Prophetic Conflict and Scribal Culture

Prophetic conflict, or true and false prophecy, is a classic centerpiece in biblical scholarship. The dominant critical approach has long regarded biblical discourse about prophetic conflict as a reflex of historical socioreligious and ideological conflicts and polemics in ancient Israel. Taking its cue from major developments in the study of the Hebrew Bible—especially inner-biblical interpretation and scribal culture—this book argues that prophetic conflict in the book of Jeremiah is a scribal literary invention. Jeremiah's prophetic opponents, whose speeches are suffused with inner-biblical allusions, are best understood as exegetical constructs that owe their very existence to the ancient literary imagination. Meticulously designed, these imagined opponents fulfil a strategic exegetical function within the Jeremianic tradition. Prophetic conflict, reassessed through the lens of scribal culture, emerges as a literary vehicle for articulating a scribal grammar, a set of exegetical rules, for interpreting salvation and judgment in the Jeremianic tradition. The scribal invention of prophetic conflict opens a window onto ancient Israelite literary culture, scribal hermeneutics, harmonization, incipient notions of scriptural coherence, and the formation of the book of Jeremiah.