The Last Stage of the Literary History of the Book of Jeremiah

Abstract

Presumably the book of Jeremiah underwent several editorial stages for which there is no evidence in the textual witnesses. At the same time, the last stage of the literary growth of that book is reflected in the elements that the Masoretic Text (MT) has in excess of the LXX and the Qumran scrolls 4QJerb,d. These differences are not scribal, but editorial, so that the latter have been named “edition I” and MT “edition II,” with the understanding that edition II was based on a literary form like edition I. This chapter describes the many views that have been expressed in the post-Qumran era on the content, tendencies, and dating of these two editions. It points out that the assumption of “layers” may be more appropriate than “editions.” In the wake of the research of Bogaert, this paper adds an excursus on the apocryphal book of Baruch that was surprisingly appended to the short, not the long, text of Jeremiah. Presumably, when edition I was expanded with Baruch, edition II was already in existence, but maybe at a different place or in a different environment. In any event, we do not know why Baruch was appended to the short and not the long edition.