [1969], pp. 315-52 [329])
20. suggest emending the text to read 'so that I may dwell with you', but Lundbom (Jeremiah 1-20, p. 461) points out the problems with this approach. The original form of the Masoretic text is therefore the preferred reading and thus indicates the shift in understanding from the original Deuteronomic usage of the term to that used by Jeremiah.
21. McKane (Jeremiah, I, p. 160) states that the mantra is a formula, but in the context of the Sermon it is precisely the concept of a formula that is being criticized.
22. Jeremiah may here be limiting the viability of Isaiah's message in Isa. 6.3, rooted as it was in the Zion tradition that died (in Jeremiah's eyes) with Josiah. That it applies to the signifies that while YHWH himself is beyond such limitation, human-produced icons, ideas and formulas are not. Holladay (Jeremiah 1, p. 242) notes the connection to the terminology relating to Shiloh (1 Sam. 1.9; 3.3)
23. See T. Overholt, The Threat of Falsehood: A Study in the Theology of the Book of Jeremiah (SBT, Second Series, 16; London: SCM Press, 1970), p. 8.
24. Ergo Levinson's observation that eliminating cultic dimensions from regional life nevertheless retains the sanctity of regional life (Levinson, Deuteronomy, pp. 49-52).
25. Overholt (The Threat of Falsehood, p. 8) recognizes the legalistic dimensions of the term but associates it strictly with the Covenant Code (Exod. 21.1) rather than the process of Deuteronomic jurisprudence in Deut. 17.8-13, the very text that serves as the legitimizing basis for Jeremiah's Temple Sermon.
26. see M. Leuchter, 'Jeremiah's 70-Year Prophecy and the 1Dp DbA]Uu Atbash Codes', Bib 85 (2004), pp. 503-22 (512).
27. identifies these verses as a rhetorical unit, though he breaks them into a tripartite structure. For the ever-fluid nature of the Covenant, see R. Rendtorff, Die 'Bundesformel' (SBS, 160; Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1995), pp. 80-88.
28. see J.A. Dearman, 'My Servants the Scribes: Composition and Context in Jeremiah 36', JBL 109 (1990), pp. 408-12.
29. Dearman additionally discusses the relationship between these chapters and 2 Kgs 22, the original narrative parallel to Deut. 17.8-13 (see above).
30. See also K.M. O'Connor, 'Do Not Trim A Word: The Contribution of Chapter 26 to the Book of Jeremiah', CBQ 51 (1989), pp. 617-30.
31. So Lundbom, Jeremiah 1-20, p. 464.
32. Contra E.K. Holt, 'Jeremiah's Temple Sermon and the Deuteronomists: An Investigation of the Redactional Relationship between Jeremiah 7 and 26', JSOT 36 (1986), pp. 78-81, who sees the Sermon as a Dtr construction based on Jeremiah's rejection of the Temple. Holt's reading, though, is predicated upon the Sermon being a retrospective view of the events that led up to the Temple's destruction, which facilitates this understanding of the text - from the retrospective point of view, having Jeremiah inveigh against the Temple legitimizes his position as a prophet to an audience that had seen it destroyed. Much of this is based upon Holt's presumption that 'it would, of course, be impossible' (p. 77) to determine an original Jeremianic utterance in Jer. 7.1-15, a view easily adopted if the passage is categorically attributed to a later Dtr redaction. The relationship between Jeremiah's prose and Dtr prose is much more complex; the function of the Sermon and its reliance upon the process at the heart of Deut. 17.8-13 follows Levinson' s argument that Deuteronomic literature is geared to transform traditions (Deuteronomy, pp. 144-57), an element that Holt does not consider in evaluating the passage as redactional justification rather than a functional/programmatic revelation.
33. In this sense, Jeremiah is attempting to wrest the Temple away from the Monarchic institution and re-impose the sacral priestly/prophetic norms over the people as was the case at Shiloh in the days before the monarchy; see B. Halpern, 'The Uneasy Compromise: Israel Between League and Monarchy', in B. Halpern and J.D. Levenson (eds.), Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981), pp. 75-81.
34. See Murray, 'MQWM', p. 309;
35. the in 2 Sam. 7.10 is meant to apply to the people and the land, in which case, Jeremiah redirects the Deuteronomic terminology (inclusive of the term in its current context) back towards a pre-Deuteronomic (and possibly) pre-Monarchic understanding of the term, though the nation's political reality yielded a new social paradigm for the application of the term. Within the single literary unit, then, we encounter Levinson's conception of the Deuteronomic hermeneutic (Deuteronomy, pp. 149-51) via the transformation of the contextual meaning of. We should note that this rather overt and dramatic shift in semantic meaning is presented as part of an expansive ideological trajectory via the semantic methodology common to the hermeneutics of both the Deuteronomic source and the current Jeremianic vehicle.
36. See D.N. Freedman, The Unity of the Hebrew Bible (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), p. 27, for a comparative discussion of the Hosean and Jeremianic citations.
37. and Lundbom (Jeremiah 1-20, p. 464)
38. See M. Leuchter, Josiah's Reform and Jeremiah's Scroll: Historical Calamity and Prophetic Response (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, forthcoming), Chapters 4-5.
39. See C.D. Isbell and M. Jackson, 'Rhetorical Criticism and Jeremiah vii 1 - viii 3', VT 30 (1980), pp. 20-26 (21-22);
40. See Holladay, Jeremiah 1, pp. 251-56.
41. For stylistic (and keyword) similarities between Jer. 26 and 2 Kgs 22, see Dearman, 'My Servants the Scribes', pp. 408-12.
42. That Jer. 36 not only inverts 2 Kgs 22 but narrates the formation of Jeremiah's own writings yields an organic connection between the Dtr text and Jeremiah's corpus in the same manner as the 'antithetical chiasm' that Kaufman identifies throughout Jeremiah's work ('Rhetoric, Redaction and Message in Jeremiah', p. 71), furthering the prophet's original intention to have his work be viewed as an extension of the Josianic-era Deuteronomic traditions.
43. For the association of Jer. 24 with the deportation of 597, see C.R. Seitz, Theology in Conflict (BZAW, 176; Berlin: W. deGruyter, 1989), pp. 207-14, 224, 226;
44. see M. Seidel, 'Parallels Between Isaiah and Psalms', Sinai 38 (1955-56), pp. 149-72, 229-40, 272-80, 335-55.
45. For Jer. 30-31 as being shaped at one point specifically for the 597 community in Babylon, see Leuchter, 'Jeremiah's 70-Year Prophecy', pp. 519-20.
46. For Jer. 27-29 as a distinct literary corpus preserved among the Babylonian community of 597, see Holladay, Jeremiah 2 (Hermeneia: Minneapolis: Fortress Press), pp. 114-16;
47. B.D. Sommer, 'New Light on the Composition of Jeremiah', CBQ 61 (1999), pp. 646-66.
48. See J.R. Lundbom, 'Baruch, Seraiah, and Expanded Colophons in the Book of Jeremiah', JSOT 36 (1986), pp. 89-114 (101-104, 107).
49. The majority of Jeremiah's literature dating from 609-604 BCE is preoccupied with redefining the nature of Torah to include his prophetic proclamations; see Leuchter, Josiah's Reform, Chapter 7 (section 7.2, with respect to the debate over the status of Torah preserved in 8.8).
50. See Lundbom, 'Baruch, Seraiah', pp. 99-101;
51. B. Peckham, History and Prophecy (New York: Doubleday, 1993), pp. 302, 375 n. 255.
52. The function of Jer. 45 as a vehicle that transmits Jeremiah's authority to Baruch is discussed by C.R. Seitz, 'The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah', ZAW 101 (1989), pp. 3-27 (23-24).
53. Though Seitz views Jer. 45 as an exilic composition, the presentation of Baruch as the inheritor of Jeremiah's authority ('The Prophet Moses', pp. 16-18)
54. agrees with Lundbom's argument of the scribe's increasing role in the communication of prophecy ('Baruch, Seriah', pp. 107-109).
55. see Seitz, 'The Prophet Moses', pp. 26-27.