Build, Plant, and Marry Return, Dwell, and Harvest: Symbolic Code as a Tool of Cultural Hegemony in the Book of Jeremiah

Abstract

This thesis examines narrative episodes from Jer 29, 32, 35, 40, 41 and 44 in terms of the representation of communal settlement, socio-economic participation, and spatial dynamics, in order to reveal the operations of a symbolic code. This symbolic code centred around norms of household establishment, agricultural productivity, and economic participation operates as a tool of cultural hegemony within the book of Jeremiah. Cultural hegemony is control of social discourse, including facets of the economic and political spheres, via cultural means. Cultural hegemony is the key tool of a social caste of ?intellectuals? who, as originators of cultural products, seek to exert socio-political and economic control. The symbolic code, as an array of signifiers gleaned from the surrounding cultural context, is deployed in the text of Jeremiah to broadcast a specific message of adaptation and compliance to the new, post-crisis reality of Judean life under Neo-Babylonian suzerainty. The hegemonic message promoted and reinforced via the semiotic operation of the symbolic code is one of adaptation and survival in the aftermath of the collapse of Judah as a monarchic state and its reformulation within a new all-encompassing Neo-Babylonian imperial system.

Employing interpretive tools garnered from the realms of social, economic, and literary studies this research relies on the semiotic model of a transactional relationship between text and audience while also acknowledging the composite nature of the text under examination, exploring questions of its relationship with other foundational texts of the Hebrew Bible. In performing literary analysis in a mode conversant with the principles of historical-criticism this thesis attempts to offer plausible reconstructions of elements of the historical reality which influence both the form and function of the symbolic code. This analysis demonstrates the coherent presence of certain words, phrases, concepts and recurring themes within the text of Jeremiah as a symbolic code deployed to the specific end of cultural hegemony.