This thesis addresses the question of how to interpret instances in Hebrew prophetic literature in which one speaker quotes another speaker. Speech quotations of this kind occur almost 300 times across the prophetic corpus and exhibit a wide range of quoting and quoted participants with modal and temporal variations. In order to examine this phenomenon and to formulate a method for its interpretation, the thesis conducts an exegetical case study of Jeremiah 2.1-‐3.5 which is distinguished by its high number and density of quotations (twelve instances in forty-‐two verses). With a few notable exceptions, the phenomenon of prophetic speech quotation has not received any attention in its own right but was subsumed under other research concerns, such as prophetic conUlict or the form-‐critical genre of disputation speech. Across these and other studies, the interpretation of quoted speech is marked by two principal procedures: a) on the basis of their assumed authenticity, quotations are frequently employed as a way to gain direct access to expressions of Israelite religion; b) in most studies, the approach to quoted speech is deUined by extracting the quoted words from their literary environment and by assigning them to a Uixed number of categories. Prompted by the exegetical studies by Wolff (1937) and Overholt (1979), the thesis utilizes Sternberg’s publications on quotation theory in order to confront these two central domains of authenticity and categorization. Quoted speech is deUined as a dualistic structure in which the inset (quoted utterance) is subsumed under the frame (quoting context) in order to serve its perspective and rhetorical goals. The dynamics of the frame-‐inset relationship renders appeals to authenticity and direct access misguided: every quotation is subject to the forces of contextual mediation, inUluence, and shaping. The inseparable bond between frame and inset also challenges the approach of extraction and categorization. As a corrective to previous approaches, the thesis thus constructs the argument that prophetic speech quotations must always be interpreted within their literary context. To demonstrate the accuracy and implications of this methodological discussion and argument, the remainder of the thesis analyzes the twelve quotations in Jeremiah 2.1-‐3.5. Special attention is devoted to the contextual integration of the quoted words and to the ways in which they are utilized to serve their frames. In close interaction with previous studies on this passage, this exegesis demonstrates the beneUits of a reading that takes into account the contextually conditioned nature of prophetic speech quotations. At the end of the thesis, the results of this analysis are summarized and related to other quotations in the Book of Jeremiah and other prophetic texts. The contribution of the thesis relates to the exegesis and understanding of the speech quotations and text of Jeremiah 2.1.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:716597 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Hildebrandt, Samuel |
| Contributors | Reimer, David ; Klein, Anja |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/22019 |
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