Jeremiah and the Structure of Prophecy Open Access
MacGillivray, Ian (Spring 2025)
Abstract
This dissertation uses the poststructuralist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze to explain the presentation (mimesis) of the prophet Jeremiah in the book of Jeremiah. Applying established exegetical methods from a novel theoretical perspective, the study argues that Jeremiah’s uniquely detailed portrayal as a prophetic character derives from the book’s unprecedented combination of mimetically divergent texts: while the first half of Jeremiah foregrounds divine revelation and other aspects of the prophet’s personal dialogue with the deity YHWH, the second half focuses instead on Jeremiah’s public proclamations and their ambivalent reception among the people of Judah. In the end, however, the similarities between the literary structure of Jeremiah and the social realities of ancient prophecy prove to be unreliable. Even if Jeremiah did exist as a historical person, he has been so thoroughly transformed by the artistry and textuality of the biblical book as to become a fundamentally different kind of being, one that cannot be understood apart from its functions in the hands of living readers.
Chapter 1 undertakes close contextual readings of certain poems of lament traditionally known as Jeremiah’s “confessions,” which reveal a significant shift in the prophet’s portrayal just before the final confession in Jer 20. Chapter 2 outlines Deleuze’s philosophy of difference through his idiosyncratic theory of structuralism. Chapter 3 then connects this theory with current social-scientific research on ancient Near Eastern prophecy, yielding a structure of “epistemic intermediation” that describes the movements of privileged knowledge common to prophecy and other forms of divination. After an analysis of extrabiblical prophetic texts in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 assesses the biblical prophetic books, with special attention to Jeremiah and others (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Jonah, Haggai, Malachi) that include at least one text detailing the titular prophet’s direct engagement with an audience. Chapter 5 steps back to consider the limitations of this structural approach and offers a different way to understand Jeremiah and the Hebrew Bible, drawn out of Deleuze’s multifaceted concept of the “rhizome.” Some implications of this concept for biblical studies are briefly explored in the Conclusion.
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Introduction: Jeremiah, Auerbach, Deleuze 2
1. Characterization in the Confessions and Their Contexts: Toward a “Mimetic Watershed” between the “Channels Of Prophecy” 10
1.1. Introduction 10
1.2. Prelude: Jeremiah as Tragic Hero (11:1-14) 12
1.3. Jeremiah’s “Confession(s)” in 11:18-12:6 16
1.3.1. Prolegomena on Terminology and Textual Units 16
1.3.2. Jeremiah’s Complaint (11:18-20) 22
1.3.3. YHWH’s Response (11:21-23) 30
1.3.4. Characterization across the Confessions: From a Downward Slope to Dynamic “Cycles” 36
1.4. A “Mimetic Watershed” in the Book of Jeremiah (19:14-20:6) 40
1.4.1. The Confrontation with Pashhur in Context 40
1.4.2. Two Modes of Mimesis in Jeremiah 46
1.4.3 Two Modes of Mimesis and Two “Axes” of the Prophetic Process 51
1.5. Conclusion: From Social Axes to Structural Series 55
2. The Structure of Structures, according to Gilles Deleuze 59
2.1. Introduction 59
2.2. Structural Components: Relations, Series, Singularities 61
2.3. Structural Dimensions: Virtuality, Actuality, “Different/ciation” 69
2.4. Structural Assembly: Serial Disparity, Paradoxical Objects, Intersubjectivity 81
2.5. Conclusion 91
3. How Do We Recognize Structuralism in Prophecy and Prophetic Literature? 93
3.1. Introduction 93
3.2. A Two-Dimensional Typology of Epistemic Intermediation in the Ancient Near East 97
3.3. Structuring Epistemic Intermediation: Knowledge, Authority, and the “Word = x” 105
3.3.1. Differential Construction of the Revelation and Proclamation Series 105
3.3.2. Paradox at the Heart of Prophecy: The “Word = x” 117
3.4. Ancient Near Eastern Actualizations of the Structure of Epistemic Intermediation 133
3.4.1. From Two Series of Prophecy to Two Types of Prophetic Literature 136
3.4.2. Between Technocracy and Autocracy: The Structural Significance of Biblical Prophetic Literature 149
4. 2 Complex 2 Jeremiah: Structures of the Book and Its Prophet 169
4.1. Introduction 169
4.2. Textual Actualizations of Epistemic Intermediation in the Latter Prophets 172
4.2.1. Prophetic Books without Proclamation Texts 173
4.2.2. Prophetic Books with Proclamation Texts 178
4.3. The Literary Structure of Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah 202
4.3.1. Elements of the Revelation and Proclamation Complexes 205
4.3.2. Constructing the Revelation and Proclamation Complexes 213
4.3.3. Prophetic Quotation Formulas and Other Markers of the Divine Datum in Jer 231
4.4. This is (Not) a Prophet: Jeremiah as Simulacrum 253
4.4.1. Jeremiah in the Revelation Complex 257
4.4.2. Jeremiah in the Proclamation Complex 261
4.4.3. Conclusion 272
5. The Tree and the Rhizome: Three Ontologies of a (Biblical) Book 277
5.1. Introduction 277
5.2. Regimes of Signs and the Root-Book 282
5.3. Historical Criticism and the Radicle-Book 293
5.4. Assemblages, “Antimimesis,” and the Rhizome-Book 307
5.5. Only Life Can Make a Rhizome: Reading Jeremiah (and the Bible) as an Assemblage 318
Conclusion: Anti-kythera 339
Bibliography 344
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