Charles contrasts First Sentences from Ford and Fretheim the differences are really striking!

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

Ford Maddox Ford in the novel The Good Soldier

The Pentateuch (that is, a book in five parts) has been a designation for the first five book of the Old Testament (and Hebrew Bible) since the second century CE at least.

Terrence Fretheim in an academic work The Pentateuch. Charles notes, and I agree, that Fretheim is a stimulating thinker. So, he poses the question of why academic writing is so often dull and lifeless. I have not much wisdom to offer there. Read his post.

He offers his own suggestion for improving Fretheim’s sentence:

In contrast to the abstract and immovable god of the philosophers, the Pentateuch portrays a god that is, in the best sense, all too human.

Which I think is good but too long, I suspect the original paragraph in a sentence led him astray ;) How about editing it to:

God is all too human in the Pentateuch.

The prophet Jeremiah. Woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle (from Wikimedia)

So, with this terrible example (from an academic hero) in front of me I am looking closer at my own first sentences from now on. I’m currently working on an article for the book on Lament and Complaint. I’m ashamed that the current first sentence reads like this:

The claim by Shakespeare’s Juliette “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” is often quoted to assert that naming is arbitrary.

Maybe:

The “Confessions of Jeremiah” present the emotionally turbulent and violent world of a prophet caught between God and family.

Of course, I’d need then to make clear by “prophet” I do not mean a historical figure, but a literary construct, yadda yadda yadda, but that might make a better start?

We looked at Jeremiah 4:23-27 in class this week and I plan a podcast on the text over at 5 Minute Bible so, since Ill use my own very literal translation there I though I’d publish it here wirth a few notes to explain it.It is intended to be as near word for word as I could get and still be English. So the repetitions stand out, it is laid out to show the terse almost staccato feel. I have noted some of my translation choices with footnotes.

²³I looked at the earth.

See!¹

It’s higgledy piggledy.²

To heaven,

but no light there!

²⁴I looked on the mountains.

See!

They are quaking.

All the hills shake themselves.

²⁵I looked.

See!

No human,

and all the birds of heaven have fled.

²⁶I looked.

See!

The field’s a desert,

and all its cities are destroyed

before YHWH,

before the heat of his anger.

²⁷For thus says YHWH:

All the land will be desolation.

But I will not make a full ending.

²⁸Because of this the earth will mourn,

and the heavens will be dark above,

because I have spoken,

I have decided;

and I have not relented

nor will I turn back

1. הִנֵּה hinneh “look!” can serve a number of functions. In old translations it was often rendered “Lo!” or “Behold!” The important part this construction plays in giving language a “biblical” flavour, illustrates its significance to Hebrew speech. 

   In narrative hinneh often marks a change in view-point:
   Ruth 2:4 where we are invited to “join” Ruth in watching Boaz’ arrival;
   Ruth 3:8, having followed Ruth to Boaz’ feet, we share his surprised awakening.

   It also serves other functions:
   affirmation (translated something like “indeed”) – Ruth 3:2 (where the “look” seems redundant in English);
   explanation “that is…” (which we would put in brackets) Am 7:1;
   call to attention (Ruth 1:15)
   marking events that happen contemporaneously - Ruth 4:1 where וְהִנֵּה suggests that, hardly has Boaz sat down, than the other Goel arrives.

2. תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ tohu vabohu
   This phrase is found most notably in Gen 1:2 (also though split by other words in Is 34:11) translators have to choose a rendering which ideally captures:
   the sense of confusion - rendered in traditional English translations “formless and void” –
   and the echoing sound.

   Various proposals have been tried; Robert Alter’s literary “welter and waste” is good. I have opted in Jer 4:23 for the more homely “higgledy piggeldy”.

Gavin at Otagosh has a post Jeremiah was no bullfrog – and since I’ve been posting on Jeremiah a lot this month, working on an article helps ;) and since be mentioned one of my posts¹ I thought I’d respond²Both Gavin’s posts are thought provoking and will stimulate you to think through your response to this troubling book.

He and I both find reading Jeremiah unpleasant, the book leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  But then our responses diverge. Gavin is a suspicious reader. He understands Jeremiah as:

first and foremost a political agitator, and the God-talk, which serves as a framework for his agenda, serves those ends

I’m not a suspicious reader of theological writings (at least not of Scripture) I tend try to see the good in every passage. The brutality and confusion in Jeremiah seems to me to express the brutality and confusion of life, and therefore I’d read the book as an attempt explore this within a Yahwistic framework. Clearly composed³ some time after the events it describes and presenting the character of the prophet as in some sense (pretty much the same sense as a good novel presents its protagonist) a model through whose life we can explore our own. That is, I see the book as a valuable work of theological art, not as a horrid piece of pro-imperial propaganda. In short, I tend to take the work at face value and ask what it seems to be wanting to achieve, rather than reading it through my suspicion that it must be up to no good ;)

But then OTOH, I’m a skeptic about history, while Gavin seems almost uncritical  about the historicity of what he reads,   seemingly seeing the book as written near the time of the events it describes and perhaps with Jeremiah having a hand in the writing, for he writes:

The book is written against a time of horrific political developments, and the prophet – a partisan for the Babylonian superpower (“my servant Nebuchadnezzar”) – attempts to make sense of it all through the time-honoured method of blaming the victim (the people of Judah) while stewing in his own self pity.

I find this interplay of suspicion and what I⁴ think of as humble hermeneutics fascinating, and never more so than when it is married to a believing approach to history. This historical approach might well be right. My stance is not to claim that we know the book is distant from the prophet, rather I am happily agnostic about history, I believe that however hard we try we can know very little about how and when the book came to be. But why be credulous about history if you are then suspicious about purpose and character of the writing?

1. …and since hopefully a little link love will get Google interested ;)
2. Here not there since his 2009 post “So Amazing a Blasphemy” that he references had comments closed.
3. By which I mean, at least, edited into something like the shapes (LXX and MT) in which we have it.
4. Well, we all like to use “good” words about ourselves.

Reading a master’s thesis reminded me of Robert Alter’s bold suggestion:

Let me risk a large conjecture, … It may be that a sense of some adequate dialectical tension between these antitheses of divine plan and the sundry disorders of human performance in history served as an implicit criterion for deciding which narratives were to be regarded as canonical.

Alter, Robert. The art of Biblical narrative. Basic Books, 1983, 34.

To someone studying alternately roughly week about:

• assertions of YHWH’s sovereignty in Isaiah
• Jeremiah’s laments

Alter’s conjecture is highly suggestive, whatever else the book of Isaiah is “about” it is concerned to explore what it means to declare the sovereignty of God in three different imperial contexts, whatever else the book (or books if we count the LXX as a different work) of Jeremiah is about it is concerned with the tempestuous and troubled relationship of God and prophet. These two works epitomise Alter’s two tendencies rather well, and they follow each other in the canon :)

The fact that both works are among the longest and most complex in the Bible should not interfere with your enjoyment of such a bold oversimplification built upon such a conjectural foundation ;) But do rip it to shreds, or admit its fascination, or just ask for clarification… I need distraction from my writer’s block…

I should point out as an addendum to my previous post it sould be noted, that if it had been in a traditional scholarly article and not an ad hoc blog post I would have referenced scholars like:

Crenshaw, James A Whirlpool of Torment Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984,  39.

Fretheim, Terence E. Jeremiah. Smyth & Helwys Bible commentary. Macon, Ga: Smith & Helwys Pub, 2002, 290.

In particular:

Lundbom, Jack R. Jeremiah: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 1999, 854f..

Give a richness of detail and scholarship that are valuable, though unsuited to the blog format (or at least to be honest to the time I can spare for what is intended to be a writers’ block breaking strategy – till my conscience got the better of me!)

In response to my podcast “The last Confession of Jeremiah: Jeremiah 20: Yahweh seduces his prophet” David Haslam asked (on Facebook) about the choice of “seduce” here. He noted that most English translations have other words:

“persuaded/denounce” (ASV & WEB),
“deceived/report” (KJV),

“coerced/denounce” (NET)

“deceived/persecute” (DRC & NIV)

From that list you will see that פתה is not easy to translate, like most words, but more than many it carries a meaning that will in other languages be rendered in different ways according to the context. It does indeed suggest persuading, though often in the sense of deceiving, sometimes coercing. In the qal it has the sense of being simple, open minded, or deceived. Its first occurrence in the Bible (Gen 9:27) it just means “enlarge”.

The piel that we have in Jer 20:7 is used 17 times:

• enlarge (Gen 9:27)
• seduce virgin girl (Ex 22:15 v.16 in English)
• coax, entice – of Delilah technique for getting information from her husband (Jud 14:15; 16:5) of tricking Ahab (1 Kgs 22:20,21,22 also 2 Chron 18:19,20,21) or of humans attempting to trick Yahweh as if he were a god (Ps 78:36)
• deceive (2 Sam 3:25; Pr 24:28)
• seduce (Hos 2:1) of Yhwh as husband persuading his wife (Israel) to return to him from her lovers
• Pr 1:10 might be either coax/entice or deceive but Pr 16:29 suggests the use of force
• Ez 14:9 is perhaps the closest usage at first sight, it involves someone deceiving  a prophet into inquiring of Yhwh on their behalf even though they are an idol worshipper, in which case Yhwh will do the same to the prophet, and even kill him.

So basically most of the usages involve persuading someone to do wrong, often by using sexual wiles. The question that remains concerns Jer 20:7. Does Yhwh here trick a gullible Jeremiah into doing wrong? or Does Yhwh here seduce Jeremiah? Clearly the sexual overtones here cannot be intended literally, but is this the picture being painted? I find it difficult to see Jeremiah in this case claiming that Yhwh has treated him like the prophet in Ezekiel, for Jeremiah is firm that he has spoken the truth. Rather, I suggest that he is claiming to be like an innocent girl (cf. his first confession 11:18ff.) whom Yhwh has persuaded to do as he wishes.

Because in Jer 20:7 that seems to me to be the choice we have: either Jeremiah accuses Yhwh of treating him like a prophet who takes payment from idolaters to give an oracle, or Jeremiah is claiming Yhwh charmed him into what he has done, like a girl seduced by a lover.

What do you think?

Confessions of the Lovelorn (image by dickuhne)

As some of you know (despite this week working on my “Assertions of YHWH’s sovereignty and imperial context in the book of Isaiah” paper – provisional but current title, watch this space ;) I am continuing my series of short biblical studies podcasts on The Confessions of Jeremiah adding two more to the series, which now comprises:

• The Confessions of Jeremiah
• Jeremiah’s first confession: Jer 11:18-12:6: Part One
• Jeremiah’s first confession: Jer 11:18-12:6: Part Two Jeremiah and Yahweh
• Jeremiah’s second confession: Jer 15:10-21: complex relationships
• Jeremiah’s third confession: Jer 17:12-18: How might YHWH respond?

On this latest one, I wonder how YOU think Yahweh might have wished to respond to this complaint from our Jerry?

PS: Plus another in the series: Jeremiah’s fourth confession: Jer 18:18-23 the continuing drama of Jeremiah and his Yahweh

In my recent request for information “The Confessions of Jeremiah: who coined the usage? I cited T. K. (Thomas Kelly) Cheyne, Jeremiah, his life and times. James Nisbet & Co., 1888, 2 as the first usage of the phrase “the confessions of Jeremiah” that I could find, and asked if anyone had more sure information.

No one did, but Stephen kindly tracked down Cheyne and sure enough the quote is there. Mysteriously it is on the second page 2 (it is not mysterious that it is, I trust Google books implicitly, what is strange is that there are two page twos, one after the other – a misprint :) BUT in the quote Cheyne is calling the whole book “the confessions of Jeremiah” not just the texts we now know by that name. There seems still to be a reference that (given I only have access to Google snippet view) looks like current usage given that it is a whole section with this title:

BUTTENWIESER, Moses. The Prophets of Israel from the Eighth to the Fifth Century. Their Faith and Their Message. 1914, 80ff.

Can anybody, either confirm this usage, or propose a more solid information on the origin of this name for a collection of some of the laments in Jeremiah?

Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly)

The more I look at the “Confessions of Jeremiah” the more puzzled I get (not by the contents, though Jeremiah is a puzzle of a book for sure) it is a commonplace of scholarship (and also to some extent of preaching) to identify a collection of passages from the book of Jeremiah as “the confessions of Jeremiah” (the exact list of passages varies a bit, but the lists are substantially the same).This usage was already common and unexplained by the start of the twentieth century. But is seems almost absent (at least from Google books, as far as they are available outside the USA) before that. The only sure example I can find is:

I’m writing that focuses quite a bit on the “confessions of Jeremiah”. I suddenly came to realise that though I know the terminology “confessions” dates before the start of the twentieth century I do not know who coined it or when. Does anyone have any evidence to help me? (My excuse for asking is that I am cut off by a three hour drive from my usual print reference works and my Google skills have so far failed to help me!)