Becker, Uwe: Jeremia im Spiegel des Buches

Uwe Becker offers a comprehensive redaction-critical analysis of key texts in Jeremiah 1-36 in order to draw a completely new overall picture of the development of the Book of Jeremiah. At the beginning of the development was the proclamation of the "historical Jeremiah", who sees an as yet undetermined disaster approaching "from the north" (Jer 4-6) and expresses a restrained, regretful criticism of the last kings of Judah (Jer 21-22). In the course of the book‘s genesis, the literary prophet, the "prophetic persona", identifies more and more with his task: he is called by God himself to proclaim the word (Jer 1), becomes part of the proclamation with his own body in the sign acts (Jer 13; 18; 19; 32), until he finally suffers from the prophetic task and is persecuted (Jer 36). Although the development outlined here began with the historical Jeremiah, it is to a far greater extent than previously thought the result of complex updating processes. At the same time, they reflect striking changes in the image of the prophet, as can be seen in the genesis of Jer 27-29, a multi-layered discourse text on "true" and "false" prophecy. The historical Jeremiah, who in his presumably authentic words still represents the state religion of Judah, becomes in the course of the book‘s development the preacher of the inevitable judgment of God and an insistent admonisher of Torah obedience, before he (again) becomes the herald and representative of new salvation at the end (Jer 30f.). With his analyses, Uwe Becker combines a new thesis on the emergence of the prophecy of doom in Judah: it is not to be placed as early as the 8th century, but begins with Jeremiah as the prophet of transition in the late state epoch of Judah.