the translation of the canonical Hebrew text, but that the two
Books, while sharing a common basis of wide extent, represent two
different lines of compilation and editorial development which continued
till at least 200 B.C. Between them they are the proof that, while our
Bible was still being compiled, some measure of historical criticism and
of editorial activity was at work on the material--and this not only along
one line. We need not stop to discuss how far the fact justifies the
exercise of criticism by the modern Church. For our present purpose it is
enough to keep in mind that our Book of Jeremiah is the result of a long
development through some centuries and on more than one line, though the
two divergent movements started with, and carried down, a large body of
material in common.

Moreover, this common material bears evidence of having already undergone
similar treatment, _before_ it passed out on those two lines of further
development which resulted in the canonical Hebrew text and the Greek
Version respectively. The signs of gradual compilation are everywhere upon
the material which they share in common. Now and then a chronological
order appears, and indeed there are traces of a purpose to pursue that
order throughout. But this has been disturbed by cross-arrangements
according to subject,(19) and by the intrusion of later oracles and
episodes among earlier ones(20) or _vice versa_(21) as if their materials
had come into the hands of the compilers or editors of the Book only
gradually. Another proof of the gradual growth of those contents, which
are common to the Hebrew and the Greek, is the fashion in which they tend
to run away from the titles prefixed to them. Take the title to the whole
Book,(22) Ch. I. 2, _Which was the Word of the Lord to Jeremiah in the
days of Josiah, son of Amon, King of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his
reign_. This covers only the narrative of the Prophet's call in Ch. I, or
at most a few of the Oracles in the following chapters. The supplementary
title in verse 3--_It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of
Josiah, King of Judah, up to [the end of]_(_23_)_ the eleventh year of
Sedekiah, the son of Josiah King of Judah, up to the exile of Jerusalem,
in the fifth month_--is probably a later addition, added when the later
Oracles of Jeremiah were attached to some collection of those which he had
delivered under Josiah; but even then the title fails to cover those words
i