520 Mark Leuchter year prophecy from the atbash codes (namely, Jer 30–31) was originally composed to support the goals of the Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic literature of Josiah’s reign (59). Its position in this collection suggests that the exilic circumstance is subject to that earlier theology. In other words, despite the reference to the Esarhaddon inscription, it is YHWH, not Marduk, who directs the events of history. As with the Josianic scribes of that earlier era, Jeremiah has transformed the lemmas of Assyrian literature for the purposes of articulating a distinctively Israelite sentiment. That the Jeremianic corpus would eventually be viewed en masse as contiguous with the Deuteronomistic literature is evidenced by the inter-referencing apparent in the closing chapters of both. The manner in which the post-Josianic narratives summarize Judah’s closing decades appears to point to the more detailed material concerning this period in Jer 26–45, and Jer 52 and 2 Kgs 25 share profound formal commonalities that attest to common authorship. The reader of the Deuteronomistic material is in effect directed to consult the Jeremianic corpus for prophetic insight and commentary, and then redirected to the Deuteronomistic narrative for context (60). Consequently, with Babylon both eclipsing Assyria as Israel’s enemy and also functioning as YHWH’s servant via the final destruction of Jerusalem in 587, the reliance upon Assyrian tropes ends with the Jeremianic material. Subsequent redactors of the Book of Jeremiah would incorporate the 70-year prophecy and the atbash codes into the larger book, turning them into proleptic references to the prophet’s message in later chapters rather than employing them as rhetorical allusions to the prototype of Assyria (61). This would account (59) See SWEENEY, King Josiah, 225-232, who identifies these chapters as containing early Josianic propaganda directed to the population of the former northern kingdom. The current form of these chapters reflects the prophet’s re- activation and re-application of his earlier material into the 597 collection. (60) A number of exilic additions to both the book of Deuteronomy and to the Deuteronomistic History are directly dependent upon ideas and terms introduced by the Jeremianic material; see LEUCHTER, Jeremiah, 302-310; HOLLADAY, Jeremiah 2, 436-443. For the dependence of the Deuteronomistic material on that of Jeremiah, see C. SEITZ, Theology in Conflict (BZAW 176; Berlin 1989) 198- 200. Dearman notes the role of the Jeremianic corpus as an independent prophetic “witness” to the Deuteronomistic History (“My Servants The Scribes”, 420-421). (61) For the use of proleptic repetition as an editorial device in the redaction of earlier literary sources, see B. PECKHAM, “Writing and Editing”, Fortunate The Eyes That See, 370.