Jeremiah’s egypt prophetic reflections on the saite period
The book of Jeremiah exhibits several symptoms of what might be called “Egyptomania.” It contains more references to Egypt than any other book of the Hebrew Bible except Genesis and Exodus and mentions Egypt more often than any other foreign nation except Babylon. Many of these references are hi...
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| Formato: | Libro |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
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Society of Biblical Literature
2023
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| Acceso en línea: | https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/16596 |
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| Sumario: | The book of Jeremiah exhibits several symptoms of what might be called
“Egyptomania.” It contains more references to Egypt than any other
book of the Hebrew Bible except Genesis and Exodus and mentions
Egypt more often than any other foreign nation except Babylon. Many
of these references are highly specific, touching on Egyptian geography (Jer 2:16), religious practices (Jer 46:25), and military and political
decisions (Jer 37:5).1 Jeremiah 42:1–43:7 even preserves a tradition that
the prophet Jeremiah relocated to Egypt following the assassination
of Gedaliah, the Babylonian appointed governor of Judah. The reason
for this “Egyptomania,” as I will argue throughout this book, is primarily historical. As recent scholarship on Egyptian-Israelite interaction
has shown, the pharaohs of the Twenty-Sixth or Saite Dynasty2 (664–
525 BCE) ruled Judah as a vassal state for much of the late seventh and
early sixth centuries BCE—the time period during which the book of
Jeremiah first began to take shape. My goal in this book, therefore, is
to interpret the book of Jeremiah in light of this historical background.
Focusing on the experiences of Judahites living under Egyptian rule, I
argue, changes how we read and interpret the book of Jeremiah in three
important ways: it helps explain the antipathy toward Egypt evident in
several passages of this prophetic work; it provides a historical anchor
for redactional approaches to dating the text; and it places the work’s repeated calls for submission to Babylon in a different light. These calls do
not present a choice between Judahite autonomy and Babylonian domination, but rather a choice between Egyptian and Babylonian control... |
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