Jeremiah : Being The Baird Lecture for 1922. George Adam Smith
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George Adam Smith
Jeremiah : Being The Baird Lecture for 1922
Published by Good Press, 2020
EAN 4064066103835
Table of Contents
The Prophet—His Youth And His Call.
The Prophet In The Reign Of Josiah.. 627-26-608 B.C.
1. His Earliest Oracles. (II. 2-IV. 4.)
2. Oracles on the Scythians. (With some others: IV. 5-VI. 29.)
3. Jeremiah and Deuteronomy. (Chs. VII, VIII. 8, XI.)
Under Jehoiakim. 608-597-8 B.C.
1. From Megiddo to Carchemish, 608-605.
2. Parables. (XIII, XVIII-XX, XXXV.)
3. Oracles on the Edge of Doom. (VII. 16-XVIII passim ,. XXII, XLV.)
To The End And After. 597-? B.C.
1. The Release of Hope. (XXIV, XXIX.)
2. Prophets and Prophets. (XXIII. 9-32, XXVII-XXIX, etc.)
3. The Siege. (XXI, XXXII-XXXIV, XXXVII, XXXVIII.)
4. And After. (XXX, XXXI, XXXIX-XLIV.)
2. Predestination. (I, XVIII, etc.)
God, Man And The New Covenant.
Medes And Scythians (pp. 73 , 110) .
Necoh's Campaign (pp. 162 , 163) .
Lecture II.
The Poet.
From last lecture I left over to this the discussion of a literary question, the answer to which is fundamental to our understanding both of the Book and of the Man, but especially of the Man.
The Book of Jeremiah has come to us with all its contents laid down as prose, with no metrical nor musical punctuation; not divided into stichoi or poetical lines nor marked off into stanzas or strophes. Yet many passages read as metrically, and are as musical in sound, and in spirit as poetic as the Psalms, the Canticles, or the Lamentations. Their language bears the marks that usually distinguish verse from prose in Hebrew as in other literatures. It beats out with a more or less regular proportion of stresses or heavy accents. It diverts into an order of words different from the order normal in prose. Sometimes it is elliptic, sometimes it contains particles unnecessary to the meaning—both signs of an attempt at metre. Though almost constantly unrhymed, it carries alliteration and assonance to a degree beyond what is usual in prose, and prefers forms of words more [pg 032] sonorous than the ordinary. But these many and distinct passages of poetry issue from and run into contexts of prose unmistakable. For two reasons we are not always able to trace the exact border between the prose and the verse—first because of the frequent uncertainties of the text, and second because the prose, like most of that of the prophets, has often a rhythm approximating to metre. And thus it happens that, while on the one hand much agreement has been reached as to what Oracles in the Book are in verse, and what, however rhythmical, are in prose, some passages remain, on the original literary form of which a variety of opinion is possible. This is not all in dispute. Even the admitted poems are variously scanned—that is either read in different metres or, if in the same metre, either with or without irregularities. Such differences of literary judgment are due partly to our still imperfect knowledge of the laws of Hebrew metre and partly to the variety of possible readings of the text. Nor is even that all. The