Andrew Macintosh’s “The Spider in the Septuagint Version of Psalm XC.9” (JTS, 1972). He suggests that the OG originally read as τὰ ἔτη ἡμῶν ὡς ἐμελέων, with μελετᾶν as a normal Greek equivalent of Hebrew הגה (sigh). But ἀράχνην may have crept into the text, perhaps via a marginal note, on account of the similar…

Carroll Stuhlmueller writes:Book One (Pss. 1-41) consists almost exclusively of ‘Psalms of David’ (except Pss. 1-2, 10, and 33) and is dominated by laments. Book One reflects the decadent or, at best, the despondent state of religion after the return from exile, as seen in Haggai and Isa. 56:9-57:13; 63:7-64:11. The fact that the royal…

Article The first important similarity between these two texts is that the consonants for the Ugaritic dragon named Litanu, or LTN in Ugaritic, are contained within the consonants comprising the word Leviathan, LWYTN in Hebrew. (Note that most Middle Eastern alphabets are consonantal and omit symbols for vowels.) Notice also that, like Psalm 74, the…

James King West writes on the style/dating, while giving hints on the author with its’ vocabulary of Deutero-Isaiah:“The prose account is written in an archaic style which bears all the marks of an ancient and popular folk tale. That its hero is a virtuous Edomite is good evidence that it predates the Exile, when Jewish…

Article This paper brings up a long standing question in the study of Ezekiel and his (or, the book’s) relationship to Jeremiah. A hypothetical scenario: if Jeremiah had arrived in Babylon after 586 B.C. E., would he be included among those whom Ezekiel had designated as the הטלפ , those survivors taken out of Jerusalem…

“8:8 Literally translated, ‘The lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.” Scribes (sometimes translated “secretaries”) were not responsible to interpret or teach the law until postexilic times (Ezra 7:11). In Jeremiah’s day, scribes primarily wrote and transcribed documents (Jeremiah 36:32). Teaching was the work of priests (Deuteronomy 33:10) and was done…

This paper by Ivan Ladynin shows that there is no real evidence to suppose that Apries was supported by Nebuchadnezzar at all, nor that he was an ex-pat in Babylon. Rather, Josephus was aware, as were the Jewish scribes who read Jeremiah, that Babylon fought against Apries, in support of Amasis. By placing Amasis in…

The consensus seems to be that there was a historical Jeremiah and that portions of the book probably were written by Jeremiah and/or his scribe Baruch. However it also went through several extensive redactions in the exilic and post-exilic periods which added material and altered the wording of oracles. This resulted in variant editions of…

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Leslie C. Jeremiah: A Commentary. 1st ed. The Old Testament Library. Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.Becking, Bob. “Jeremiah’s Book of Consolation: A Textual Comparison Notes on the Masoretic Text and the Old Greek Version of Jeremiah XXX-XXXI.” Vetus Testam. 44.2 (1994): 145. https://doi.org/10.2307/1518652. Brown, Francis, S.R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs.…

If you read all of Jeremiah in context, you see that it’s giving an explanation for why God allowed the first Temple to be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah goes to the Temple 39 years before it is going to be destroyed by the Babylonian invasion. Jeremiah gives a speech in the courtyard saying that people…