506 Mark Leuchter hands of an editor of the Jeremianic text who lived during the Babylonian exile. It is argued that this editor was reticent to institute additions to the text that would openly condemn the ruling regime (12). Other scholars have advanced the notion that the coded terms, as literary inversions of the corresponding Hebrew letters, represent a type of word-magic formula, projecting the demise of the Babylon and the Chaldean regime through negating influence of the sacred text (13). There can be little doubt that the Jeremianic tradition places far greater emphasis on the power of written prophecy than any of the prophetic traditions from which it drew (14), but there can little likelihood that the coding represents a word-magic formula. The principle factor that compromises this reading is the general ideological trajectory of the Jeremianic corpus itself, particularly with regard to the motif of rqç or “falsehood”. The Jeremianic tradition consistently inveighs against the hypostatization of systems, icons and ideas within Israelite religious consciousness, likening blind faith in the Zion tradition or a frozen, static Torah to falsehood and idolatry (Jer 7,1-15; Jer 8,8-12, respectively; cf. Jer 10,1-16…all three texts are associated with the rqç motif). This same accusation of hyposta- tization underscores the criticism of Zedekiah in Jer 34,8-22 and is presupposed by the account of Jehoiakim’s destruction of the Urrolle in Jer 36,24. In both cases, the monarch in question reduces the role of Scripture to little more than a ritualistic icon or fetish, the sustenance or destruction of which might alternately preserve communal integrity or eliminate threat (15). The application of magical dimensions to the atbash coding in the Jeremianic passages would be inconsistent with the dominant theo-polemical scheme of the text. The case for the atbash codes as a veiled political criticism is equally untenable. These passages are set within polemical literature that unabashedly calls into question Babylon’s future. A later scribe’s seditious interpolation of these codes within a text he sought to (12) See BRIGHT, Jeremiah, 161; NICHOLSON, Jeremiah 1–25, 215. (13) See BRIGHT, Jeremiah, 355; see also D.R. JONES, Jeremiah (NCBC, Grand Rapids 1992) 535, who notes this possibility, though he is tentative about accepting it as a viable explanation. (14) On the priority of the written form of prophecy in Jeremianic discourse, J.R. LUNDBOM, “Baruch, Seraiah and Expanded Colophons in the Book of Jeremiah”, JSOT 36 (1986) 107-109; ID., Jeremiah 1–20 (AB; New York 1999) 92. (15) For the Jeremianic invective against hypostatization, see B. HALPERN, “Brisker Pipes Than Poetry: The Development of Israelite Monotheism”, Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel (eds. J. NEUSNER et al.) (Philadelphia 1987) 98-102.