508 Mark Leuchter the atbash code for Babylon is read in the same breath as a specific prophecy limiting the dominance of that same power, making it quite unlikely that the code would be understood as anything but a direct reference to the role played by Babylon in Jeremiah’s discourse(19). Nevertheless, Steiner’s conclusions concerning the public origin of the atbash codes are beset by two difficulties. First, there is little to indicate that the ymq bl/˚çç code words would have originated in the public domain when all evidence points to the atbash scribal method as something known only to the elite literati of the Judeans of the 597 exile (20). Second, and more significantly, there is little to suggest that the audience of the text feared to “utter openly” the name of Babylon in the same critical sense as the bearers of the Jeremiah tradition. Ps 137 laments the exile, curses Babylon and vows never to forget Jerusalem, Ezek 40–48 openly envision the restoration to Judah and the rebuilding of the Temple, and the critical evaluation of the exilic circumstance lies at the heart of the exilic additions to the Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic literature (21). The hermeneutical binding of the ˚çç atbash code to the 70-year prophecy in Jer 25 follows the same impulse. All of these texts speak to a broad concern (19) There is general agreement that Jer 25 has undergone several stages of redaction; see AEJMELAEUS, “Turning Point”, 468. (20) E. BEN ZVI, “Introduction: Writings, Speeches, and the Prophetic Books- Setting an Agenda”, Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy (eds. E. BEN ZVI – M. H. FLOYD) (Symposium 10; Atlanta 2000) 6-16, points out that only a limited social caste would have been familiar with the type of scribal devices evidenced in the Jeremiah texts. The broader implications and completed work may well have made an impact in the public arena, but the methods involved in the atbash inversions under consideration would not have originated in that arena, which was far more predisposed to aural devices as opposed to textual/visual ones. See H. TADMOR, “The Appointed Time Has Not Yet Come: The Historical Background of Haggai 1,2”, Ki Baruch Hu. Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A Levine (eds. R. CHAZAN et al.) (Winona Lake 1999) 401-408. TADMOR discusses the phrase awb t[ al as a public chant by virtue of its rhythmic cadence. F.M. CROSS, “Towards a History of Hebrew Prosody”, Fortunate The Eyes That See, 302-306, discusses the oral dimensions of poetic units, something that is clearly at work in the Haggai passage and which characterizes much earlier modes of direct public discourse as well (cf. 1 Sam 18,7), but entirely lacking in the hermetic atbash references. (21) On the exilic meditations added to the Deuteronomistic material, see B. PECKHAM, History and Prophecy (New York 1993) 518-612; R.E. FRIEDMAN, The Exile and Biblical Narrative (Chico 1981) 26-43; F.M. CROSS, Canaanite Myth Hebrew Epic (Cambridge 1973) 276-289.