A Resident Alien in Transit

Contemporary research into the social location of resident aliens sheds important light on the language, rhetoric and sociological features of many passages in the book of Jeremiah. The particular, the narrative materials within the book point to the worldview of authors whose sense of identity breaks with that of Judahites long-characterized by attachment to space and place. This reinforces the likelihood that these materials stem in substantial form from an authorial circle with heritage beyond Judah, i. e., writers whose ancestry can be traced to the former northern kingdom and whose experience in late-monarchic Judah is that of resident aliens. This carries implications for both the book of Jeremiah and the larger Deuteronomistic tradition to which it belongs in terms of the introduction of new standards of social and religious identity in the development of Israelite religion and ancient Judaism.