The prophet and the lying pen: Jeremiah's poetic challenge to the Deuteronomic school

Abstract

Recent scholarship on the poetry of Jeremiah has emphasized the prophet's association with the Deuteronomic movement of the seventh century BCE and with the reforms of King Josiah. The present study clarifies the value of this poetry as an historical artifact by advancing new strategies for understanding it as politically engaged rhetoric. Attending to Jeremiah's exegetical transformations of prior tradition and analyzing the operation of one of his favored literary devices (a type of augmented double rhetorical question), this dissertation reconstructs how Jeremiah's speech functioned as persuasive discourse in its historical context. The resulting analysis demonstrates that his engagement with the Deuteronomists was far more agonistic than has typically been recognized, that his attitudes toward national sovereignty and political expansion were negative throughout his life, and that he attempted to redefine the basis for collective affiliation in late-monarchic Judah. The pragmatic approach developed in this dissertation shows how prophetic poetry can be drawn upon for historiographical work even when the traditions which frame it are ideologically and polemically inclined.