THE CALL OF JEREMIAH by DAVID TUDOR ... - David T Williams

7
If an investigation of the calling and receipt of revelation of Jeremiah is
to have any value, it presupposes that the data to be found in the book
is an accurate reflection of the prophet's experiences. Carroll (1981)
believes that it reflects a later interpretation of Jeremiah (p2), and that
it is impossible to reconstruct an "historical Jeremiah" (p25). In this he
is primarily reacting against Skinner (1961) whose assessment of
basic historicity is followed by most (eg Rowley 1962:199, Blank
1961:3), as Carroll (1981:6) himself admits.
The claim of the book itself is that a large portion is from Jeremiah,
some in poetic form and some in prose, and if this is indeed from the
prophet himself, must be of great value. The book also refers to
Jeremiah in the third person in the biographical portions, which has
again been assessed as an objective unbiased account (Blank
1961:62) although some have seen in the biography conflicting
assessments. Wanke, for example, sees a conflict between a rejected
Jeremiah of Jeremiah 38-44 and a victorious hero of Jeremiah
14-20:6, 26-29, 36 (Wanke 1971:144f, Jobling 1978:5).
The reliability of the account of Jeremiah to be found in the book has
been queried from various viewpoints.
1.5.1 The distinction between poetry and prose. Leaving aside the
narrative material which will naturally be in prose of the style current at
the time, the material which claims to be from Jeremiah occurs both in