Review in: Interpretation
2010 64: 86
Review door: Mark E.
BiddleGevonden op: http://int.sagepub.com/content/64/1/86.full.pdf+html
Jeremiah: A Commentary
by Leslie C. Allen The Old Testament Library. Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 2008.
546 pp. $59.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-664-22223-9.
THIS VOLUME REPLACES THE COMMENTARY by the late Robert
Carroll in the venerable Old Testament Library. It includes a select
bibliography focused on works published since the middle of the twentieth
century, an introduction to the critical issues in Jeremiah studies and to the
approach taken in the commentary, the author's translation of the text of
Jeremiah with additions made by the Masoretic textual tradition in italics,
text-critical and grammatical notes, and an index of authors cited. The
introduction discusses the complicated problem of the two traditions (MT and
LXX) of the text of Jeremiah, the prominent genres in the book, the history of
the literary development that produced the canonical text, and the
macrostructure evident in the final form of the text.
In many respects,
Leslie Allen's approach to Jeremiah can be described as methodologically
conservative. This is suggested by the chief dialogue partners he identifies
(Rudolph, McKane, and Holladay) and by the six primary assumptions he
acknowledges from the outset, namely: 1) that Jeremiah is religious literature;
2) that the interpreter confronts the final, canonical form of the text; 3)
that it is nonetheless incumbent upon the interpreter to recognize the
complicated condition of the textual witnesses; 4) that the condition of the final
form of the text requires attention to redaction and source critical issues; 5)
that primary concern with exegeting the text necessitates leaving aside
questions of hermeneutics or theological application; and 6) that the
commentary will include observations regarding Jeremiah's context in the canon,
both as it develops prior biblical traditions and as it serves as the source
for the subsequent growth of tradition.
Allen's
focus on the final form of the text does not reflect a commitment to purely synchronic
reading. Instead, relying heavily on the work of Emanuel Τον with regard to the
history of the text of Jeremiah and of Louis Stulman with regard to the
character of the so-called "prose sermons" in Jeremiah, Allen
concludes that MT represents the final redaction of Jeremiah over against LXX,
which represents an earlier form of the book. This final form is characterized
by "a serial structure of closing hope with sporadic anticipation that the
MT redaction imposed on the older text, developing intimations it already found
there" (p. 14). The MT did so principally through additions in Jer
10:12-16; 30:10-11; and 33:14-26, through rearrangements of material, through "amplifications" in Jer
46-51, and through the prologue (1:1-2:3) and epilogue (52) structure.
Significantly, Allen differentiates between the "now" of the prophet
Jeremiah, the "now" of the final form of the text (i.e., the context
of the original readership), and the "now" of the commentator, a very
fruitful hermeneutical distinction. In his view, however, the identification of
the audience is not yet sufficient to identify the purpose of the book.
Although the prose sermons may seem to address the audience with the options
available to them (repentance), the reader must take care to distinguish
between the purpose of Jeremiah's preaching to the pre-crisis Judeans and the
purpose of the book. That is, in the context of the book, the prose sermons
already presuppose the outcome. Similarly, rather than offering an option to
exilic readers, the several "calls to repentance" situated throughout
the book "are set firmly in prejudgment contexts and draw implicit
attention to the fact that repentance did not take place" (p. 17). In
contrast, Allen notes "the purposeful trajectory of overriding grace that
stretches over the book like a rainbow" (e.g., Jer 1:10; 3:14-18;
12:14-17; 16:14-15; 24:6; 31:28). This trajectory was "already introduced
in the edition represented by LXX and enhanced in MT" (p. 17).
Problematically,
however, Allen's identification of the MT with the final form of the text and
his characterization of the book's "now" as the exilic period and
thus, the "now" of the audience, require greater attention to the
redaction history of the book than Allen's assumptions allow. He must account
for evidence suggesting that LXX and MT represent regional versions of the text
and that both versions, but especially the text witnessed by MT, underwent
rather lengthy periods of growth, probably continuing down into the Persian
period. He does not, in fact, seem to maintain that the book of Jeremiah, at
least not the Babylonian oracles in Jer 50-51, attained essentially its current
form before the Persian period. Although Allen attributes much of the poetry in
the oracles against the nation to Jeremiah, a judgment that seems uncritically
to apply the poetry/prose distinction as a criterion for authenticity, he finds
signs in Jer 50-51 that point to a date later than Jeremiah. These signs
include, especially, the reuse and reapplication of pre-existent prophetic
materials, particularly material from Deutero-Isaiah. If this is correct, the
final form of the LXX version of Jeremiah, which includes Jer 50-51, already
postdated the exile. Thus, if Allen's conclusion that the MT edition represents
a rearrangement, amplification, and expansion of the prior LXX version is
correct, it must have attained its final form well into the Persian period. How
would Allen's reading of Jeremiah be influenced by postulating the later period
as the context for the final form of Jeremiah?
Allen's commentary on the compositional
unit often termed the "Temple Sermon" (7:1-8:3) illustrates the
mainstream character of his analysis. He describes the unit as "a
collection of prose passages with cultic overtones" (p. 93) consisting of
five oracles of destruction (7:1-15, 16-20,21-29,30-34; 8:1-3) structured into
two literary compositions (7:2-20; 7:21-8:3). The oracle reception heading in
7:1 lends the unit a significant macrostructural role mirrored on the
microstructural level by the quotation formulas in 7:3 and 21. The initial
oracle of destruction moves from a chiastic exhortation (w. 3b, 4, 5-7; A, B,
A') to repentance and reform through an enumeration of reasons for the
impending disaster (w. 8-1 la) to the ultimate announcement of destruction in
w. 13-15. "Place"—God's (temple, Shiloh) and the people's (the land),
integrally interrelated—functions thematically in the oracle's juxtaposition of
a perversion of Zion theology and the demands of covenant fidelity. The second
oracle also focuses on "place," but exchanges the false worship of
God with the worship of false gods as the people's offense. The second set of
these oracles, which exhibits a number of verbal connections with the first
pair of oracles, also moves from a denunciation of faulty Yahwistic worship to
a charge of pagan worship. The final oracle of destruction in the overall
composition parallels the second in its treatment of astral worship in relation
to the coming disaster.
Allen adopts similar
middle-of-the-road stances regarding virtually every critical crux in Jeremiah
studies: the book preserves authentic material, but has undergone a process of
collection and redaction; it offers some reliable information concerning the
life and career of the prophet, but cannot be pressed to yield a substantial
biography; etc. Allen's contribution may be viewed, then, as a summation of
mainline historical-critical scholarship on Jeremiah at the end of the
twentieth century. In some regards, it is most remarkable for what it eschews:
its own solution to critical issues, theological and hermeneutical readings,
engagement with literary theory, and so forth. This observation is not meant as
a criticism. The contemporary trend in commentary writing leans so far in the
direction of literary novelty and theological, even homiletical, pertinence
that the kind of historical, textual, linguistic, and form-critical
interpretation and analysis Allen has produced has almost disappeared from the
marketplace. Without access to a good library, this variety of
scholarship—solid historical-critical exegesis—is virtually no longer
available. Allen fills that gap admirably.
Mark
E. Biddle
BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT
RICHMOND
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
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