JEREMIAS
338
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
