Week 27 Jeremiah
I finished reading Jeremiah today.
In chapter 51 there’s a pretty interesting story I’d use if I was a fiction writer. My novel would have adventure, intrigue, danger, exotic locales, and life-threatening risk. I’d be Indiana Joe, an archaeologist searching for the Lost Babylonian Scroll of Jeremiah.
It’s kind of totally plausible. After Jeremiah finished his one-hundred-plus verses of withering oral denunciation against Babylon he had it transcribed (which is absolutely perfect since I’ve got nothing to search for unless I get Jeremiah’s spoken prophecy into writing). Better yet, he gave the scroll to a guy named Seraiah, told him to read it publicly in Babylon, and then to throw it into the Euphrates River!
So there I have it – an actual-tangible-for-real archaeologist-friendly document at the bottom of the river for me to discover.
Okay, I know the bible doesn’t say that Seraiah sealed the scroll in a watertight container that would last for twenty-five-hundred years. But not to worry – that’s why we have fiction.
Note: the story of Jeremiah getting his oral speech into text-form is in Jeremiah 51:59-64. The scroll likely contained our Jeremiah 50:1-51:58.
Added note: I calculated my end-of-month numbers. Total pages read from January – June = 1115. So I’ve read 64.45% of the bible. I feel pretty good about that. But…then I checked last year’s numbers. I’d finished the entire OT by July 12, 2019 – 77% in 6.5 months – but on December 31 I still had 50 unread psalms. Hard to believe. So anyway I won’t count my chickens yet.