The ''Confessions'' of Jeremiah have generally been interpreted as isolated poems interspersed among prophetic oracles. This book endeavours to read the Confessions in their present literary context. Diamond argues persuasively that the more the Confessions are isolated from their setting in the book of Jeremiah, the more opaque and indeterminate readings of them become. When they are allowed to function in the context determined for them by the editors of Jeremiah, they promote the editorial valuation of the prophet''s mission-Israel''s opposition to Jeremiah becomes the ground for a theodicy explaining the national disaster. Restoring the Confessions to their context in the book finally enables the author to demonstrate that chapters 11-20 form an integrated literary complex.

Troubling Jeremiah presents essays by Jeremiah scholars who are troubled by the biblical book and give the scholarship on Jeremiah trouble in turn. Essays seek to move beyond the Duhm-Mowinckel source criticism of the book to address matters of metaphor, final form, intertextuality, and the relationship of the book to various audiences of readers. Taken together, the 24 essays in this volume press for an end to ''innocent'' readings of Jeremiah inasmuch as current models prove inadequate for troubling the very Jeremiah they have already helped to reveal.

Jeremiah (Dis)Placed collects the best of the papers and responses presented to the 2007 and 2008 sessions of the Writing/Reading Jeremiah Group (SBL) offering an assessment of new interpretative directions in current Jeremiah Studies. The Writing/Reading Jeremiah group was re-launched at the 2007 annual meeting of the SBL. Its purpose is to invite new readings and constructions of meaning with the book of Jeremiah "this side" of historicist paradigms and postmodernism. The group welcomes all strategies of reading Jeremiah that seek to reconfigure, redeploy, and move beyond conventional readings of Jeremiah. Their manifesto: not by compositional history alone, nor biographical portrayal alone, nor their accompanying theological superstructures; rather, we seek interpretation from new spaces opened for reading Jeremiah by the postmodern turn.

Jeremiah (Dis)Placed collects the best of the papers and responses presented to the 2007 and 2008 sessions of the Writing/Reading Jeremiah Group (SBL) offering an assessment of new interpretative directions in current Jeremiah Studies.The Writing/Reading Jeremiah group was re-launched at the 2007 annual meeting of the SBL. Its purpose is to invite new readings and constructions of meaning with the book of Jeremiah "this side" of historicist paradigms and postmodernism. The group welcomes all strategies of reading Jeremiah that seek to reconfigure, redeploy, and move beyond conventional readings of Jeremiah. Their manifesto: not by compositional history alone, nor biographical portrayal alone, nor their accompanying theological superstructures; rather, we seek interpretation from new spaces opened for reading Jeremiah by the postmodern turn.

The ''Confessions'' of Jeremiah have generally been interpreted as isolated poems interspersed among prophetic oracles. This book endeavours to read the Confessions in their present literary context. Diamond argues persuasively that the more the Confessions are isolated from their setting in the book of Jeremiah, the more opaque and indeterminate readings of them become. When they are allowed to function in the context determined for them by the editors of Jeremiah, they promote the editorial valuation of the prophet''s mission-Israel''s opposition to Jeremiah becomes the ground for a theodicy explaining the national disaster. Restoring the Confessions to their context in the book finally enables the author to demonstrate that chapters 11-20 form an integrated literary complex.

Troubling Jeremiah presents essays by Jeremiah scholars who are troubled by the biblical book and give the scholarship on Jeremiah trouble in turn. Essays seek to move beyond the Duhm-Mowinckel source criticism of the book to address matters of metaphor, final form, intertextuality, and the relationship of the book to various audiences of readers. Taken together, the 24 essays in this volume press for an end to ''innocent'' readings of Jeremiah inasmuch as current models prove inadequate for troubling the very Jeremiah they have already helped to reveal.

Jeremiah (Dis)Placed collects the best of the papers and responses presented to the 2007 and 2008 sessions of the Writing/Reading Jeremiah Group (SBL) offering an assessment of new interpretative directions in current Jeremiah Studies. The Writing/Reading Jeremiah group was re-launched at the 2007 annual meeting of the SBL. Its purpose is to invite new readings and constructions of meaning with the book of Jeremiah "this side" of historicist paradigms and postmodernism. The group welcomes all strategies of reading Jeremiah that seek to reconfigure, redeploy, and move beyond conventional readings of Jeremiah. Their manifesto: not by compositional history alone, nor biographical portrayal alone, nor their accompanying theological superstructures; rather, we seek interpretation from new spaces opened for reading Jeremiah by the postmodern turn.

Jeremiah (Dis)Placed collects the best of the papers and responses presented to the 2007 and 2008 sessions of the Writing/Reading Jeremiah Group (SBL) offering an assessment of new interpretative directions in current Jeremiah Studies.The Writing/Reading Jeremiah group was re-launched at the 2007 annual meeting of the SBL. Its purpose is to invite new readings and constructions of meaning with the book of Jeremiah "this side" of historicist paradigms and postmodernism. The group welcomes all strategies of reading Jeremiah that seek to reconfigure, redeploy, and move beyond conventional readings of Jeremiah. Their manifesto: not by compositional history alone, nor biographical portrayal alone, nor their accompanying theological superstructures; rather, we seek interpretation from new spaces opened for reading Jeremiah by the postmodern turn.