The voices of Lamentations

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Trauma and the Failure of Narrative in Lamentations

The Book of Lamentations reflects the sorts of struggles that trauma survivors encounter when provided with narratives that attempt to explain the suffering that resulted in their trauma. We encounter some voices in Lamentations trying to create explanatory narratives for the destruction of Jerusalem that resulted in the survivors’ suffering, only to find the voices of the survivors reject or contradict those narrative explanations.

See Also: Trauma and the Failure of History (SBL Press, 2019).

By David Janzen
Department of Theology and Religion
Durham University
Durham, United Kingdom
March 2019

Cross-file under New Book.

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