Chapter 3 How to do things with scrolls: writing and ritual in Jeremiah 36

Book section : Chapter

The Hebrew Bible is replete with references to written media. The traditional way that historical-critical scholarship has approached these references is to interpret them as sources used by the producers of biblical texts. The scrolls destroyed and recreated in Jeremiah 36 have been understood as the first two versions of the book of Jeremiah, and scholars have debated what the original contents of these scrolls might have been based upon the received text of Jeremiah. But in this paper, I consider what these references indicate about the status of written media within the thought-world of the narrative. By comparing Jeremiah’s scroll to other biblical texts in which written documents produce an efficacious outcome, I demonstrate that Jeremiah’s scroll functions as a prophetic object. It serves as a proxy both for the prophet, who is physically unable to approach the king, but also for the king himself – King Jehoiakim’s ritualistic destruction of the scroll produces a similar outcome upon his own body. Prophetic scrolls are understood to have efficacy in the ritual context. Against this background, the recreation of the scroll following its destruction is significant: this second scroll is not identical to the first, for “many similar words were added to it” (v. 32). Jeremiah 36 thus authorises scribal intervention in the production of religious writ, and in so doing, places prophetic power into the hands of scribes. Sensitivity to these scribal claims is essential in order to understand the purpose of Jeremiah 36. But more broadly, these claims can serve as a metaphor in order to remind biblical scholars of the ethical dimension inherent to biblical scholarship: scribes and scholars both make certain claims about the nature of their task, and awareness of these claims must be kept at the forefront of the interpretative endeavour.

Authors: Quick, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Brill
• Host title: The Exegetical and the Ethical: The Bible and the Academy in the Public Square. Essays for the Occasion of Professor John Barton’s 70th Birthday
• Pages: 47-65
• Chapter number: 3
• Series: Biblical Interpretation Series
• Series number: 197
• Place of publication: Leiden, The Netherlands
• Publication date: 2022-03-16
• DOI: 10.1163/9789004505490_005
• ISSN: 0928-0731
• EISBN: 9789004505490
• ISBN: 9789004505483
• Language: English
• Subtype: Chapter