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Book Review: Forgive and Forget?

Andrew G. Shead, The Open Book and the Sealed Book: Jeremiah 32 in its Hebrew and Greek Recensions (London: T&T Clark International, 2002. £60.00. pp. 316. ISBN 1–84127–274–4). Originating as a Cambridge PhD supervised by Prof Robert Gordon, this is a study of a single chapter of Jeremiah in both Hebrew and Greek versions (mt 32, lxx 39), and aims to contribute to the vexed question of the priority of the short form represented by lxx and the long form represented by mt. Shead divides previous scholars in the field into two camps: the ‘butterflies’ who arrive at conclusions by selecting scattered examples throughout Jeremiah, and the ‘caterpillars’ like himself who crawl slowly over a small unit of text (p. 256). He interacts particularly with the 1996 study of Herbert Migsch, Jeremias Ackerkauf: Eine Untersuchung von Jeremia 32, which he criticizes for not allowing the translator any freedom, with the ramification that the Hebrew Vorlage of lxx Jeremiah would thus be identical with the Greek form of the text. Shead’s own method is to carry out an analysis of discourse structure of the mt of Jeremiah 32 (ch. 1), and the succeeding three chapters are a detailed discussion of the variants between the Hebrew and Greek texts of Jeremiah 32 [39]. He concludes that ‘an original discourse was shaped with vv. 15, 25 in mind’, represented by the Vorlage of lxx, and that it was subsequently revised with vv. 36–44 in mind, as shown by the form of mt (p. 239). The lxx form of the text is thus more original, but mt Jer is a revision according to a consistent editorial policy. mt ‘moves from the particular (Jeremiah’s field) to the general (fields)’, and applies ‘the message taught by the events of Jeremiah’s day to a broader audience’ (ibid.). mt has grown ‘tidier’ textually as an overreaction to transmission error (p. 244), but both mt and lxx Jer represent recensions which add secondary readings to a common text base. Shead believes that it is unlikely that the two forms originated in widely different times and places, and follows Lundbom’s suggestion ( JSOT 36 [1986]) that Baruch was responsible for the shorter and better ordered Hebrew form behind lxx, designed for Egyptian Jews, while Seraiah shaped the longer form for a version destined for Babylon (p. 261). This is possibly extrapolating too much from what is after all an exposition of a single chapter, but a ‘caterpillar’ is perhaps entitled to a ‘butterfly’s’ view at the end of a long and careful crawl.