The Fulfilment of Doom? The Dialogic Interaction between the Book of Lamentations and the Pre-Exilic/Early Exilic Prophetic Literature (review)

Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 378 Reviews THE FULFILMENT OF DOOM? THE DIALOGIC INTERACTION BETWEEN THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS AND THE PREEXILIC /EARLY EXILIC PROPHETIC LITERATURE. By Elizabeth Boase. Pp. x + 268. New York: T & T Clark, 2006. Cloth, $145.00. Elizabeth Boase states that in The Fulfilment of Doom her main pursuit is an exploration of the relationship between Lamentations and the eighth- to sixth-century prophetic texts and of how that relationship affected the complex and diverse theological outlook of Lamentations (cf. pp. 1–3). She is motivated by what she understands to be a general tendency of scholars to reduce both Lamentations and the prophetic texts to single monologic theological statements. Reducing Lamentations in this manner, she argues, sacrifices the variety of voices addressing the destruction of Jerusalem (pp. 239– 240). The structure of her chapters focuses on various shared motifs between Lamentations and the prophetic texts ([1] Introduction; [2] The Personification of Jerusalem as Female: Prophetic Motif and Literary Device; [3] The Day of Yahweh: the Relationship between Lamentations and the Prophetic Literature; [4] Sin and Judgment in Lamentations and Its Relationship to the Prophetic Literature; [5] Lamentations as Dialogic Text; [6] Conclusions). These motifs represent areas of dialogic interaction between the prophetic texts and Lamentations (cf. pp. 31–32). Initially, she proposes to embark on her investigation with the theoretical framework of Mikhail Bakhtin (pp. 23–26). She borrows several concepts from Bakhtin (dialogism, polyphony, and double-voicing), stating that these concepts facilitate an exploration of the theological dialogue in which Lamentations engages (p. 24). She also acknowledges that she “filters” her use of Bakhtin’s concepts through the works of Patricia Tull and of Charles Miller (p. 31; see also pp. 24–30). Yet apart from two brief nods to Miller (pp. 212, 215), she does not appear to reference these authors again. References to Bakhtin are likewise in short supply (pp. 24–26, 206). Thus, despite her initial proposal, it appears that she simply borrowed Bakhtin’s vocabulary—rather than engage rigorous application of the theory of which these concepts are a part. The personification of Jerusalem as female is the first motif that Boase analyzes (cf. p. 51). “Lamentations magnifies and sustains the personification in order to evoke audience empathy and pathos in the aftermath of the events of 586 BCE” (p. 52). She assumes—and this applies to all the motifs discussed—that the audience of Lamentations is familiar with the prophetic texts and would notice the manner that meaning is portrayed in the “dialogue ” between Lamentations and the prophetic texts (cf. p. 142; see also p. 172). The prophetic texts range from and include Isaiah 1–39, Micah, Jeremiah, and Zephaniah. “Only those texts which can reasonably be as- Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 379 Reviews sumed to pre-date or be contemporaneous with Lamentations will be considered ” (p. 54). She finds the second motif, the Day of Yahweh, in Lamentations based on the imagery and elements that constitute the Day (pp. 111–112). She argues that Lamentations subverts the prophetic motif and redefines it as a motif stressing the extent of the suffering within Jerusalem (p. 139). Further, she argues that several chapters in Lamentations (chaps. 1, 2, 4) evoke the prophetic literature based on the association of sin references used in conjunction with the personification of the Day of Yahweh motif (pp. 189–190; sin and judgment are the third motif discussed). From her discussion, Boase determines that a main distinction between the prophetic texts and Lamentations—a distinction that creates polyphony to an extent—is that the prophetic texts were written before judgment was meted out and that Lamentations was written afterwards (cf. p. 202). She argues that in its “double-voicing” of the prophetic texts, Lamentations enters into a dialogic relationship with them when it “borrows” motifs from the prophetic literature and inserts new semantic meaning into the borrowed motifs (p. 203; see also p. 26). “Inherent in the above assertion—that Lamentations draws the prophetic viewpoint into dialogic interaction—is that Lamentations cannot be viewed as a monologic text but is, in fact, polyphonic . That is, Lamentations contains more than one viewpoint, and those viewpoints within the text...