The so-called “false prophecy of salvation” in the book of Jeremiah—long thought to be discernible particularly in the veritable treasure trove of elaborate speeches which the Jeremianic tradition imputes to Jeremiah’s rivals (Jer 6:14; 14:13, 15; 23:17, 25; 27:9, 14, 16; 28:2–4, 10–11; 29:8, 26–28; 37:19)—endures as a puzzle in modern biblical scholarship. With a steady stream of publications searching for its historical kernel, this enigmatic phenomenon has been variously reconstructed as royal or establishment ideology, the theology of Zion’s inviolability, cultic prophecy, vox populi, patriotic fervour, or a front for competing ideological agendas of the latter-day tradents who composed these texts. The resulting historical reconstructions have played a pivotal role in shaping scholarly conceptions of prophecy in ancient Israel.

My doctoral project returns to the well-travelled fields of false prophecy with a fresh perspective, shifting the focus from historical circumstances of ancient Israelite prophecy to scribal hermeneutics—that is to say, from the putative extra-textual realities of prophecy in ancient Israel to the textual realities of the developing Israelite prophetic literature. My argument is that false prophecy of salvation in the book of Jeremiah is best understood as a scribal construct. That is to say, it is a scribal literary invention; it is, at its heart, a product of ancient exegetical imagination. I unfold this argument in four key stages.

In Chapter 1, I provide an overview of scholarship on false prophecy in the Hebrew Bible to date and identify key trajectories within it—namely, socio-religious, hermeneutical, ideological, canonical, and literary approaches. The chapter then turns to summarise relevant insights from recent studies of scribal culture in ancient Israel and to introduce key methodological orientation points for the present investigation. Of particular importance is the increased scholarly awareness of the sophisticated exegetical culture that flourished among the ancient Israelite scribes.

Part I, entitled “False Prophecy of Salvation as an Exegetical Invention” and comprising Chapters 2, 3, and 4, begins the reassessment of false prophecy in the book of Jeremiah. Chapter 2 develops the notion of an exegetical invention. I suggest that false prophecy of salvation is a product of inner-biblical interpretation and owes its very existence to deeply learned scribal exegesis and literary imagination. False prophets are best construed as exegetically invented exegetes. Texts covered include Jer 28 and 29:24–32 (Chapter 3) as well as Jer 14:13–16; 23:16–17, 25–27, 30–32; 27:9–10, 14–15, 16–22; 29:8–9 (Chapter 4).

Building on the preceding discussion, Part II, entitled “False Prophecy of Salvation as an Exegetical Device” and comprising Chapters 5, 6, and 7, proceeds to focus on the exegetical ends to which false prophecy of salvation is put in the Jeremianic corpus. Not only is false prophecy of salvation an exegetical invention, but it is also an exegetical device—a literary tool for the interpretation of texts (Chapter 5). False prophecy of salvation is, in essence, a scribal project of harmonisation and integration. Chapters 6 and 7 marshal the evidence in favour of this proposal.

Finally, in Chapter 8, I round out the argument of this study by venturing that the major achievement of the Jeremianic false-prophecy texts is the articulation of a scribal exegetical grammar for understanding salvation and judgement in the book of Jeremiah. I conclude that the Jeremianic false prophets stand amid a rich variety of imagined opponents, known from both antiquity and the modern world. They are, in particular, imagined exegetical opponents, and our scribal scholars engage in hypothetical exegetical polemics with them.