516 Mark Leuchter Assyria served as the prototypical enemy of Israel (47). The tropes of important Assyrian documents dominated the literature of the Josianic court and emerged as a major theme in Jeremiah’s earlier oracles; Assyrian terminology and imagery had become a genetic feature of Israelite sacral discourse. That a substantial contingent of the Urrolle audience comprised the deportees of 597 increases the likelihood that they would recognize Jeremiah’s Esarhaddon reference. Indeed, they would more likely adhere to Jeremiah’s message because it involved Assyriological rhetoric, binding the current Jeremianic text to earlier and recognized sacred Judean literature from late 7th century. 5. The Political Sentiments of the Judean Deportees of 597 The initial response to the exile among these deportees would not have been one of unilateral complacency. The Josianic reform program was motivated by a spirit of independence and a desire to reclaim the glories of the past associated with David’s reign (48), and despite Josiah’s death and the influence of Egypt upon the administration of Jehoiakim, it appears that a substantial number of people in the royal court believed in a degree of Jerusalem-centricity and the inviolability of the Davidic covenant (49). The battle of Carchemish in 605 revealed to Jeremiah that political autonomy was a delusion, though it is clear that the Judean royal court was divided on this issue (50). The deportees of 597 would have included people sympathetic to Jeremiah’s message but also those who held out for an imminent restoration to Jerusalem, holding onto notions of the Josianic concept of covenant to see them through their [temporary] circumstances. Thus within the collection of Jer 29 we encounter the adaptation of the Deuteronomic laws (Jer 29,5-7; cf. Deut 20,5-10) (51), redeployed (47) See P. MACHINIST, “The Rab ∏˝qˇh at the Wall of Jerusalem: Israelite Identity in the Face of the Assyrian ‘Other’”, Hebrew Studies 41 (2000) 163-166. (48) SWEENEY, King Josiah, 173-174. (49) Jer 7,1-15 provides a famous argument to the contrary, and the criticism of Jehoiakim in Jer 22,13-26 creates a condemnatory association between that king and Solomon (LEUCHTER, Jeremiah, 213-215). (50) Compare, e.g., the scribes in Jer 36,16 to other members of the royal administration in Jer 36,24. (51) A. BERLIN, “Jeremiah 29,5-7: A Deuteronomic Allusion”, HAR 8 (1984) 3-11. BERLIN’s article demonstrates the reliance of the Jeremianic passage upon that of Deuteronomy, pointing to the adaptation of the laws of warfare therein as a counsel against potential rebellion fomenting among the deportees of 597.