Jeremiah Through the Centuries

"Readers from the beginning wrestled with the complex relation between divine speech and its human record. Septuagint begins "The word of God that came to Jeremiah..." but the Hebrew reads "The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah...which was the word of the LORD to him." Dead Sea scrolls of Jeremiah offer evidence that multiple versions co-existed, some supporting what became the Masoretic text and others the Septuagint. The Septuagint, though later than our Hebrew text, translates an earlier Hebrew version no longer extant. Why does this matter? For redactors of Jeremiah in the exile the uncontrolled nature of prophecy was a problem"--