A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, vol. 2.

• Author: NISSINEN, MARTTI
• Position: Review

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, vol. 2. By WILLIAM MCKANE. The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 1996. Pp. ix, cxxliii-clxxiv + 737 (659-1396). $69.95.

A commentary is customarily perceived as a long-term exegetical handbook, providing the reader with a comprehensive grasp of the linguistic, literary, and historical problems of each biblical book, together with their solutions weighed against alternative explanations. However, an all-embracing exposition of a biblical book and its varying interpretations is hardly possible anymore. The mass production of scholarly work on each book as well as the general dispersion of methods and interests does not promise a bright future for the genre. Therefore, whoever engages today in such an enterprise must inevitably confront difficult decisions concerning the format, method, and focus of the commentary.

William McKane has held to issues he has deemed essential for a commentary. The second volume of his major commentary on Jeremiah, now grown to its full size of 1570 pages, is characterized by the same features as the first volume, published in 1986: meticulous text-critical scrutiny, sharp-eyed diachronical observations, and a historical orientation which pays much attention to the difficult question of the earliest core of the book of Jeremiah. From the point of view of newer approaches in the field of biblical studies, such as ideological criticism or reader-response criticism, this kind of historical criticism may appear as somewhat outdated. Along with the growing skepticism towards the possibility of reconstructing pre-exilic historical conditions on the basis of the thoroughly edited texts of the Hebrew Bible, some would even declare its task altogether hopeless. This dilemma notwithstanding, historical problems continue to exist, and in their resolving McKane is a good representative of a traditional exegete.

According to McKane, the book of Jeremiah is "the product of a long growth extending into the post-exilic period and generally, if not universally, the shorter text of Sept[uagint] is a witness to a more original Hebrew text than that of M[assoretic] T[ext]" (p. clxxii). This is well in line with the "rolling corpus" idea outlined in the first volume (pp. l-lxxxiii), according to which the prose in chapters 1-25 consists of Deuteronomi(sti)c expansions generated and triggered by the...