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In this commentary, Joshua Berman considers Lamentations as a literary work that creates meaning for a community in the wake of tragedy through its repudiation of Zion theology. Drawing from studies in collective trauma, his volume is the first study of Lamentations that systematically accounts for the constructed character of the narrator, a pastoral mentor who engages in a series of dialogues with a second constructed character, daughter Zion, who embodies the traumatized community of survivors. In each chapter, the pastoral mentor speaks to a different religious typology and a different sub-community of post-destruction Judeans, working with daughter Zion to reconsider her errant positions and charting for her a positive way forward to reconnecting with the Lord. Providing a systematic approach to the careful structure of each of its chapters, Berman illuminates how biblical writers offered support to their communities in a way that is still relevant and appealing to a therapy-conscious contemporary society.
List of contents
Introduction; I. Plotting a path for Zion's spiritual rehabilitation; II. Dispelling delusions I: the Lord and His love for Zion; III. Redirecting Zion's anger: the Geber as Model; IV. Dispelling delusions II: Zion and her social structures; V. Purging prayer of Zion theology.
About the author
Joshua Berman is a professor in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He is the author of Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2011), which was a National Jewish Book Award Finalist in Scholarship; and Inconsistency in the Torah: Ancient Literary Convention and the Limits of Source Criticism (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Summary
Other commentaries see Lamentations' theological positions as randomly expressed. In this commentary, we discover how Lamentations' narrator, a pastoral mentor, engages daughter Zion in a series of discussions in a systematic process akin to therapy, charting for her a way forward to reconnecting with the Lord.
