| Summary: | While the relationship between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy has stood at the center of Jeremiah scholarship for over a century, the interpretive nature of this relationship has not been adequately addressed. Scholarship has more often capitalized on the existence of a parallel rather than the analysis of its nature. When scholars do address the nature of the parallels, they invariably stop short of a comprehensive treatment. This dissertation fills this lacuna by analyzing in detail every allusion to Deuteronomy in Jeremiah. The analysis focuses on both the interpretative process and the perspective on Deuteronomy embedded in each allusion. This study also addresses the compositional affiliation of the allusive passages, assigning each to pre-Deuteronomistic, Deuteronomistic, and post-Deuteronomistic layers of tradition. The literary critical division, combined with the analysis of the discrete allusions, permits the tracing of particular types of interactions with Deuteronomy in the various layers of Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. Pursuing this line of inquiry, this study demonstrates a shift in the nature of Deuteronomy's textual authority. While earlier, pre-Deuteronomistic, texts in Jeremiah allude to Deuteronomy as one prestigious literary work among others, later Deuteronomistic texts treat it as a divinely written authority. It is these later texts, ironically, that are constrained to transform or even subvert Deuteronomy when there is a desire to innovate. This study thus traces in the development of the book of Jeremiah a key shift in perspective on Deuteronomy that points to an early movement towards the text-centered religion---along with its distinctive forms of creativity---characteristic of later forms of Judaism. In addition to contributing to the field of Jeremiah studies, this project engages religious and Jewish studies more generally by exploring the nature and dynamics of religious textual authority.
|
|---|
