Jeremiah Still Speaks

The centrality of the prophet's speech as God's speech remains even when that speech is cast in the form of a book. Both rhetorical criticism and speech-act theory allow for the extension of the spoken word into writing as communicative event. We saw how the book of Jeremiah contains its own reflection on the process from utterance to text in Jeremiah 36. This means that the book itself favors a model that reckons with the poles of actual speech of the prophet and the book itself as communicative event.

The force of the word is neither identified with with the pure voice of the prophet or with the book as dehistoricized text. The book rides on the speech of the prophet; conversely, the speech of the prophet is accessible only through the book, with all the mediation and interpretation that is implied in this.

The guarantee that the relaying of the prophet's words is true and faithful lies in the nature of the community. New meanings do not arise in a vacuum but are understood within a tradition of knowing and believing. The idea of the prophetic word as speech of God, further constrained by anxieties about false prophecy, guards the traditioning of the word.

• Gordon McConville, "Divine Speech and the Book of Jeremiah" (pp. 36-37)