Letter of Jeremiah

5 Episodes

The Letter of Jeremiah is a deuterocanonical Jewish work preserved mainly in Greek and often transmitted alongside Baruch and Jeremiah despite not being composed by the same authorial circle. Framed as a warning to exiles in Babylon, it is best understood as a later anti-idolatry polemic shaped by Second Temple and Greco-Roman Jewish discourse rather than as an authentic letter from the sixth-century prophet.

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Why this book matters

The show returns to the Letter of Jeremiah less for its plot than for the questions it raises about authorship, date, canon, and anti-idolatry rhetoric. It becomes a useful case study in how later Jewish texts could be attached to prophetic figures, transmitted in different scriptural orders, and then received unevenly by Jewish and Christian communities. That makes it a compact example of how canon formation and manuscript tradition are historical processes rather than timeless givens.

It also fits one of the podcast’s recurring interests: how biblical and para-biblical polemics work from inside ancient religious cultures rather than from some neutral distance. Dan repeatedly uses the letter’s mockery of idols to show that these texts are not simply observing other people from the outside; they are participating in the same broader world of divine images, ritual objects, and competing claims about which mediating objects count as legitimate. That makes the Letter of Jeremiah a sharp entry point into the show’s larger conversations about exile memory, Second Temple interpretation, and the messy afterlife of scripture.

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Quotes from the Data

“When? So, uh, the Babylonians, there are, uh, two main waves: 597 BCE and then 586 BCE. And it's the 586 invasion that results in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Uh, I think some folks think this is probably the 597, uh, wave that this letter is supposed to be associated with.”

Dan McClellan Episode 126

“Yeah. But the Letter of Jeremiah is kind of your classical idol polemic, which starts with Jeremiah, with Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and others who are basically just saying, "Those aren't real gods, you dumb-dumbs. Those are just idols of stone and wood and gold, and they can neither eat nor drink nor breathe nor see nor speak nor hear nor any of that kind of stuff."”

Dan McClellan Episode 126

“Yeah, this was, this was something that, that was established pretty late and, and primarily because of rhetorical utility to Athanasius for, for his attempt to try to engage in boundary maintenance—who's a good Christian, who's a bad Christian—and, and also for the churches. So I think you have toward the end, the Council of Hippo, 393 CE, the Council of Carthage, 397 CE. Those are reaffirmations basically of more or less the canon that Athanasius asserted. ... Jeremiah with Baruch. So that would be what is now considered an apocryphal book. Lamentations and the Epistle, which is probably a reference to the Epistle of Jeremiah, another apocryphal book, if I recall correctly.”

Dan McClellan Episode 119

“These are all expansions on Daniel. We have Epistle of Jeremiah. We have Baruch. Baruch was the scribe of Jeremiah, Ben Sira, the Wisdom of Solomon, Judith, Tobit, and then 1 and 2 Esdras. These are texts that were considered authoritative within early Judaism and are adopted into the Christian concept of Scripture. But then the Jewish canon omits them when it becomes solidified.”

Dan McClellan Episode 20

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