Abstract: This article, which focuses on the role of Jeremiah as a prophet, is based on a study of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint. It also analyzes references to Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon and connects those references to current scholarly research on the book of Jeremiah. Consistent with the general consensus among biblical scholars today, as well as Nephi₁’s own references to Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon, the author proposes that even though Jeremiah embodied the office of a prophet, he was not recognized as being “among the prophets” during his lifetime. This is a subtle yet significant difference. If this view is correct, it would further substantiate the alignment between the Book of Mormon and contemporary scholarly perspectives on the historical reception of Jeremiah’s identity as a prophet in antiquity.

The book of Jeremiah is the longest book in the entire Bible, and it also “has a complex redaction history. Few books in the Hebrew Bible exist in recensions [revised editions of a text] that preserve such profound transformations.”¹ Much of the evidence for these “transformations” are readily observable when we compare the received text (Hebrew Masoretic Text, hereafter MT) and the Greek Septuagint (hereafter LXX) of the book of Jeremiah. For centuries, theologians believed that the differences between the MT and LXX could be ascribed to the translation process from Hebrew to Greek. However, two hundred years ago, German biblical scholar Johann Eichhorn [Page 266]brought this assumption into question and proposed an alternate theory that has greatly impacted scholarship of the book of Jeremiah to this day:

The modern discussion of the relationship between M [MT] and G [LXX] in Jeremiah begins with Eichhorn, who proposed that the two text traditions originated in successive editions of the book by Jeremiah himself. According to his hypothesis, a first edition was composed in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, augmented in Egypt with subsequent oracles, and in this form was sent to Babylon for the use of the exiles there. An identical copy was kept in Egypt, not in one continuous document, but in a series of smaller booklets. From this copy Jeremiah prepared a second edition, whose various additions were typical of the elaborations, retouching, and up-dating which go into any revision. This revised edition was sent to Palestine, where it entered the Hebrew canon and became the prototype of the received text. Meanwhile, the copy of the first edition, which remained in Egypt, was transmitted in its unrevised form (though in somewhat different order because of reshuffling of the small booklets in which it was contained) and eventually was translated into Greek. Eichhorn thus explained the divergence not as a textual, but as an editorial phenomenon.²

While Eichhorn’s theory opened the possibility of understanding LXX Jeremiah in new ways, the discovery of Jeremiah manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls (hereafter DSS) has enabled modern biblical scholars to update Eichhorn’s theory with information that was unavailable to him. Following the trail illuminated more clearly by the DSS, this paper explores the complicated transmission history of the book of Jeremiah from the perspective of the MT and the LXX, as well as noting Jeremiah’s limited, but potentially meaningful, mentions in the Book of Mormon text. These differences between the MT and LXX versions of Jeremiah are significant, as they reveal how Jeremiah’s prophetic role was perceived over time. Understanding these textual disparities also helps validate the Book of Mormon’s depiction of Jeremiah as someone whose prophetic status was not fully recognized during his lifetime.

[Page 267]What is a Prophet?

Words often carry diverse and biased connotations, and this is particularly true for the term prophet, especially within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The English word prophet originates from the Greek προφήτης (prophetes), “a proclaimer or expounder of divine matters or concerns,”³ or alternatively, a “spokesman for another” or “interpreter for a deity.”⁴ Following these interpretations, a prophet is someone who speaks authoritatively on behalf of someone else, and especially for God.

Prior to the Exodus, Moses was told to “go, and gather the elders of Israel” (Exodus 3:16) and speak the words of God to them.⁵ Moses, however, complained that he was “not eloquent” and that he was “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10). The Lord corrected Moses, saying: “Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say” (Exodus 4:11–12). Unconvinced, Moses begged the Lord to choose another spokesperson. At this, “the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses,” and he replied, saying:

Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well (דבר ידבר, daber yedaber). And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee: and when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart. And thou shalt speak (דברת, dibarta) unto him, and put words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. And he shall be thy spokesman (דבר, diber) unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God. (Exodus 4:14–16)

Though Moses remained God’s spokesman or “mouth,” Aaron was appointed as Moses’s spokesman. The Hebrew noun for “spokesman” in this passage, דבר (diber), originates from the same root as the verb “to speak,” דבר (dabar). A few chapters later, God added to these [Page 268]instructions: “See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet (נביאך, neviecha)” (Exodus 7:1). In other words, Aaron’s role as a spokesman for Moses was synonymous with the role of prophet; Aaron was the person designated by God as the official mouthpiece for Moses.

Ernest Klein stated that the Hebrew word for prophet, נביא (navi), is probably “derived from base נבא (= to call, proclaim); accordingly the original meaning of נביא probably was ‘the man who calls or proclaims.’”⁶ In addition to meaning to call or proclaim, Klein added that the related verb, נבא (nava), found its way into Hebrew from the Akkadian loanword nabū, which carries the same basic meaning as its Hebrew descendant. So, though a prophet can and does at times foretell future events, the primary role of a prophet is to proclaim or communicate messages on behalf of another person, especially messages from God.⁷ Foretelling future events falls more under the biblical role of ראה (roeh, see 1 Samuel 9:9) or חזה (chozeh, see 1 Chronicles 21:9), both translated as seer in English.

Saul the Prophet

In 1 Samuel 10, we are confronted with the interesting and perplexing story of Saul’s anointing as the first king of Israel. Following his anointing by Samuel, we are told that the Spirit of God came upon Saul and that he began to prophesy:

And it was so, that when [Saul] had turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him another heart: and all those signs came to pass that day. And when they came thither to the hill, behold, a company of prophets [נבאים, neviim] met him; and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied [ויתנבא, va’yitnave] among them. And it came to pass, when all that knew him beforetime saw that, behold, [Page 269]he prophesied [נבא, niva] among the prophets [נבאים, neviim], then the people said one to another, What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets [נבאים, neviim]? And one of the same place answered and said, But who is their father? Therefore it became a proverb, Is Saul also among the prophets [נבאים, neviim]? (1 Samuel 10:9–12)

Several questions arise from this passage that will be relevant as we study the prophetic role of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible:

• What does it mean that Saul “prophesied among the prophets”?
• Why is the proverb “Is Saul also among the prophets?” worded as a question? Does this express, doubt, surprise, or some other emotion?
• How is one counted “among the prophets”?
• Are being a “prophet” and being “among the prophets” different things?

The Books of Jeremiah

The book of Jeremiah, as we have it in our western, protestant translation of the Bible (KJV, for example), perhaps more than any other biblical book, bears the stretch marks and scars of a difficult and prolonged childbirth. Though most Christians and Jews today are familiar with the book that eventually found its way into our Bibles, many are unfamiliar with the alternative scriptural traditions of the book. I am principally speaking of the book of Jeremiah in the LXX translation. Compared with the MT, the source of most English translations of the book of Jeremiah, H. G. M. Williamson noted the following:

The Greek translation [of Jeremiah] in the Septuagint is approaching 20% shorter than the Hebrew text, and in addition some of the chapters occur in a different order. While in the past it could in theory (though against the usual state of affairs) be argued that the shorter text was the result of the work of the translator, some very small fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls now demonstrate adequately that the translation was based on a Hebrew original.⁸

[Page 270]Although some biblical scholars in the past had expressed an opinion that the shorter book of Jeremiah in the LXX was the result of editing by the translator from Hebrew into Greek, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the middle of the twentieth century, we can now confidently assert that the LXX and MT texts grew out of two separate Hebrew versions of Jeremiah, similar to what Eichhorn proposed two hundred years ago. Rather than referring to the “book of Jeremiah,” C. L. Crouch uses the phrase “books of Jeremiah,” because the Greek and Hebrew versions of Jeremiah likely reflect two separate textual traditions.⁹ In support of this conclusion, Williamson states:

There can now be no doubt that copies of books of the Hebrew Bible varied from one another in innumerable different ways in the pre-stabilization period, some of the differences minor but others, as we shall see, being far more substantial. This is not, in fact, new knowledge since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as is sometimes implied. It was recognized by most serious textual critics long before that on the basis of the Septuagint, the pre-stabilization translation which in the case of some books reflects an alternative tradition (or should we call it edition?) from what eventually became the Masoretic Text. The cases of Samuel and Jeremiah are the most celebrated of the examples, though they are not in fact alone. What the Dead Sea Scrolls did was, for the first time, to give us Hebrew versions of (parts, sometimes only fragments of) these alternative traditions, thus finally burying the notion that was sometimes voiced that these differences in the Septuagint were to be ascribed entirely to the work of the translator.¹⁰

As Williamson noted above, the Dead Sea Scrolls have helped us clearly discern distinct textual traditions in Hebrew underlying both the LXX and the MT that we have today. As it turns out, the shorter LXX text is not the result of editing by the translator. Hermann-Josef Stipp added:

JerAlT [the Alexandrian version of Jeremiah] is neither the [Page 271]first edition of the book nor even its “Urtext,”¹¹ a concept that is not applicable to the book of Jeremiah anyway, in light of its multistage development history. In fact, JerAlT already looked back on a sizable number of prior editions. Furthermore, the Vorlage of JerG* [LXX version] was not a direct ancestor of JerMT. Rather, the textual tradition of the book split into two strands, culminating in the Vorlage of JerG* and JerMT, respectively, with JerAlT experiencing far fewer alterations than JerMT. As a result, of the two text-types, JerAlT stands much closer to the condition of the book at the point of bifurcation, without, however, being identical to it.¹²

So, according to Stipp, the LXX represents a related but distinct textual tradition that developed alongside, and likely prior to, the MT. Williamson, in agreement with Stipp, observes:

There were two versions or editions of Jeremiah in circulation in the pre-Christian centuries. Although they each have their own integrity, they also overlap in sufficient measure to conclude that one probably developed from the other or at the least from a common ancestor which closely resembled one version or the other. It is thus a reasonable question to ask which was the earlier. The answer of most scholars today would be that the version which underlies the Greek translation came first and that the version which became the Masoretic text developed from it or from something very like it.¹³

[Page 272]As noted above, Williamson is not the only biblical scholar to claim that the version of Jeremiah underlying the LXX is earlier than the version that became the MT. Leslie Allen also observed, “For a long time scholars could write off the shorter [Jeremiah] text of LXX with different explanations, but most now accept that it bears witness to an older Hebrew text than that of MT.”¹⁴ In addition, Andrew Shead wrote that “there are many reasons to see m [Masoretic Text] as resulting from additions to an LXX-like Vorlage, particularly the preponderance of evidence for this when individual variants are examined on a case-by-case basis.”¹⁵ Finally, Emanuel Tov notes:

Jeremiah underwent a complex literary history, in the course of which elements of the original words of the prophet (stratum A) were combined with a biographical stratum (B), or were edited by B; subsequently a third, Deuteronomistic, stratum was added to the book, or the book was edited by a Deuteronomistic reviser (C). . . .

MT reflects the last stage in the development of the book as we know it from the Hebrew canon. On the other hand, several scholars believe that the textual form extant in the LXX and 4QJer^b,d reflects an earlier stage in the literary development of the book.¹⁶

4QJer^b,d are two fragments of Jeremiah found at Qumran (Cave 4) that agree with the text of the LXX against the MT. The fragments are written in Hebrew rather than Greek and support the wording and chapter organization of the LXX. As Marvin Sweeney observed, “Apart from the expanded form of the MT, both versions [LXX and MT] are substantially the same through Jeremiah 25:15a, but they differ markedly after this point.”¹⁷ Tov asserts that the editor of the text [Page 273]underlying our current MT (editor II)¹⁸ made significant, but mostly benign, additions:

When inserting his own words and thoughts in a book that was transmitted under the name of the prophet Jeremiah, editor II took considerable liberty. Indeed, pseudepigraphal authorship and revision were common practice in antiquity. Editor II did not distort significantly the message of the prophet as handed down to him. True, he added a great deal and inserted significant changes, but these changes were not radical.¹⁹

Tov also makes a distinction between “new information” and “new details” added by editor II:

When analyzing the nature of the added elements, one must pay attention to the amount of “new information” contained in them. Many of the added elements somehow derive from the context, but others contain such data as cannot have derived from the context. It is the latter that we term new details.²⁰

In other words, some of the information that editor II added to his text was likely derived from the context of the passage—new information—while new details would refer to information that could not be understood from context and must have been gleaned from a separate source text. Jeremiah 29:1 provides us with an example of a passage with many added elements from editor II that were likely appended to more “properly” clarify the text (the added text has been bolded). Following Tov, we can refer to this as “new information”:

LXX: And these are the words of the book, which Ieremias sent from Ierousalem to the elders of the exile and to the priests and to the pseudo-prophets, as a letter to the exile in Babylon and to all the people,²¹

[Page 274]KJV: Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders which were carried away captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon;²²

Editor II added the title prophet to Jeremiah’s name as well as including that it was Nebuchadnezzar who carried away the captives from Jerusalem. Referring to Jeremiah as “the prophet” is consistent with editor II’s description of Jeremiah. Editor II also must have felt a need to educate his readers concerning the name of the Babylonian king responsible for the exile, and that the captives were specifically carried away from Jerusalem. While these additions do not “distort significantly the message of the prophet as handed down to him,” editor II certainly felt comfortable altering the original text to add new information that he felt made the text more informative.

An excellent example of Tov’s “new details” that were added by editor II can be found in Jeremiah 25:26:

LXX: And all the kings from the east wind, those far and those near, each with his brother, and all the kingdoms that are on the surface of the earth.

KJV: And all the kings of the north, far and near, one with another, and all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth: and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them.

As shown above, we find the added phrase “and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them.” This “new detail” in the MT is significant because it contains a type of secret writing in Hebrew known as an atbash.²³ The word rendered Sheshach in the KJV is ששך (sh-sh-kh) [Page 275]in Hebrew, and it is a code word for Babel (בבל, b-b-l). So “the king of Sheshach” should actually be written “the king of Babel (Babylon),” as clarified in most modern English translations of the Bible.²⁴ Where did editor II get this new detail? Likely from a separate Hebrew edition of Jeremiah. Since the atbash only works in Hebrew, and not in Greek, it would not have been present in its ciphered form in the LXX. It is also unlikely that the editor would have added this atbash independently as a way of disguising the identity of the king of Babylon, especially since editor II created his version of Jeremiah during the Persian period, well after the kingdom of Babylon had ceased to exist. The most logical conclusion is that this atbash existed in a separate Hebrew source edition of Jeremiah that was used by editor II.

The textual history of the book of Jeremiah, like a difficult childbirth, reveals the evolving recognition of Jeremiah’s prophetic role during and after his lifetime, reflected in both the biblical account and in the Book of Mormon. The full recognition of Jeremiah’s prophetic role was delayed during his own lifetime, which, as we will see, appears to align with the text in the Book of Mormon.

Priests and Prophets during the time of Jeremiah

Who was Jeremiah? What was his lineage within the tribes of Israel? And what did he teach about the priests and prophets during his time?

The historical Jeremiah was a Levite of northern heritage with roots in the region of Benjamin and ties to the old Elide priestly clan once stationed at Shiloh. His primary place of activity was Jerusalem, where he became a fixture of the Deuteronomistic group who shared similar northern Levite lineage roots. This group also had gained some access to both the royal court and the Jerusalem temple on an elite level by the late seventh-century BCE; nevertheless, and consistent with the Deuteronomistic worldview, Jeremiah was a vocal critic of the Jerusalem cult and royal patronage.²⁵

[Page 276]We also know that Jeremiah was commanded not to marry: “Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this place.” (Jeremiah 16:2) William Schniedewind adds that Jeremiah was “from a priestly family that came from outside of the Jerusalem Temple priestly community.”²⁶ As such, he would have been viewed as an outsider among the temple priests. And of course, his open and vocal criticism of them did not help matters:

For, behold, I have made thee [Jeremiah] this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land. (Jeremiah 1:18)

Schniedewind observed that “Jeremiah, as a priest, showed an intimate concern for the priesthood and the temple, but mostly as a critique of the Jerusalem priesthood.”²⁷ And it was not only the rulers, priests, and people that he openly criticized; the “prophets” were also held up to ridicule:

The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit. (Jeremiah 2:8)

In fact, Jeremiah specifically targeted the temple priests and supposed “prophets” in his strong invectives against them:

A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof? (Jeremiah 5:30–31)

For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet [נביא (prophet) in MT, ψευδοπροφήτου, pseudo-prophet in LXX] even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. (Jeremiah 6:13)

As noted above in 6:13, while the MT has the word נביא (navi, or prophet), the LXX has pseudo-prophet, or false prophet. This [Page 277]appellation is found nine times in JerLXX and helps confirm Jeremiah’s low regard for the “prophets” of his time. In Jeremiah 5:13, there is even a pun in Hebrew that can be understood as declaring that the role of “spokesman” for God (as we saw earlier with Aaron in Exodus 4:16) no longer belonged to the prophets of his day: “And the prophets shall become wind, and the word [דבר, diber] is not in them.” Not only is the word not in them, but the spokesmanship is also not in them any longer. Following standard biblical Hebrew, the wordדבר in this verse should be pronounced davar (see Exodus 14:12), but the Masoretes,²⁸ likely to create the pun mentioned above, voweled it to sound like the word for spokesman, diber. This, of course, adds to the indictments against the prophets of Judah. Just as was true with Saul, the prophets during the time of Jeremiah did not have the prophetic mantle and were not worthy to be counted “among the prophets,” as spokesmen for God.

Jeremiah “the prophet”

Was Jeremiah considered “among the prophets” during his own lifetime? Not likely. Tov states that editor II (MT) frequently added the appellation the prophet to Jeremiah’s name:

When the names in editions I and II are compared, some interesting details come to light. In ed. I, Jeremiah is usually referred to by his name only; the fuller description, “Jeremiah the prophet,” occurs but four times in this edition (42:2; 43:6; 45:1; 51:59). In ed. II this title is frequently added to Jeremiah’s name (twenty-seven times in all), but the filling in is systematic only in chapters 28–29.²⁹

As noted by Tov, editor II was very free-handed with the title “Jeremiah the prophet.”³⁰ Editor I, by contrast, was not (see Appendix). In fact, editor I never refers to Jeremiah as “the prophet” anywhere within the first 25 chapters, while editor II does. It is very likely that the original conclusion to the book of Jeremiah was what we now recognize [Page 278]as Jeremiah 25:13 in both the LXX and MT.³¹ Not only does this verse seem to mark a final ending in both the LXX and MT, but it is also where the two textual traditions begin their bifurcation:

LXX: I will bring upon that land all my words that I have spoken against it, everything written in this book.

MT: And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, (which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations).

William Schniedewind asserts that the addition of the prophet to Jeremiah’s name by editor II was intended to transform him from a mere priest into a prophet during the early Persian period (late sixth century BCE):

From this consistent titling of Jeremiah, it becomes clear that the priest Jeremiah has been systematically changed into the prophet Jeremiah in the longer version. This refashioning of Jeremiah from a priest into a prophet was likely done by a priestly scribal community in Jerusalem during the early Persian period. They did not want Jeremiah to be identified by his priestly heritage but rather as a prophet.³²

The question we need to ask is how and why the “longer” version of the book of Jeremiah reimagined him as a prophet rather than a priest? Schniedewind answers:

The key to understanding the two new additions of Jeremiah is understanding that one retains the identity of Jeremiah as a peripheral priest and the other retitles Jeremiah as “the prophet.” Jeremiah himself does not have the “right” priestly heritage—namely, he is not an Aaronite priest. His family comes from the village of Anathoth, and they have no connections with Jerusalem and the temple. This Jeremiah gets taken into exile into Egypt. We must assume that the [Page 279]“short” Jeremiah, which retains his identity as a priest from Anathoth (and not a prophet), is an edition that gets updated among the Egyptian exilic community. The Egyptian “short” Jeremiah originally and appropriately settled with those in Egypt (see LXX, “short” Jer 51 [“long” Jer 44]). . . .

Both the “long” Babylonian and the “short” Egyptian books of Jeremiah return to Jerusalem in the early Persian period (i.e., late sixth century BCE). There, the two versions of Jeremiah—the “long” Babylonian and the “short” Egyptian—were partially harmonized by later copyists in Jerusalem, but not systematically. For example, the two versions would get the same introductions and conclusions to make the “short” and “long” versions seem similar, but they also retained the unique characteristics of their different scribal communities.³³

Of course, following the “partial harmonization” of the two versions of Jeremiah, one of the unique characteristics that was retained in the longer Babylonian version was the title of prophet. While we can only speculate on many of the logistical details involved in the creation and editing of the “long” and “short” scrolls of Jeremiah, Schniedewind’s explanation seems quite plausible:

In sum, Jeremiah himself was a peripheral priest. He survived the first (597 BCE) and second (586 BCE) exiles, but he ended up in Egypt with various refugees at the time of the third Babylonian campaign against Judah (581 BCE). At that time there was already a first scroll of Jeremiah that included an early version of Jeremiah reflected in 1:1–25:13a. This first edition of Jeremiah then had two different fates—one ended up in Egypt (with the priest Jeremiah) and another in Babylon with the royal family and its scribal community. The book of Jeremiah itself gives hints about a Babylonian version: “These are the words of the scroll that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles . . . whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon” (Jer 29:1 MT; 36:1 LXX). This would become the basis for the “long” Jeremiah that would transform him into “the prophet.” The two scrolls of Jeremiah tell the story of two different scribal [Page 280]communities—the peripheral priests that reflect the original figure of Jeremiah, a priest from Anathoth, and the royal administration that was exiled to Babylon and survived in a palace in the Babylonian capital supplied by rations from the royal table. The scrolls will eventually make their way back to Jerusalem to the library of the rebuilt Temple. They are updated, even partially harmonized, but the two Jeremiah editions continue to have their own lives. These two editions were preserved by the scribal community that would survive the Babylonian Exile—namely, the Jerusalem Temple priestly scribal community.³⁴

According to Schniedewind, Jeremiah, a “peripheral priest” from an insignificant village near Jerusalem was transformed into “the prophet” by the Jerusalem Temple priests in the early Persian period. During their editing of the two Hebrew Jeremiah scrolls, the temple priests retained many of the unique characteristics from each, including renaming Jeremiah as a “prophet” in version II, the text that made its way back from Babylon.

Jeremiah sent a letter to the exiles in Babylon advising them to settle down in Babylon and to ignore the counsel of the false prophets among them:

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace. For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them, saith the LORD. (Jeremiah 29:5–9)

As can be imagined, this letter did not go over well with the leaders and “prophets” who exercised influence among the captives in Babylon. One of them, ironically named Shemaiah (שמעיהו, [Page 281]shemayahu, or “heard by Jehovah”), sent a letter to the acting high priest in Jerusalem, Zephaniah, chastising him for not punishing Jeremiah:

The LORD hath made thee priest in the stead of Jehoiada the priest, that ye should be officers in the house of the LORD, for every man that is mad, and maketh himself a prophet, that thou shouldest put him in prison, and in the stocks. Now therefore why hast thou not reproved Jeremiah of Anathoth, which maketh himself a prophet to you? (Jeremiah 29:26–27)³⁵

In this letter, the pseudo-prophet Shemaiah ridiculed Zephaniah for his failure to punish Jeremiah, or more fully, ירמיהו הענתתי המתנבא לכם (yirmejahu ha’annetoti ha’mitnave lakhem), or “Jeremiah the Anathothite who makes himself a prophet to you.” Two observations can be made from Shemaiah’s label for Jeremiah:

1. Shemaiah highlights Jeremiah’s “otherness.” Jeremiah was not a Jerusalemite priest; he was from Ananthoth. In other words, his priestly lineage was defective.
2. Jeremiah was a self-declared prophet; he did not speak for the Lord. In his letter to the captives in Babylon, Jeremiah, speaking for the Lord, had claimed that the prophets in Babylon “prophesy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them, saith the LORD.” Shemaiah, speaking from his own authority rather than for the Lord, responded that Jeremiah was the false prophet, and that by implication he, Shemaiah, was the one who spoke for the Lord.

Shemaiah’s denouncement of Jeremiah likely reflected a broader skepticism of Jeremiah’s prophetic authority and status among the people during his lifetime, evidenced by his imprisonment on charges of treason for allegedly supporting the Babylonians. This historical context, where Jeremiah’s authority was doubted, becomes essential when we turn to the Book of Mormon’s portrayal of him.

[Page 282]Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon

Jeremiah is mentioned on three different occasions in the Book of Mormon, twice by Nephi₁ and once by Nephi₂. His first mention occurs following the acquisition of the brass plates by Nephi₁ and his brothers. After their return to the family’s camp in the wilderness, Nephi₁ informed us that his “father, Lehi, took the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass, and he did search them from the beginning” (1 Nephi 5:10).³⁶ Following this perusal, Nephi₁ gave us an abbreviated account of what was on the plates:

And he beheld that they did contain the five books of Moses, which gave an account of the creation of the world and also of Adam and Eve, which was our first parents, and also a record of the Jews from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, and also the prophecies of the holy prophets from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah. (1 Nephi 5:11–13)

Interestingly, this summary account given by Nephi₁ only provides us with the names of two contributors to the plates, Moses and Jeremiah. Nephi₁ appears to identify the Torah with “the five books of Moses,” the introductory books of the Hebrew Bible. It concludes by stating that the plates also included “many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah,” presumably the final writings found on the brass plates. In essence, naming Moses and Jeremiah was a way for Nephi₁ to bookend the contents of the brass plates.

It is also noteworthy that Nephi₁ tells us that these prophecies were “spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah” rather than written by him. While nuanced, this language could inform us that whoever was responsible for the final updates to the brass plates was not working with an account written by Jeremiah, or Baruch, in his possession, but was writing from memory or from an oral account. As a result, we cannot be sure in what form these “many prophesies” of Jeremiah would have taken on the plates. Did the brass plates record summaries of some of his prophesies, perhaps only highlights, or were the writings on the plates similar to what we encounter in the MT or LXX? Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing, since neither Nephi₁ nor any other authors [Page 283]of the Book of Mormon seem to have cited any of Jeremiah’s prophecies from the brass plates.

It is also significant that Nephi₁ did not include Jeremiah when he mentioned “the prophecies of the holy prophets.” Rather, Nephi₁ placed Jeremiah in a category apart from the prophets. As suggested by modern scholarship, Jeremiah had not yet achieved the title of “prophet” during his lifetime. Although Jeremiah was a priest, and even highly revered by some residents of Jerusalem, this passage from 1 Nephi can be seen as confirming that he was not yet included “among the prophets,” meaning that his status as a prophet was still in question by a large part of the population of Jerusalem, and especially by its priests and rulers.

After securing the brass plates from Laban, Nephi₁ and his brothers were again instructed to go up to Jerusalem and bring Ishmael and his family down into the wilderness to join Lehi’s group. However, during the return trip into the wilderness we read:

Laman and Lemuel and two of the daughters of Ishmael and the two sons of Ishmael and their families did rebel against us, yea, against I Nephi and Sam and their father Ishmael and his wife and his three other daughters. And it came to pass that in the which rebellion they were desirous to return unto the land of Jerusalem. (1 Nephi 7:6–7)

Nephi₁, as he was wont to do, chastised his rebellious brothers for their lack of faith, and in the process provided us a little more information about Jeremiah. Book of Mormon chronology informs us that Lehi and Jeremiah were contemporaries in Jerusalem, and that their prophesying overlapped, perhaps by as much as a decade.³⁷ We also know from both the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Mormon that the lives of Jeremiah and Lehi were threatened, and that Jeremiah was imprisoned on at least one occasion.³⁸ In the following passage, Nephi₁ confirmed that he was aware of Jeremiah’s imprisonment, but not of his release:

[Page 284]For behold, the Spirit of the Lord ceaseth soon to strive with [those remaining in Jerusalem]. For behold, they have rejected the prophets, and Jeremiah have they cast into prison, and they have sought to take away the life of my father, insomuch that they have driven him out of the land. (1 Nephi 7:14)

As with the previous passage, Nephi₁ appears to place Jeremiah in a separate category from “the prophets.” It is also noteworthy that Nephi₁ does not refer to him as “Jeremiah the prophet” in either passage as editor II frequently does in the “long” version of Jeremiah. Both passages from Nephi₁ lend credence to Schniedewind’s observation that it was only during the early Persian period, well after the destruction of Jerusalem, the death of Jeremiah, and Lehi’s escape from Jerusalem, that he was transformed from priest to prophet.

Interestingly, we find a related passage in the book of Matthew:

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. (Matthew 16:13–14)

As with the passages from the Book of Mormon, in this New Testament verse Jeremiah is also not included among “the prophets.” The translators of the NASB, perhaps believing there to be an omission in the NT text, inserted a word: “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets.” The word other in this translation is italicized to clarify that it is not found in the Greek. This does not presuppose that Jeremiah was not a prophet, only that he may not have been included “among the prophets,” at least according to the author of the book of Matthew, even as late as the first century CE.

The third mention of Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon is found in Helaman, where Nephi₂ is preaching of the coming of Messiah and using the words of the prophets as support:

And behold, also Zenoch and also Ezaias and also Isaiah and Jeremiah, Jeremiah being that same prophet which testified of the destruction of Jerusalem—and now we know that Jerusalem was destroyed according to the words of Jeremiah. (Helaman 8:20)

[Page 285]In this passage, more than five centuries after Nephi₁’s mention of Jeremiah, Nephi₂ clearly portrays Jeremiah as a prophet, in the company of Isaiah and others. We do not know how long it took for the Nephites to recognize Jeremiah as a prophet, as God’s mouth and spokesman, but it is possible that this recognition came only after they had arrived in the promised land.

Jeremiah and Lehi both prophesied an identical message: if the people did not repent, Jerusalem would be destroyed, many of its inhabitants would be killed, and the remainder would be taken captive into Babylon. While Jeremiah was told to write these words in a scroll (see Jeremiah 36), Lehi was given a scroll to read with these prophecies:

And the first came and stood before my father and gave unto him a book and bade him that he should read. And it came to pass that as he read, he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord. And he read, saying: Woe woe unto Jerusalem, for I have seen thine abominations. Yea, and many things did my father read concerning Jerusalem, that it should be destroyed and the inhabitants thereof; many should perish by the sword and many should be carried away captive into Babylon. (1 Nephi 1:11–13)

Lehi apparently preached a message of choice to the inhabitants of Jerusalem—a choice between repentance and salvation, or intransigence and destruction. As with Jeremiah, Lehi was mocked and rejected by the people for his prophecies (see 1 Nephi 1:19). And like Jeremiah, it seems clear that Lehi’s prophetic status was also not recognized or accepted by those at Jerusalem. However, as a vindication of his prophetic role, after arriving in the promised land, Lehi told his family that he had seen a vision of the destruction of Jerusalem:

How merciful the Lord had been in warning us that we should flee out of the land of Jerusalem. For behold, saith he, I have seen a vision, in the which I know that Jerusalem is destroyed; and had we remained in Jerusalem, we should also have perished. (2 Nephi 1:3–4)

Although this vision is not the type of concrete evidence that the editors of the book of Jeremiah possessed after their return from captivity during the early Persian period, it did confirm Lehi’s prophetic message to his family. Interestingly, unlike Jeremiah who was called a prophet by Nephi₂, Lehi himself is never given the title of “prophet” in [Page 286]the Book of Mormon, even though his prophecies aligned with those of Jeremiah.

Immediately following the passage where Nephi₂ referred to Jeremiah as a prophet, he added the following as evidence that Jeremiah’s prophecies were fulfilled:

And now will ye dispute that Jerusalem was not destroyed? Will ye say that the sons of Zedekiah were not slain, all except it were Muloch? Yea, and do ye not behold that the seed of Zedekiah are with us and they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem? But behold, this is not all. Our father Lehi was driven out of Jerusalem because he testified of these things. (Helaman 8:21–22)

Although Nephi₂ accepted that “Lehi was driven out of Jerusalem because he testified of these things,” meaning the coming of Christ, he refrained from calling him a prophet and chose instead the title “our father.” Jesus said that a “prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house” (Mark 6:4). This proverb certainly applies to Jeremiah during his own lifetime. However, it does not appear to apply to Lehi since his descendants seem to honor and esteem him, even though he is not called a prophet by them.

Beyond these three instances, the only other mention of the name Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon is found in 3 Nephi 19, where we are given the names of the twelve disciples. These disciples bear the names of several noteworthy men from the Hebrew Bible, including Jeremiah, Zedekiah, Isaiah, and two named Jonah (Jonas). Unfortunately, since the name Zedekiah is also included in the list, we cannot conclude that these men were named after prophets, only that they were named after prominent men from the brass plates.

Summary and Conclusions

The LXX (edition I) and MT (edition II) versions of Jeremiah are similar to each other for the first half of the book, roughly through chapter 25, but they differ significantly in the second half. A rising consensus among biblical scholars identifies the vorlage underlying edition I as the earliest of the two textual traditions. The principal difference between these two books is the additional material that has been appended to edition II of Jeremiah, including naming Jeremiah “the prophet” multiple times. This is not to say that Jeremiah was not a prophet, nor does [Page 287]it deny that he was called of God to act as a prophet to the house of Israel. The intended point in this article is that Jeremiah was not recognized as being “among the prophets” during his lifetime. It was likely only in the early Persian period that the identity of Jeremiah migrated from priest to prophet. Regarding the title of prophet given to Jeremiah so freely in the MT, Schniedewind noted:

This title is fundamentally a reflection of the Masoretic Text as opposed to the earlier, shorter version of the book of Jeremiah. And here we are fortunate to have objective and concrete evidence of the transformation of the figure of Jeremiah in the process of the editing of the book, as evidenced by the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Masoretic Text. The conclusion must be that Jeremiah was not originally known as a prophet at all. This was not one of his titles. He was simply from a priestly family that came from outside of the Jerusalem Temple priestly community. This observation must be the beginning for a reflection on “The Invention of the Prophet Jeremiah.”³⁹

This conclusion is also supported by, and consistent with, Nephi₁’s depiction of Jeremiah in the Book of Mormon. In the two passages where he mentions Jeremiah, Nephi₁ does not include Jeremiah among “the prophets.” Had Nephi₁ viewed Jeremiah as “among the prophets” he could have written, “For behold, the Spirit of the Lord ceaseth soon to strive with them; for behold, they have rejected the prophets, including Jeremiah whom they have cast into prison.” (1 Nephi 7:14, modified). But he did not. Rather, he wrote, “For behold, the Spirit of the Lord ceaseth soon to strive with them; for behold, they have rejected the prophets, and Jeremiah have they cast into prison.” Nephi₁ uses similar language in 1 Nephi 5:11–13. In other words, it would likely have been an anachronism for Nephi₁, during his lifetime, to refer to Jeremiah as “the prophet.”

It is not until the book of Mosiah that we read that Nephi₂ accepted Jeremiah as a prophet on equal footing with Isaiah and others. This is not to say that it took more than five centuries for Jeremiah to be accepted “among the prophets” in Nephite society; this is likely not the case. What we can say is that Jeremiah eventually was included “among the prophets” by the Nephites even though during Jeremiah’s [Page 288]own lifetime, which closely aligned with the lifetime of Lehi and Nephi₁, he likely was not included “among the prophets.”

Appendix

All passages from the book of Jeremiah (MT) that include the phrases “Jeremiah the prophet” or “the prophet Jeremiah” are listed in the left-hand column below. The corresponding passages from the Septuagint (LXX) are shown in the right-hand column. While the KJV translation of the MT presents twenty-eight occurrences of these phrases—one was added by the KJV translators that is not extant in the MT—the LXX only contains four such occurrences. None of the LXX passages are found prior to Jeremiah 25:13a (the presumed ending of the initial book of Jeremiah).