The Author(s) of the Book of Jeremiah

Abstract

Who wrote the Book of Jeremiah, one of the major prophetic books in the Bible? As it stands now, the book purports to record the words that the Israelite prophet Jeremiah spoke in between 650–586 BCE (Jer 1. 1, “The words of Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, one of the priests living in Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin”). Parts of this book resemble a biography, and yet details of the life of the prophet are scant and incomplete (neither a birth nor a death notice is provided), with double accounts of events of his life (such as, Jer 7. 1–14 and 26; 7. 15–25; 44. 15–30; 37 and 38). Most of the book comprises anonymous oracles addressed to the people of Judah, the chapters mix poetry and prose, and the portrayal of the man Jeremiah that emerges from its pages is contradictory and elusive. Although some biblical scholars still do not question the historicity of Jeremiah and of the content of the book that bears his name, a more critical approach to the study of the biblical text was undertaken starting from the twentieth century. This approach challenges the assumption of one single hand behind the composition of this book, and even questions the historicity of his author and his status of “prophet”, considering him a literary creation of the later editors of the book, who were active for centuries after the “times of Jeremiah”. Thus, is it possible to reconstruct the “historical” Jeremiah, the alleged “author” of the book? If not, how should we consider “authorship” relating to this book? If there was no Jeremiah, how are we supposed to intend a book that begins with the sentence “the words of Jeremiah”?