This book is the first major work on Jeremiah in English for over fifty years. Its conclusions are likely to revolutionize the understanding of the most important prophetic books of the Old Testament. Jeremiah has usually been seen as one of those rare biblical fugures to whose personality and emotions we have access because ogf the nature of the writings that have been left behind. Dr Carroll argues otherwise. It is highly doubtful wheter we can discover what the historical Jeremiah was like because the presentation of the prophet we have in the book bearing his name is so much the work of later tradition. For him, the book bearing his name so much the work of later tradition. For him, the book of Jeremiah is a metaphor of the community activity which produced it. Responses to the disasters of the fall of Jerusalem and deportation, power struggles within the communities of the sixth century BC and later, and attempts to provide justification for policies in the reconstruction of the Jerusalem community have all contributed to the production of the Jeremiah tradition. As Dr Carroll pursues the various themes so characteristic of the book of Jeremiah, the prophet's call, the question of true and false propechy, the confessions, the notion of the new convenant and the exile, the reader will have many unquestioned presuppositions shaken. However, the resultant picture, far from being negative, is a marvellous illustration of the nature of the living community which produced the highly complex material which has now come down to us as the Old Testament.