The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

75
THE LAMENTA TIONS OF JEREMIAH
more fitting than that the mourning patriot's tears for
the woes of his city should have been shed so near to
the very spot where her rejected Saviour was to suffer ?
But unfortunately history cannot be constructed on the
lines of harmonious sentiments. When we endeavour
to trace the legend that attributes the Lamentations to
Jeremiah back to its source we lose the stream some
centuries before we arrive at the time of the great
prophet. No doubt for ages the tradition was undis-
puted ; it is found both in Jewish and in Christian
hterature— in the Talmud and in the Fathers. Jerome
popularised it in the Church by transferring it to the
Vulgate, and before this Josephus set it down as an
accepted fact. It is pretty evident that each of these
parallel currents of opinion may have been derived
from the Septuagint, which introduces the book with
the sentence, " And it came to pass, after Israel had
been carried away captive, and Jerusalem had become
desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with
this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said," etc. Here
our upward progress in tracking the tradition is stayed
no more ancient authority is to be found. Yet we are
still three hundred years from the time of Jeremiah !
Of course it is only reasonable to suppose that the
translators of the Greek version did not make their
addition to the Hebrew text at random, or v/ithout
what they deemed sufficient grounds. Possibly they
were following some documentary authority, or, at least,
some venerable tradition. Of this we know^ nothing.
Meanwhile, it must be observed that no such statement
exists in the Hebrew Bible ; and it would never have
been omitted if it had been there originall3^
One other witness Jias been adduced, but only to
furnish testimony of an obscure and ambiguous character.
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