The Witness of Lamentations

Today we read through the five poems of Jeremiah's Lamentations over the destruction of Jerusalem. We look in particular at the historical context and the humanness of this 2600 year old performance, but also at some of the theological innovations that, already at the start of the Babylonian exile, are marking the exilic Jews out as a faith distinct from their neighbors and unique in the world. The main Mesopotamian context here is the genre of Laments which was already at least 1500 years old when Jeremiah wrote this one. I read one of these on the main show, a bonus episode between eps 55 and 56 called Lament for Ur, but if you want to get deeper into the now little known genre of this text, definitely take a look at the City Laments section on ETCSL: https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.2.2*# The first Oldest Stories book, covering Sumer and Akkad, is available for purchase: https://a.co/d/64mxp6w