Review in: JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 42/4
Review door: J. Robert Vannoy
A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and
Homecoming.
By Walter Brueggemann. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998,
xiv + 502 pp., $32.00 paper.
This book is a combined edition of
Brueggemann’s previously published twovolume commentary on Jeremiah in the
International Theological Commentary series (To
Pluck Up, To Tear Down,
1988 [reviewed in JETS 34/3 (1991)]; To Build, to Plant, 1991). The volume begins with a
newly written brief survey of “Recent Jeremiah Study” in which Brueggemann
assesses the redefinition of Jeremiah studies emerging out of the 1986
publication of three major commentaries on Jeremiah by W. Holladay, R. Carroll and
W. McKane. It is Brueggemann’s opinion that these three commentaries, while reflecting
substantial differences in approach, nevertheless have in common a
disproportional intensity of criticism and thinness of interpretation (see his
“Jeremiah: Intense Criticism/Thin Interpretation,” Int 42 [1988] 279). In Brueggemann’s
view, the book of Jeremiah ultimately “does not belong to the scholarly guild,”
but rather to the synagogue and the Church, where it has been preserved and
read (p. xiii), although as a “public document” Jeremiah cannot be contained
within the Church and synagogue because it “purposes to address all who attend
and listen” (p. xiv).
Brueggemann
is clearly one of today’s most prolific and astute writers on matters of
hermeneutical, exegetical and theological import for the contemporary reading
of OT literature. His writings are both innovative and imaginative. Reading
them can be exhilarating and exasperating, enlightening and elusive at the same
time. Reading this commentary is no different from many other examples of his
writing. It contains a wealth of material for elucidating the underlying
theological issues with which Israel was confronted at the time of the
Babylonian captivity, and suggests ways in which these same issues reappear in
different forms in our own time and culture. According to Brueggemann this is a
commentary that is intentionally addressed to the Church and synagogue as
communities that expect “to be addressed in dangerous and unsettling ways by
the holiness that sounds here” (p. xiii). This statement is not an idle threat.
Reading Brueggemann is always unsettling! He regularly deals in provocative statements
that alternately inspire and disturb. In spite of differences that evangelical interpreters
may have with some, if not many, of Brueggemann’s theological, philosophical, hermeneutical
and literary-critical assumptions, he brings a superb gift of language to his
task and suggests numerous fresh approaches to understanding the text that very
often fit well within an evangelical framework.
While in
his introduction Brueggemann disavows adjudication between the different positions
on the composition of the Jeremiah reflected in the works of Holladay, Carroll
and Childs (p. 11), the commentary for the most part sidesteps these issues by accepting
the text as it stands, while not denying significant editorial reshaping. He views
the book as a “complicated literary composition” (p. 7), and he is skeptical
about the possibility of unraveling the specifics of the editorial processes
that gave form to the book, but he concludes that in the end what matters is
its present canonical shape. The skepticism about untangling the book’s textual
history spills over into skepticism about the “person of Jeremiah” as well.
While Brueggemann does not deny that the “Jeremiah” of the text is rooted in
historical reality, he views the persona
of
the prophet as an “intentional construction” (p. 11), and suggests that the
Jeremiah of the book of Jeremiah “is more like a ‘portrait’ that reflects the
taste and interest of the artist, rather than an objective report that is
factually precise” (p. 11). He concludes that whether Jeremiah is a
“discernible historical figure or an imaginative literary construct is not
required for this exposition, and finally adjudication of the matter is impossible”
(p. 12).
Brueggemann’s
interpretive perspective is shaped primarily by sociological and literary analysis.
He views the Biblical text as “neither neutral nor objective, but as located in,
reflective of, and concerned for a particular social context that is
determinative of its shape and focus” (p. 13). He sees the book as the reflection
of a dispute in Jerusalem “about who rightly understands historical events and
who rightly discerns the relation between faith, morality, and political power.
The tradition of Jeremiah articulates a covenant-torah view of reality that
stands in deep tension with the royal-priestly ideology of the Jerusalem
establishment” (p. 14). The sort of literary analysis that Brueggemann embraces
is not traditional source- or form-critical analysis, but rather one that
recognizes the power of language to “propose an imaginative world” without
“excessive reference to external historical factors and without excessive
interest in questions of authorship” (p. 15). He says that the interpreter
should focus on “the action and voice of the text itself ” and not be “led away
from the actual work of the text by any external reference or hypothesis” (p.
15). His interpretive method rests on the assumption that “Jeremiah’s proposal
of the world is indeed an imaginative construct, not a description of what is
nor a prediction of what will be. . . . It invites the listener to participate
in the proposed world so that one can imagine a terminated royal world while
that world still exists, and one can receive in imaginative prospect a new
community of covenant faith where none has yet emerged” (p. 17). So in
Brueggemann’s view “sociological analysis helps us see how the covenantal
perspectives of the prophetic tradition stand over against royal ideology”
while literary analysis “helps us see how Judah is invited to act faithfully,
even if that faithfulness is against the presumed interest and ‘truth’ of the
Jerusalem establishment” (p. 17). It is then when the “text is read and heard
as a critique of ideology and as a practice of alternative imagination” that
the “text continues to have power and pertinence in many subsequent contexts, including
our own” (p. 17). From this synopsis of Brueggemann’s method, it should be apparent
that imagination plays a central role in his conception of both the formation and
proper reading of the text. His approach says that the text invites the reader
to enter the imaginative world of Jeremiah’s prophetic vision and in so doing
to experience its power for contemporary living.
In the
commentary proper Brueggemann divides Jeremiah into fifteen main literary units,
each of which is given a general introduction and then detailed commentary along
with suggestions for contemporary relevance is provided for each subsection within
the larger unit. This is a commentary that every interpreter of Jeremiah should
consult when wrestling with the meaning and continuing relevance of Jeremiah’s words
for today.
J. Robert Vannoy
Biblical Theological Seminary,
Hatfield, PA
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