Ancient and Modern Perspectives on Jeremiah
Ancient and Modern Perspectives on Jeremiah
Project Summary
Set during a period of instability and impending exile, the book of Jeremiah reflects on religious, political, and cultural concerns of the 7th-6th centuries BCE. With a mix of poetic oracles, prose narratives, and sermons, Jeremiah provides a wealth of prophetic literature on themes relevant to ancient and modern communities. For instance, Jeremiah considers the causes and implications of war, responsibilities of religious and political leaders, individual and collective trauma, migration, hope, and healing. The goal of the project is to produce a feminist commentary on Jeremiah. This project uses interpretive methods, such as feminist, womanist/black feminist, and sociological, to produce a multidimensional resource for biblical study. This project will be published by Liturgical Press in the Wisdom Commentary Series, the first feminist commentary series of its kind (add hyperlink if interested: https://litpress.org/wisdom-commentary-series).
Approach
This commentary treats biblical texts as literary units and analyzes the biblical world of the text, its social location, reception history, and contemporary questions and interests with attention given to issues of gender, power, and ethnicity in Jeremiah. While the commentary cites the NRSV (per Wisdom Commentary Series guidelines), it includes sections called “Translation Matters” which highlight past problematic, inaccurate, or misogynistic translations and offers new translations that better articulate the meanings of texts.
Why conduct this research?
There are excellent commentaries, books, and articles on the book of Jeremiah, but there is not a feminist commentary written on the entire book. This research project fills the gap by being attentive to the ways that women and feminine imagery are present in the book. In addition, this project considers the implications of the content of Jeremiah for ancient and modern audiences, especially women.
A commentary is a resource for biblical study, so the audience is anyone interested in a thoughtful and critical analysis of Jeremiah. Students, preachers, and scholars are the primary audience for this work, although given its approach and content, a broad audience might find it appealing.
This project is especially attentive to the intersections of gender, power, and ethnicity and the ways in which women and feminine imagery are presented in Jeremiah.
The project adds to the field by producing an analysis of Jeremiah using feminist and womanist interpretive lenses. The work offers new ways of understanding and interpreting the content of Jeremiah and its implications for the modern readers.