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Haunting Book— Haunted People We are, all of us, children of the biblical text. We have been conceived and birthed, generated and summoned, given life by this text and none other. This text keeps having its say among us, by translation and interpretation, by commentary and proclamation, by study and enactment. We must always again, always afresh in every circumstance, come to terms with it. We spend our lives struggling with this text, sometimes struggling for the text, sometimes struggling against the text. The text always has its say among us; it will not go away. Its voice is a haunting one, sounding promises, uttering commands, voicing stories, proclaiming oracles, ejaculating pain, authoring hope. The voice of the text haunts us because we know very well it is a human text filled with endless critical problems— and yet we hear in it the very voice of God: majestic sovereignty, awesome holiness, passionate grace, weakness made strong. Because of this text, which will not go away or finally keep silent, we live haunted lives, filled with yearnings for what is not in hand, promises not yet filled, commands not yet obeyed, desires not yet granted, neighbors not yet loved. The old text becomes new text; old story becomes new song. For all those reasons, in gratitude and awe and fresh resolve, we celebrate the publication of the NRSV, made freshly aware by it that we are indeed haunted children of this haunting text. And because the text will not go away or be silent, we are destined to be endlessly haunted, uneasy, restless, and on the way. I.There Was a Time:The Emergence of a Text There was a time before which we were not children of this biblical text. There was time when our Jewish fathers and mothers had no text. It seems chapter ten 132 most likely that our Jewish parents became children of this authorized, authorizing text only somewhere in the seventh or sixth centuries b.c.e., a happening linked to the reform of Deuteronomy, to the disaster of 587, and to the danger of exile. It is in times of reform, disaster, and exile (times not unlike our own), that this community first was seized by the text, and in such times is always again seized by the text, for such times are primal times for retextualization. I have chosen for this occasion a very early textual moment, perhaps the earliest. Jeremiah 36 is indeed the only clear account in the Old Testament of how the text came to be. Earlier there were powerful oral traditions, and later there was canon. But in this text we are at the pivotal moment between oral tradition and settled canon. There is an awesome moment of redefinition. In this awesome moment of text-making, we have the intrusion of heavenly holiness into a region that would so much like to be immune to the haunting. This pivotal invasion happened in the career of the subversive Jeremiah. I shall trace the emergence of this dangerous text in six moments, perhaps the same six moves always enacted when we rehear the text and accept its haunting. 1. The text is initiated by God; it intends always to evoke a drastic change (Jer. 36:1-3). It is God who initiates the notion of a scroll, which Jeremiah perhaps would not have thought of or have risked. It is the speech of God and the passion of God and the purpose of God that are the driving forces of this event. It is as though Jeremiah is a passive receiver who can exercise no choice in the matter. The Lord says to Jeremiah: Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today. (v. 2) The scroll initiated by God constitutes a threat, for it is three times “against”—against Israel, against Judah, against the nations. The speechscroll of God casts God’s terrible rule against the orders of the day. The purpose of that dangerous, holy scroll from heaven is to evoke in the listeners massive, drastic change: It may be that when the house of Judah hears of all the disasters that I intend to do to them, all of them may turn from their evil ways, so that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin. (v. 3) Haunting Book...

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