LAMENTATIONS
connexion with the last verse of Isaiah, Malachi, and Ecclesiastes.
IV. AurHoRsHIP.—Both in Jewish and in Chris- tian cireles a tradition has long prevailed that the book was written by Jeremiah. We will examine—
(a) The External Evidence. — While the Heb. Bible is silent as to the authorship of Lamentations, it is otherwise with the Sept., where the book opeus thus: καὶ ἐγένετο μετὰ τὸ αἰχμαλωτισθῆναι τὸν ᾿Ισραὴλ καὶ ᾿Ιερουσαλὴμ ἐρημωθῆναι ἐκάθισεν “lepeulas κλαίων καὶ ἐθρήνησεν τὸν θρῆνον τοῦτον ἐπὶ ᾿Ιερουσαλὴμ καὶ εἶπεν (‘And it came to pass, after Israel was led into captivity and Jerusalem laid waste, that Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said’). It has been urged that these words, which sound like the rendering of a Heb. original, imply a notice to the above effect in the Heb. MS from which the Sept. translator worked. The Vulg. opens with words which reproduce in Lat. the above Gr. sen- tence, with the additional phrase δέ amaro animo suspirans et ejulans, and these words in italics imply, acc. to some, the existence of yet another Heb. original. In ch. 5, moreover, Vulg. has the heading Oratio Jeremie prophete. The super- scription of the book in jeah. also supports the same tradition.
There are, however, two circumstances that zreatly weaken the force of the above evidence. ‘irstly, the absence of any allusion to Jeremiah in the MT would be utterly inexplicable if such a notice as oceurs in the Sept. had ever stood in the Hebrew. As every student knows, it was far more the tendency of copyists to add than to suppress. Secondly, the place of the book in the Heb. Canon, not attached to Jer, but included among the Kéthibhim, is hard to reconcile with its prophetic authorship. As Driver remarks,
at least three centuries separated the Sept. from Jeremiah, and its notice quoted above may be merely an inference founded on the general re- semblance of tone which the Lamentations exhibit to such passages as Jer 8-9, 14-15, and on the reference assumed to be contained in 315 58:56. to incidents in the prophet’s life (Jer 207 385). It
was doubtless a similar feeling that gave rise to the extraordinary conflate reading τῷ Δαυὶδ ᾽Ἴερε- ulov, which is the title in some MSS of Ps 137 (Cheyne). According to Léhr and Gerlach, the καὶ ἐγένετο, ete., of the Sept. was written in order to connect Lamentations with the prophecies of Jeremiah, probably at the time when it was an object to reduce the number of books in the Canon to twenty-two. It need scarcely be added that the statements of the Fathers, the superscription in the Targum, and the citations from the Talmud, have no independent value as evidence in regard to the authorship.
There has been much discussion as to the meaning of 2Ch 35% ‘And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah, and all the singing men and singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations unto this day, and they made them an ordinance in Israel, and behold they are written in the lamenta- tions.’ The question is whether the words we have italicized refer to our book of Lamentations. If so, we should have a tradition as early as the days of the Chronicler (c. B.c. 250) in favour of Jeremiah’s authorship of at least a portion of its contents. Thenius answers the above question in the negative, holding that the Kinéth referred to were a collection of lamentations for the dead sung on the occasion of the burial of the kings of Judah. In this collection Jeremiah’s lament for Josiah may easily have had a place, but our book never formed part of it. On the other hand, a great many of the leading OT scholars
LAMENTATIONS
of the day understand the Chronicler to refer to the canonical book of Lamentations. Lohr offers three reasons for this conclusion: (1) it is hard to believe that there were extant other lamentations by Jeremiah outside the Canon; (2) the Chronicler might readily have referred such passages as La 2° and 4” to Josiah ; (3) an un- critical writer like the Chronicler might easily have committed a blunder into which Jos. (Ant. X. i. 5) probably and Jerome certainly fell. The words or the latter in commenting on Zec 12" are, ‘super quo (Josia) lamentationes seripsit Jeremias, que leguntur in Ecclesia et seripsisse eum Para- (hans testatur liber.” The same interpreta- tion of the Chronicler’s language is supported by Néldeke, Cornill, Wildeboer, W. R. Smith, and Budde.* If it be correct, it gives us a testimony in favour of Jeremiah’s connexion with Lamenta- tions, dating from about the same period, and en- titled to much the same consideration as the testi- mony of the Sept. which we have just examined. As the external evidence is manifestly insuffi- cient to decide the question, we are thrown back upon—
ΒΜ) The Internal Evidence.—At the first glance this may seem to be in favour of Jeremiah’s authorship, which has been strongly maintained by Keil and others. The verdict of modern criti- cism, however, is given for the most part against the traditional view. The undoubted affinities of all the five chapters with Jer (see a list of simi- larities in Driver, LOT® 462d) are recognized by critics of all schools, but are explained on the ground that this prophet’s works were the favourite study of the author or authors of Lamentations, who were in such sympathy with his spirit that the book might be entitled ‘Lamentations of the sons of Jeremiah’ (Cheyne).