Duhm, Mowinckel, and a Disempowered King: Protestant Liberal Theological Analysis in Jeremiah's Construction of Jehoiachin

Abstract

Late 19th–early 20th-century German biblical scholarship, because of its connections with Protestant liberal theology and the search for myth in modern Germany, lost the category of disempowered king in its treatment of one of the final kings of Judah, Jehoiachin, in the book of Jeremiah. While current scholarship has already moved beyond Protestant liberalism, it has not yet recovered the hermeneutical category of disempowered king as a way to understand Jehoiachin and later expectations of kingship. I suggest ways for contemporary critical scholars to build on the work of more recent scholarship and engage the canonical shape of Jeremiah.