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 JEREMIAS

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JEREMIAS

seldom succeeded by prolix and monotonous details. After what has been said above concerning elegiac verse, this difference in style can only be used with the greatest caution as a criterion for literary criticism. In the same way, investigation, of late very popular, as to whether a passage exhibits a Jeremianic spirit or not, leads to vague subjective results. Since the discoverj' (190-1) of the Assuan texts, which strikingly confirm Jer., xliv, 1, has proved that Aramaic, as the Koivr/i (common dialect) of the Jewish colony in Egypt, was spoken as early as the fifth and sixth centuries B. c, the Aramaic expressions in the Book of Jeremias can no longer be quoted as proof of a later origin of such passages. Also the agreement, verbal or con- ceptual, of texts in Jeremias with earlier books, per- haps with Deuteronomy, is not in itself a conclusive argument against the genuineness of these passages, for the prophet does not claim absolute originality.

Notwithstanding the repetition of earlier passages in Jeremias, chapters 1-li are fundamentally genuine, although their genuineness has been strongly doubted, because, in the series of discourses threatening punish- ment to the heathen nations, it is impossible that there should not be a prophecy against IJabylon, then the most powerful representative of paganism. These chapters are, indeed, filled with the Deutero-Isaian spirit of consolation, somewhat after the manner of Is., xlvii, but they do not therefore, as a matter of course, lack genuineness, as the same spirit of conso- lation also inspires xxx-xxxiii.

(C) Textual Conditions of the Book. — The arrange- ment of the text in the Septuagint varies from that of the Heljrew text and the Vulgate; the discourses against the heathen nations, in the Hebrew text, xlvi- li, are, in the Septuagint, inserted after xxv, 13, and partly in different order. Great differences exist also as to the extent of the text of the Book of Jeremias. The text of the Hebrew and Latin Bibles is about one- eighth larger than that of the Septuagint. The ques- tion as to which text has preserved the original form cannot be answered according to the theory of Streane and Scholz, who declare at the outset that every ad- dition of the Hebrew version is a later enlargement of the original text in the Septuagint. Just as little can the difficulty be settled by avowing, with Kaulen, an a priori preference for the Masoretic text. In most cases the Alexandrian translation has retained the better and original reading; consequently, in most cases the Hebrew text is glossed. In a book as much read as Jeremias the large number of glosses cannot appear strange. But in other cases the shorter re- cension of the Septuagint is not the original wording, but the deliberate condensation of the translator or a lapse in the literary transmission. The additions to the Septuagint, amounting to about 100 words, which can be opposed to its large lacunae, as compared with the Masorah, are sufficient proof that considerable liberty was taken in its preparation. Consequently, it was not made by an Aquila, and it received textual changes in the literary transmission. The dogmatic content of the discourses of Jeremias is not affected by these variations in the text.

VI. Lamentations. — In the Greek and Latin Bi- bles there are five songs of lament bearing the name of Jeremias, which follow the Book of the Prophecy of Jeremias. In theHebrewtheseareentitled I^inolli. from their elegiac character, or the 'Ekhali songs after the first word of the first, second, and fourth elegies; in Greek they are called Spflvot, in Latin they are known as Lamenlationes.

A. Positiim and Genuineness of Lamentations. — The superscription to I/amentations m the Septuagint and other versions throws light on the hi.storiral occasion of their production and on the author: " And it came to pass, aft<T Israel was carried into captivity, and Jerusalem was desolate, that Jeremias the prophet sat weeping, and mourned with this lamentation over

Jerusalem, and with a sorrowful mind, sighing and moaning, he said ". The inscription was not written by the author of Lamentations, one proof of this being that it does not belong to the alphabetical form of the elegies. It expresses, however, briefly, the tradition of ancient times which is also confirmed both by the Targum and the Talmud. To a man like Jeremias, the day on which Jerusalem became a heap of ruins was not only a day of national misfortune, as was the day of the fall of Troy to the Trojan, or that of the de- struction of Carthage to the Carthaginian, it v.'as also a day of religious inanition. For, in a religious sense, Jeru.salem had a peculiar importance in the history of salvation, as the footstool of Jahweh and as the scene of the revelation of God and of the Messias. Conse- quently, the grief of Jeremias was personal, not merely a sympathetic emotion over the sorrow of others, for he had sought to prevent the disaster by his labours as a prophet in the streets of the city. All the fibres of his heart were bound up with Jeru.salem; he was now himself crushed and desolate. Thus Jeremias more tlian any other man was plainly called — it may be said, driven by an inner force — to lament the ruined city as threnodist of the great penitential period of the Old Covenant. He was already prepared by his lament upon the death of King Josias (11 Par., xxxv, 2.5) and by the elegiac songs in the book of his prophecies (cf. xiii, 20-27, a lament over Jerusalem). The lack of variety in the word-forms and in the construction of the sentences, which, it is claimed, does not accord with the character of the style of Jeremias, may be explained as a poetic peculiarity of this poetic book. Descriptions such as those in i, 13-15, or iv, 10, seem to point to an eye witness of the catastrophe, and the literary impression made by the whole continually re- calls Jeremias. Tothis conduce the elegiactoneof the Lamentations, which is only occasionally interrupted by intermediate tones of hope; the complaints against false prophets and against the striving after the favour of foreign nations; the verbal agreements with the Book of Prophecy of Jeremias; finally the prcdilecl^ion for closing a series of thoughts with a prayer warm from the heart — cf. iii, 19-21, 64-66, and chapter v, which, like a Miserere Psalm of Jeremias, forms a close to the five lamentations. The fact that in the Hebrew Bible the Kinoth was removed, as a poetic work, from the collection of prophetic books and placed among the KHhubhim, or Hagiographa, cannot be quoted as a decisive argument against its Jeremiac origin, as the testimony of the Septuagint, the most important wit^ ne.ss in the forum of Bililical criticism, must in a hun- dred other cases correct the decision of the Masorah. Moreover, the superscription of the Septuagint seems to presuppose a Hebrew original.

B. Technical Form of the Poetn/ of Lamentations. —

(1) In the first four laments the Kinah measure is used in the construction of the lines. In this measure each line is divided into two unequal members having respectively three and two stresses, as for example in the introductory first three lines of the book.

(2) In all five elegies the construction of the verses follows an alphabetical arrangement. The first, sec- ond, fourth, and fifth laments are each composed of twenty-two verses, to correspond with the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet; the third lament is made up of three times twenty-two verses. In the first, second, and fourth elegies each ver.se begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the letters following in order, as the first verse begins with Aleph, the second with Beth, etc.; in the third elegy every fourth verse begins with a letter of the alphabet in due order. Thus, with a few exceptions and changes (Pe, the seventeenth, precedes .l//j» the si.xtcenth letter), the Hebrew alphabet is formed from the initial letters of the separate verses. How easily this .'dphabetical method can curb the spirit and logic of a poem is most clearly shown in the third lament, which, besides, had