Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/200

* JERDAN. 176 JEREMIAH. IiiraseU famous, a few years later, as the reporter who laid fir-st hold upon Si)encer Perceval s assassin in the lobhy of the House of Commons. He was contributor to and editor of various journals, ami from 1817 to 1850 was connected with the litcmnj Gazette, first as editor and shareholder, then as sole owner from 1842. His intimate association with the leadinj; literary men of liis time makes interesting rcadinj,' of his reminisioiices and Aiitohiofirnph;/ (4 vols.. 1852- 53). supplemented hy Men I Hine Kiioini (1806). •Jerdan heljied to establish the Royal Society of Literature (1821). and was always popular with his brother authors, who presented biin with a testimonial u])on his retirement in 185:!. when the Goveiniiient ;_'ave him a pension of £100. JEB'EMI'AD. A sarcastic expression, applied derisively to stories or speeches containing ac- counts or projihecics of misfortunes, either very much exaggerated or purely imaginary. The term is derived from the lamentations of the prophet .IcTriiiinli (q.v.). JEBEMI'AH (Heb. YirmcyOli. Yirmeyahii, Yahweh casts, perhaps in the sense of 'ap- points'). One of the greatest of the Hebrew pro- phets. He was the son of Hilkiah and a member of a priestlv familv dwelling at Anathoth near Jerusalem. 'While the earliest references to him in the Old Testament are not older than the second centnrv u.c. still it is possible, from a study of his discimrses in the book that bears his name, to follow the general cour.se of his career. The date of his birth may be fixed ap- proximately at about B.C. C50. since we know that in u.c 025 he came forward into public notice. The beginning of his activity, therefore, is almost coincident with the pnmiulgation of the Deuteronomic code (see Dklteronomt) under .Tosiah. The adoption of this code marked the triumiih of Yahwism. Jeremiah's complete sympatliv with this code, which established among other things the centralization of ahwch- worslnp in the temple at Jerusalem, is indicated bv the numerous references to it in the discourses oif the prophet. Whether or not there was a local cult at Anathoth. to which .Teremiah may at one time have been attached, it is certain that after B.f. 020 the prophet's home was at .Jeru- salem and that he remained there till the capture of the citv. I'nlike Habakkuk. who hails the new Chaldean power with joy. Jeremiah sees in it the instniment of Yahweh's wrath to punish Judah as be had punished Israel. The death of Josiah at Meaiddo in 008. which threw the country into confusion, may have led to a reac- tion against the religious reforms instituted hy the Kill", and which bv his tragic death were (h'monstrated to be futile in averting the dis- pleasure of Yahweh. Jeremiah develops into a prophet of gloom and woe. declaring that neither privcrs nor sacrifiees will avail to ward off the coming disaster, and that even the temple of Yaliweh may be wiped out. as a punishment for the long period of defection on the part of the people " The refrain which sounds throughout lii*. discourse is 'too late.' When the end came .Teremiah counseled submission to Babylonian authority He deprecated, as did .Tosiah (q.v.), reliance 'upon Esvpt. and he did not favor the attempt of Zedekiah to throw nfT the Babylonian yoke In assuminsr this attitude .Teremiah was ^ided hy his stern hut profound conviction that the people of Yahweh had been guilty and must sulVer me eonse(pienccs. Naturally such a position rendered him exceedingly unpopular. He was denounced as manifesting lack of jialriot- i^ni. and no doulit endured much suH'ering and persci'Ution. even though the accounts of his martyrdom were subsequently exaggerated. After the destruction of Jerusalem in u.c. 58(i he went to Kgypt, if we may rely upon the statement embodied in the editorial revision of his utter- ances (chap, xliii. C, 7). JEREMIAH, liooK of. The second of the four major prophets. The Book of Jeremiah, wliile not as complex in its structure as that of Isaiah (q.v.), nevertheless is believed by critics to be a composite production, consisting of several independent series of documents as- cribed to Jeremiah, which have been combined by a series .of editions into a tictitious unit by means of historical narratives introiiuced as illustrations of the circumstances under whieh the discourses were delivered and the conditions to which they refer. In the book itself. Barncli (q.v.) is introduced as the secretary to whom .Jeremiah dictates discourses (chap, xx.xvi., 4 sqq.), but it is quite out of the question to suppose that Baiuch produced the Book of Jere- miah. Indeed, the proportion of discourses in the hook that can with definiteness be ascribed to Jeremiali is not large, and it is quite unlikely that we have a single discoui-se preserved in the form in which Jeremiah delivered it. In its present form, the book is a compilation intended chiefly to illustrate the religious and political condi'tions in Palestine during the last decades of the .Judean kingdom. It is a mixture of narrative and prophecies with poetical frag- ments, portions of psalms, elegies, and gnomic poems interspersed. The compilation may be divided into seven smaller collections, and" it would seem that each of these ecdlections once had an independent existence: (1) Chapters i.-xx. ; (2) xxi.-xxiv.; (3) xxv.. xlvi.-li.; (4) xxvi.-xxix.; (5) xxx.- xxxiii.; (0) xxxiv.-xxxix.,xlv.: (7) xl.-xliv. Chap- ter lii. is an appendix derived from II. Kings xxv. The compilation of none of these collections can be earlier than the third century, for in all of them are references to events that carry us cfnsiderablv beyond the days of Xehemiah. From the thirtieth chapter on. the genuinely .Jeremiaiiic utterances are comparatively few in number. The entire group of oracles against the nations (chap- ters xlvi.-li.) belongs to the Persian period, and some of the oracles may even be as late as the Asmoneans. The chief utterances of .Jeremiah are to be found accordingly in the first, second, and fourth divisions, but in all cases they have been amplified and in part adapted to later con- ditions. The aim of the series of writers in thus ])roducing smaller or larger collections of .Jere- mianic utterances, with historical introductions and with additions of all kinds, was the same that actuated the compilers who gradually pro- duced the Book of Isaiah, namely, to furnish food for religious thought, and. above all. con- solation to the pious circles of the struggling Jewish community in .Jerusalem. The sufTerings of this community, first harassed by Persian rulers, and then forced to submit to Greek supremacy, were looked upon as a continuous atonement for the sins of the past, under the