If jeremiah wrote it, it must be ok: on the attribution of lamentations to jeremiah in early rabbinic texts

Abstract

Despite the absence of any formal attribution of the book of Lamentations to the prophet Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible, the rabbis of the Talmudic period chose to perpetuate and reinforce this idea. The question explored is how this benefited them. Using Jorge Gracia's discussion of the "pseudo-historical author," the influence of the rabbinic assumption of Jeremiah's authorship of Lamentations on their exegesis of the book is explored. The rabbis were troubled by a number of theologically challenging verses and the claim of authorship opened the door to their use of the book of Jeremiah to explain away these difficulties. 1 In 2004 I was fortunate to enjoy a significant amount of time with Professor and Mrs. Riekert in Skukuza during the Rencontre Assyriologique and then while lecturing in Bloemfontein. Their overwhelming kindness and hospitality has not been forgotten and it is an honour to offer this article to Professor Riekert as a belated token of my gratitude and esteem. The argument put forward here was first presented at the symposium Lamentations: Music, Text, and Interpretation hosted by the

The Jeremianic Connection: Chronicles and the Reception of Lamentations as Two Modes of Interacting With the Jeremianic Tradition?

“…I hypothesize that Chronicles and the Lamentations reception by rabbinic tradition, were two different modes of engaging with the Jeremianic tradition. I will, therefore, in what follows 3 See Kalman (2009). 4 The Septuagint opens the book with the following: "And it happened, after Israel was taken captive and Jerusalem was laid waste, Jeremiah sat weeping and gave his lament over Jerusalem and said: 'How the city sat alone.…”