RECENT TRENDS IN THE STUDY OF JEREMIAH by Bill T. Arnold * Until recently, one would be hard pressed to list more than a hand- ful of commentaries currently available on the book of jeremiah. This important Old Testament prophet has been short-changed by the neglect of scholarly activity during the twentieth century; that is, un- til now! At the end of the 1970s, there was an obvious dearth of up-to-date commentaries on jeremiah. I But in the past twelve years, this desideratum has been met -- and with a vengeance. First came a trickle, which grew into a steady stream, and then a virtual downpour of com- mentaries on jeremiah. It began with john A. Thompson's contribu- tion in the NICOT series in 1980 and has continued unabated until the present. 2 And this avalanche of scholarly activity is not limited to commentaries. A host of important monographs on individual topics has also been published during this period. This article will survey the new commentaries available since 1980 including Thompson's. The discussion will center around three ma- jor, critical commentaries which appeared together in 1986. Commen- taries by Robert P. Carroll,3 William L. and William McKane,5 were all published that year making it something of a land- mark in jeremianic studies. Additionally, I will include remarks here on the new works by Walter Brueggemann,6 Ronald E. Peter C. Craigie et al.,H Elmer A. Martens,') and Douglas Rawlinson jones. tO I will also make brief comments on a few of the most impor- tant monographs. This article attempts to evaluate the new commentaries by survey- ing how eae:h one treats five of the most important exegetical issues in jeremiah studies. In the process, the presentation will also survey the recent trends among scholars working on jeremiah. 11 Three of these issues are rather standard for works on biblical books: author- ship and date, historical background, and theological emphases. But in addition to these, any serious study of jeremiah has two additional problems to address: the book's unique relationship to Deuteronomy and the puzzling text critical discrepancies between the standard Hebrew text and the ancient Greek translation of jeremiah. *Dr. Arnold (Ph.D., Hebrew Union College) is Associate Professor of Old Testa- ment and Semitic Languages at A TS. 75