Troubling Jeremiah presents essays by Jeremiah scholars who are troubled by the biblical book and give the scholarship on Jeremiah trouble in turn. Essays seek to move beyond the Duhm-Mowinckel source criticism of the book to address matters of metaphor, final form, intertextuality, and the relationship of the book to various audiences of readers. Taken together, the 24 essays in this volume press for an end to 'innocent' readings of Jeremiah inasmuch as current models prove inadequate for troubling the very Jeremiah they have already helped to reveal.

This volume contains the proceedings of a Symposium "Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah", arranged by the Edinburgh Prophecy Network in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, 11-12 May 2007. Prophetic studies are undergoing radical changes at the moment, following the breakdown of a methodological consensus in humanities and biblical studies. One of the challenges today concerns the question how to deal with history ina "post-modern" age. The French Annales School and narrative theory have contributed toward changing the intellectual climate of biblical studies dramatically. Whereas the "historical Jeremiah" was formerly believed to be hidden under countless additions and interpretations, and changed beyond recognition, it was still assumed that it would be possible to recover the "real" prophet with the tools of historical critical methods. However, according to a majority of scholars today, the recovery of the historical Jeremiah is no longer possible. For this reason, we have to seek new and multimethodological approaches to the study of prophecy, including diachronic and synchronic methods. The Meeting in Edinburgh in 2007 gathered specialists in prophetic studies from Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and the USA, focusing on different aspects of the prophet Jeremiah. Prophetic texts from the whole Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern prophecy are taken into consideration.

C. L. Crouch provides a clear and concise introduction to the complex text of Jeremiah. Readers are introduced to the diverse approaches to the book, with attention paid to the way that these approaches differ from but also relate to one another. After a brief introduction, Crouch addresses the formation of the book, especially in relation to its Hebrew and Greek versions; the theological interests of the book and the challenges posed by attempts to link these to an actual man 'Jeremiah'; and the relationship of Jeremiah to other biblical prophets. Crouch focuses clearly on method and on approaches to the text, as is the mark of this series. This makes the book especially useful for students in the quest to navigate the diverse body of scholarly literature that surrounds this troublesome biblical book.

"All Scripture is God-breathed" and yet some parts seem rather less God-breathed than one might imagine, or even like. The prophecy concerning Moab in Jeremiah 48 is one such text, since it appears to equate the Lord's work with bloodshed and curses those who withhold their swords. How, if at all, might such a passage inform the Christian community of faith? In this sophisticated study Julie Woods identifies some salient features of Jeremiah's Moab oracle by means of a careful analysis and comparison of both the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text of Jeremiah 48. She also explores the implications of links between the Moab oracles in Jeremiah 48 and Isaiah 15-16. The focus then moves to theological hermeneutics via an examination of some recent Christian interpretations of the oracle (from Walter Brueggemann, Ronald Clements, Terence Fretheim, Douglas Jones, and Patrick Miller). Building on the observations of these scholars and the conclusions reached from her own textual analyses, Woods provides an innovative Christian reading of the oracle (including two imaginative film scripts to bring the text to life). Perhaps one of the more surprising proposals is that Easter is the ultimate horizon of Jeremiah 48.

Of the Major Prophets, Jeremiah is perhaps the least straightforward. It is variously comprised of stories about the prophet Jeremiah, exchanges between Jeremiah and Yahweh, and messages directly from Yahweh—meaning a consciousness of form is essential to the understanding of its content. At times it is written in poetry, resembling Isaiah, while at other times it is written in prose, more similar to Ezekiel. And it is without doubt the darkest and most threatening of the Major Prophets, inviting comparisons to Amos and Hosea. John Goldingay, a widely respected biblical scholar who has written extensively on the entire Old Testament, navigates these complexities in the same spirit as other volumes of the New International Commentary on the Old Testament series—rooted in Jeremiah’s historical context but with an eye always trained on its meaning and use as Christian Scripture. After a thorough introduction that explores matters of background, composition, and theology, Goldingay provides an original translation and verse-by-verse commentary of all fifty-two chapters, making this an authoritative and indispensable reference for scholars and pastors as they engage with Jeremiah from a contemporary Christian standpoint.

"Whether dealing with collective catastrophe or intimate trauma, recovering from emotional and physical hurt is hard. Kathleen O'Connor shows that although Jeremiah's emotionally wrought language can aggravate readers' memories of pain, it also documents the ways an ancient community, and the prophet personally, sought to restore their collapsed social world. Both prophet and book provide a traumatized community language to articulate disaster; move self-understanding from delusional security to identity as survivors; constitute individuals as responsible moral agents; portray God as equally afflicted by disaster; and invite a reconstruction of reality" -- Publisher description.

In the first half of the 20th century there was immense scholarly interest in the biography of the prophet Jeremiah as the background for understanding the development of the book of Jeremiah. Around the turn of the century this interest disappeared, but it has now resurfaced in a transformed configuration as work seeking to analyze the creation of the literary persona, Jeremiah the prophet. This volume examines the construction of Jeremiah in the prophetic book and its afterlife, presenting a wide range of scholarly approaches spanning the understanding of Jeremiah from Old Testament times via the Renaissance to the 20th century, and from theology to the history of literature.

This is the second of a two-volume study of the dynamics of the MT version of the Book of Jeremiah. The first volume, published in 2017, analyzed chapters 1-25 and this volume will focus on chapters 25-52 of the MT version. As with the first volume, the aim of this one is to show the reader how, by paying attention to the 'Dynamics of the Text', namely how individual passages relate to their immediate and wider contexts, a new understanding of the book emerges. Rather than a loose collection of material assembled over a period of time by a variety of hands, one can discern how the parts of the book combine to portray the dramatic unfolding of Jeremiah's prophetic vocation, and how his relationship with God and God's people form an integral part of the book's presentation of the Word of God.

*Uses both a narratological and historical-critical method to read these specific passages of Jeremiah *Demonstrates that the story of Jeremiah and Zedekiah is not the typical god prophet/bad king story found in much of prophetic literature and the Deuteronomic History *Provides an intertextual reading of the passages which connects Jeremiah to other figures in the Old Testament The book offers a narratological and intertextual reading of Jeremiah 37:1-40:6, a text that features the dynamic interaction between the prophet Jeremiah and King Zedekiah in the context of events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem. While there have been many literary studies of biblical texts, there has been little such work on the narratives in the book of Jeremiah. This fact is surprising since the Jeremianic stories are narrated in a lively and sophisticated manner and contain complex characters and vivid dialogue and action, reminiscent of texts in the Primary History which have received much more literary attention. Roncace's book begins to uncover the richness of the prophetic narratives in Jeremiah. The study focuses on issues of characterization and point of view as well as the text's connections with other passages in the book of Jeremiah and those beyond it, particularly the Deuteronomistic History. Roncace argues that the text develops complex images of both Zedekiah and Jeremiah. It is not a story of the good prophet and the bad king; times as chaotic and confusing as the final days of Jerusalem do not call for a black-and-white story. Rather the text invites both sympathy and criticism for Jeremiah and Zedekiah. Jeremiah is the embattled prophet of God; yet at times he appears deceptive and manipulative, more concerned about his own well-being than that of the people, and his message can be ambiguous and in the end is not fully correct. Zedekiah, for his part, appears receptive to Jeremiah's word and protects the prophet from others who would harm him; yet he is too irresolute to take any action to save the city. The ambiguity in the portrayals of both figures is further developed by intertextual connections. Jeremiah can be compared to Moses, the Rabshakeh, Daniel, Joseph, Samuel, Nathan, and Micaiah, while Zedekiah can be compared to the monarchs that correspond to these figures (Pharaoh, Hezekiah, Saul, David, and Ahab).

This volume advances the scholarly discussion of Jeremiah via rigorous feminist and postcolonialist theorizing of texts and interpretive issues in that prophetic book. The essays here, by seasoned scholars of Jeremiah, offer significant traction on the biblical book's construction of the persona of Jeremiah and the subjectivity of Judah as subaltern; analysis of gendered imagery for the speaking subject in Jeremiah and for the Judean social body; exploration of rhetorics of imperialism and resistance; and theological implications of feminist-critical perspectives on YHWH and other deities represented in Jeremiah. Essays here deftly synthesize historical, literary, and ideological-critical insights in service of nuanced inquiry into Jeremiah as complex cultural production. The collection represents the growing edge of recent critical thinking on Jeremiah in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. It should prove invaluable in shaping the parameters of the continuing scholarly conversation on the Book of Jeremiah.