Framing the Oracle of a Seventy-Year Servitude: Early Contestation of the Jeremian Legacy in the Vorlage of the LXX of Jeremiah 25:1-7 (original) (raw)
This essay presents a reconstruction of the Vorlage of the LXX for Jer 25:1-7, the indictment phase of an oracle that comprises vv. 1-14 (LXX vv. 1-13). I contend that the interpretive difficulties this text poses in the Old Greek are best understood as a function of its Vorlage's early editorial history. A tradent encountered two parallel literary encodings of an original prophetic oracle and combined them to form the basis of the extant LXX witness. When viewed as a synthetic, consensus document, the serious problems of literary continuity in the LXX are resolved, and new purchase on the complicated structure of the MT of Jeremiah 25 is gained. Further, the nature of the discrepancy between the two traditions hypothesized here concerns the personal authority of the prophet himself. Hence, this reconstruction also provides valuable empirical data for considering the differing perspectives on prophecy and prophetic authority that were current in the period subsequent to the fall of the house of David.
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This paper examines the redactional intentions of Jer-MT concerning the oracles against the nations (OANs) by comparing the OANs in Jer-MT with those in Jer-LXX. Since the OANs are the most conspicuous difference between Jer-MT and Jer-LXX, this study will contribute to the understanding of the formation and messages of the book of Jeremiah. In light of space limitations, this paper focuses on three major differences: (1) different placement of the OAN block, (2) different ordering of the nations within the OAN block, and (3) the redactions closely related to the OANs in Jer-MT 25 (Jer LXX 25:1-13, 32:1-24) and 45 (LXX 51:31-35). The three areas of comparison show that the Jer-MT redactor repositioned, rearranged, and redacted the OANs and relevant chapters in order to promote a more positive outcome at the end of the book and create the tripartite structure of judgment against Jerusalem (chs. 26-44) – the nations (45-49) – Babylon (50-51). The move towards an emphasis on the judgment of the nations and finally of Babylon, the destroyer of Jerusalem, at the end of the book leads to a hopeful expectation for Judah’s restoration. Within the positive immediate literary context, the release of the king Jehoiachin at the very end of the book functions as a more explicit sign of future restoration.
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