188 BiBlical T heology BulleTin Volume 49 Number 2 Pages xx–xx © The Author(s), 2019. Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0146107918801512 Melvin L. Sensenig, Ph.D. (Temple University), is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Albright College in Reading, PA, and St. Joseph’s University,. in Philadelphia. He is the author of “Exhortation I. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin, Germany: Walter deGruyter). He can be reached at 350 Spring St., Read- ing PA 19601. Email: msensenig@albright.edu. Duhm, Mowinckel, and a Disempowered King: Protestant Liberal Theological Analysis in Jeremiah’s Construction of Jehoiachin Melvin L. Sensenig Abstract Late 19 th –early 20 th -century German biblical scholarship, because of its connections with Protestant liberal theology and the search for myth in modern Germany, lost the category of disempowered king in its treatment of one of the fnal kings of Judah, Jehoiachin, in the book of Jeremiah. While current scholarship has already moved beyond Protestant liberalism, it has not yet recovered the hermeneutical category of disempowered king as a way to understand Jehoiachin and later expectations of kingship. I suggest ways for contemporary critical scholars to build on the work of more recent scholarship and engage the canonical shape of Jeremiah. Key words: Jeremiah, Jehoiachin, Duhm, Mowinckel, kingship, Protestant liberalism, hermeneutics, David Biblical scholarship has struggled from time to time to work in a context where faith communities perceive a confes- sional impact at stake in the scholarship. This article investi- gates the impact of Protestant liberalism in Jeremiah studies in the 19th century. It may seem something of an oxymoron to describe Protestant liberalism as a theological bias, given that many consider it anti-dogmatic and humanitarian. Further, along with Catholics and evangelicals, Protestant Liberalism, which also was strong in America, issued calls for social re- form that came out of that movement as well as a general optimism for the human condition. However, Michael Foucault argued that the rise of modern- ity (and, by extension, the rise of Protestant liberalism) began with the impulse within Protestantism to do away with the foolishness of the cross (Foucault: 152–55). This effective- ly denied the hermeneutical category of disempowered king to 19 th -and early 20 th century Protestant biblical interpreters (Lorberbaum; Williamson: 296–97; Aschheim: 201). Given the ostensibly anti-dogmatic stance of 19 th century German Protestant liberalism, its theological infuence is sometimes dif fcult to assess. However, there is an intriguing case study in the oracle against Jehoiachin in Jeremiah 22:24–30 and the later treatment of Jehoiachin in Jeremiah. Here we can see how Protestant liberal theological imperatives removed the hermeneutical category of the disempowered king and thus submerged an important part of the editorial framing of the canonical book of Jeremiah, a framework still sometimes ab- sent from critical construals of Jehoiachin in Jeremiah. Jehoiachin and His Oracle By all accounts, King Jehoiachin in Judah is a most unre- markable and unimpressive character receiving little or no mention in Bible dictionaries or Hebrew Bible/Old Testament introductions (Waltke; Tappy; Hayes: xiv, 186, 298, 364;