reception_historical

Source Citation

Gass, Erasmus. "A possible scenario for the third deportation in 582 BCE." ZAW 135, no. 3 (2023): 402–416. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaw-2023-3002.

An Analysis of the Reception History of the Record of the Third Deportation (Jer 52:30)

I. Periodized Snapshots

The record of the third deportation in Jeremiah 52:30 has not, in itself, generated a rich theological or literary reception history. Rather, its reception has been characterized by sporadic scholarly attempts to resolve a historical puzzle. During the Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation periods, this brief list was largely viewed as an appendix to the grand prophecies and narratives of Jeremiah, receiving almost no independent attention. The effective starting point of its reception history begins with the rise of modern historical criticism. In this period, scholars, attempting to link the record to a historical event, identified the ‘assassination of Gedaliah’ (Jer 41) as the most plausible cause, based on internal narrative clues. This interpretation became the dominant scholarly consensus until the late 20th century, forming a long period of ‘continuity’ in its reception. The discovery of the Apries' Stele in 2011 and its subsequent interpretation by Erasmus Gass in 2023 represent the most recent and radical form of reception, one that fractures this long-standing scholarly tradition and opens a new chapter.

Bibliographic Balance: This analysis focuses primarily on the reception within modern critical scholarship (Albertz, Stipp, Lipschits, Gass) and finds pre-modern reception to be largely absent.

II. Nodes of Continuity and Discontinuity

The most significant continuity in the text’s reception history is the long-standing function of the ‘Gedaliah Assassination Thesis’ as a scholarly consensus. This interpretation respected the internal coherence of the biblical text and provided a self-contained explanation without requiring external evidence, thus serving as a stable axis of reception for many years. It was a compromise between the attempt to read the Bible as a historical source and the desire to respect its narrative authority.

A decisive discontinuity occurred at two points. The first began with the text-critical recognition that the list is absent in the Septuagint (LXX). This opened the possibility that the list was not original to the Jeremiah narrative, thereby weakening the necessary link to the Gedaliah story. The second and most dramatic rupture comes with the discovery and interpretation of the Apries' Stele as presented by Gass. This archaeological evidence completely shifts the axis of reception from an ‘internal, local event’ to an ‘external, geopolitical event.’ It is a revolutionary turning point that shatters the previous continuity and forces a new reception of the third deportation within a completely different historical context.

Intertext: The account of Josephus can be seen as an early form of reception, though modern scholarship, including Gass, critically receives it as a reconstruction of biblical texts rather than as an independent witness.

III. Liturgical, Homiletic, and Hymnodic Functions

Given its character as a terse administrative list of dates and numbers, Jeremiah 52:28–30 has played virtually no role in the liturgical, homiletic, or hymnodic practices of faith communities. The text is not included in official church lectionaries, and it is difficult to find instances where its content has served as the direct subject of a sermon or inspired the lyrics of a hymn. This ‘absence of reception’ in worship practices attests to the fact that the text’s historical-informational character overwhelmingly outweighs any theological-edifying potential. The meaning of this list has been explored not in the pulpit or the prayer room, but primarily in the scholar's study, in the effort to reconstruct the history of the ancient Near East.

Ethics-Affect: The practice of excluding small texts with historical details from worship may impoverish a community's understanding of the historical roots of its faith.

IV. Regional and Global Variants

The most significant ‘variant’ in this text's reception appears in the earliest stages of its transmission. The Septuagint (LXX) tradition, by omitting the list, suggests that this information was either not considered important or was not transmitted within the Hellenistic Jewish community of Alexandria. Conversely, the Masoretic Text (MT) tradition preserved it, indicating that this historical detail was considered a significant memory within the Palestinian Jewish community. This can be considered the most primordial regional variant in its reception. In the modern era, the discussion of this text is not confined to a specific region or denomination but takes place within the shared interests of a global academic community where archaeology and biblical studies intersect. Gass's research (Germany), published in an international journal (ZAW) and cited and debated by scholars worldwide, itself demonstrates the global character of its contemporary reception.

V. Summary and Limits

The reception history of Jeremiah 52:30 is less a history of rich theological interpretation and more a history of scholarly struggle over a historical puzzle. Long tethered to the internal narrative of ‘Gedaliah’s assassination,’ the text was gradually liberated as an independent source through the advances of textual criticism and archaeology. Finally, with the discovery of the ‘Apries' Stele,’ it has been reborn as part of a story of international geopolitics. This is a vivid example of how even a minor biblical record can have its semantic horizons expanded through dialogue with the external world.

This analysis relies heavily on the clues provided in Gass’s article, and a comprehensive survey of Patristic or Medieval commentaries was not undertaken. The conclusion regarding an ‘absence of pre-modern reception’ is therefore provisional and may need to be supplemented by further documentary research.

---

This report is for Evaluation purposes only and does not contain forecasts, scores, or internal system terminology.

#Hashtags

#ReceptionHistory #Jeremiah #Deportation #HistoricalCriticism #Septuagint #ApriesStele

---

This report was generated by the MSN AI Theological Review System (v8.0).