The Church
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 61, No. 1 – Fall 2018
Editor: W. Madison Grace II
Edited by Else K. Holt and Carolyn J. Sharp. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 595. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. 145 pages, Hardcover, $100.00
The scholarship on the book of Jeremiah experienced considerable changes during recent decades. The primary focus in the twentieth century lay on the historical person of Jeremiah. Jeremiah Invented represents a new direction in Jeremiah studies by focusing on Jeremiah as a literary persona. The editors Else K. Holt and Carolyn J. Sharp state that the characterization of Jeremiah as a literary persona is what holds the volume together. The essays probe the various ways in which the person of Jeremiah has been construed in ancient and contemporary contexts and how ancient scribes, modern biblical scholars, and contemporary artists have refracted the Jeremiah traditions (xvi).
Joe Henderson and Mary Callaway start off this volume by exploring biases and methods that have been used in the early twentieth century to account for an allegedly authentic portrayal of the historical person of Jeremiah. Henderson interrogates the ideological biases of the works of Bernhard Duhm and John Skinner. Next, using Jeremiah 20 as a case in point, Callaway explores the assumptions of historical-critical analysis and postmodern interpretations of the so-called “confession” of Jeremiah.
Barbara Green and Amy Kalmanofsky probe distinct communicative aspects in different passages of Jeremiah. Green investigates the interactions between Zedekiah and Jeremiah within chapters 20–39. She argues that the scenes “work narratologically to make visible the political options available to the besieged people of Jerusalem” (xvi). Kalmanofsky presents a gender critique to show how shame functions in Jeremiah 13 and argues that the text metaphorizes the naked body of Israel as a disgraced woman.
The essays of Kathleen M. O’Connor and Mary E. Mills explore aspects of lamenting and suffering in the book of Jeremiah and beyond. Focusing on links between Jeremiah and Isaiah’s suffering servant, O’Connor investigates how the life and suffering of the prophet was “evocative and meaningful for members of the post-exilic community seeking to explain their suffering and claim power as survivors” (xvii). Mills, on the other hand, investigates how the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations symbolically depict Jerusalem as a textualized “site” refiguring the materiality of loss, collapse, and grief so that “mourning can be engaged productively and redemption can be envisioned” (xvii). In response to O’Connor and Mills, A.R. Pete Diamond and Louis Stulman mention an explosion of scholarly interest on Jeremiah’s “confessions” and offer several questions regarding future research.
The last three essays represent readings of Jeremiah in light of modern phenomena from artistic constructions. Stulman’s paper may be understood as a theoretical groundwork, arguing that the book should not only be studied by the standard means of critical interpretation, but our interpretation of the horrors envisioned in Jeremiah should also take into account the perspective of the dangers, the suffering, and the pain of “the world that we inhabit” (97). Thus, he pleads for a “hermeneutic of engagement” consisting of a close reading of the text, an understanding of its reception (Nachleben) as well as an immersion “in a broken world in dire need of healing” (103). Next, using Jeremiah 27–28 as a case in point, Johanna Erzberger probes structural parallels between prophetic sign acts as presented in the biblical narratives and contemporary performance art. She argues that both can be used to understand the way in which prophetic sign acts assumed in biblical narratives produce meaning (104). The productive interaction between artist, audience, and specific public context causes an immediacy from which the audience cannot withdraw themselves forcing them to either accept or reject the message presented (115). In the final essay, Else K. Holt presents an exegetical “reading” of Rembrandt’s 1630 painting of Jeremiah lamenting the fall of Jerusalem. Describing the evocative intertextual biblical references in the painting, Holt situates Rembrandt’s work “within the political and ecclesial concerns of seventeenth-century Holland” (xix).
Overall, this volume is helpful for getting an understanding of the scholarly interest on the literary persona of Jeremiah. The strengths and weaknesses of this book can be shown by looking at three specific points. The first strength is at the same time the most stimulating aspect of all essays, namely its interdisciplinary connections with structuralist analysis, trauma theory, Mesopotamian art studies, gender criticism, contemporary performance art, and more. The basic justification for this approach is given by Holt and Sharp who assume that “what interpreters miss when they read may be as important as what they ‘find’” (xix). For example, “the reader who has never thought deeply about trauma may miss significant ways in which Jeremiah can serve as a catalyst for healing within communities that have been silenced” (xix). The same may be true for politics and other social-political realities.
As far as the second strength is concerned, most of the contributions show a profound thoroughness on the development of several key issues in the history of Jeremiah scholarship. Particularly Henderson’s “Duhm and Skinner’s Invention of Jeremiah” and Callaway’s “Seduced by Method: History and Jeremiah 20” are helpful in understanding the presuppositions and agenda of the historical-critical portrayal of the historical person of Jeremiah and the role of the prophet’s “confessions” in Duhm’s and Skinner’s methodology. For example, exploring the ideological basis of these two scholars, Henderson shows that their source-critical work was fundamentally based on their adoption of the Grafian view of the decline of Israelite religion (3). Furthermore, Henderson not only shows the impact of Romanticism and poetics such as Johann G. Herder and Robert Lowth, but he also explores how Duhm and Skinner’s judgment of the authenticity of Jeremiah traditions, situated in nineteenth century German liberal Protestantism (8–10), was influenced by “particular European convictions about individual piety and religious inspiration” (xvi).
Third, the weakness of the book, which is evident in most essays following Henderson’s and Callaway’s contributions, is the lack of any explanation or definition of the concept of literary persona. For example, while Stulman (“Art and Atrocity, and the Book of Jeremiah”) and others rightly contest the old historical-critical paradigm that separates the historical and “real” Jeremiah from later “secondary” additions (96), the alternative can hardly be a complete erasing of interest in the historical person of Jeremiah from scholarly inquiry. The book surely fits the current trend of Old Testament scholarship that takes it for granted that the books of the prophets have basically nothing to do with the historical persons of the prophets. However, it still does not answer what the concept of a literary persona actually means. Does this concept mean that the person of Jeremiah is a mere invention suited to the needs of certain Israelite communities in different time periods? Is there a relationship between the historical person of Jeremiah and what the authors of the book assume as literary persona? More clarification on these issues would surely strengthened many of the valuable essays of this book.
Overall, Jeremiah Invented is a valuable volume for scholars and students joining the conversation on the person of Jeremiah in the book that bears his name.
