Jeremiah
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts — the new covenant from the ruins of the old
Jeremiah ben Hilkiah prophesied in Judah from the thirteenth year of King Josiah (c. 627 BCE) through the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 BCE and beyond, making him the prophet who lived through the catastrophe that defined subsequent Jewish history. His book — the longest in the Hebrew Bible — combines prophetic oracles, biographical narrative (attributed to his scribe Baruch), and confessional passages of extraordinary personal anguish. Jeremiah was commanded not to marry, imprisoned, thrown into a cistern, and finally carried to Egypt against his will. His theology centres on the paradox that the God who chose Israel and gave the covenant at Sinai is the same God who destroys Jerusalem and the Temple as judgement for covenant unfaithfulness — but who also promises a "new covenant" written on the heart (31:31-34), the most radical theological innovation in the prophetic corpus.
Declared Influences
Rabbinic Judaism 35%
Christianity (Generic) 25%
Christian Existentialism 15%
Liberation Theology 10%
Jewish Philosophy (Maimonidean) 10%
Mysticism 5%
Jeremiah's new-covenant theology and his insistence that God can be worshipped without the Temple laid the theological foundation for rabbinic Judaism's survival of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
"I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." (Jeremiah 31:33)
The new-covenant passage (31:31-34) is the single most important Old Testament text for Christian covenant theology. The Epistle to the Hebrews quotes it at length (Heb 8:8-12) as the basis for the claim that Christ inaugurates the promised new covenant.
"Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah." (Jeremiah 31:31)
Jeremiah's confessions — the prophet who curses the day of his birth, who protests his calling, who weeps over the destruction he has foreseen — are the Bible's most intense exploration of the suffering of the obedient individual before God.
"Cursed be the day on which I was born! ... Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?" (Jeremiah 20:14, 18)
Jeremiah's denunciation of royal injustice, exploitation of the poor, and institutional religion that masks social sin make him a key prophetic voice for liberation theology.
"Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbour serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages." (Jeremiah 22:13)
Maimonides regarded Jeremiah as the exemplar of prophetic knowledge — one who combined intellectual apprehension of divine truths with imaginative communication to the people.
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)
Jeremiah's call narrative — the word of the LORD touching his mouth, the visions of the almond branch and the boiling pot — situates him in the tradition of prophetic mystical experience.
"Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the LORD said to me, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth." (Jeremiah 1:9)
Internal Tensions
Jeremiah embodies the tension between prophetic obedience and personal anguish: he is compelled to speak a message that brings him nothing but suffering, and his confessions (11:18-12:6, 15:10-21, 17:14-18, 18:18-23, 20:7-18) articulate the paradox of a God who is both faithful and apparently cruel. The theological tension: how can the covenant-making God be also the covenant-destroying God? Jeremiah's answer — the new covenant — resolves this by internalising the law, but at the cost of the entire cultic and political structure of pre-exilic Israel.
I. Time
Linear and eschatological: history moves through judgement toward restoration. God "knew" Jeremiah before he was formed in the womb (1:5) — divine purposes precede and structure time. Non-deterministic: the prophetic call to repentance presupposes genuine human choice; yet God's plan for judgement and renewal will be accomplished. "I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" (29:11).
Attributes
II. Space
The created world is substantival, finite, three-dimensional. Space is laden with theological significance: Jerusalem is the chosen city, Babylon the instrument of judgement, the land mourns for Israel's sin (12:4). But God is not bound to a single place: "Am I a God at hand and not a God far away? ... Do I not fill heaven and earth?" (23:23-24).
Attributes
III. Matter
Matter is created, finite, and non-conserved — dependent on divine will. The potter-and-clay metaphor (18:1-6) makes matter the raw material of divine sovereignty: God shapes, destroys, and reshapes nations as the potter reworks the clay. The destruction of Jerusalem — Temple, walls, city — is the material sign of covenant judgement.
Attributes
IV. Observer
The prophet is an embodied observer who suffers the consequences of his own message. Knowledge is mediated through the "word of the LORD" — Jeremiah does not choose his visions; they are imposed. Active agency: he speaks, writes, confronts kings, and endures persecution. Personal metaphysical agency: God is intensely personal — he grieves, rages, remembers, and promises.
Attributes
V. Energy
Divine power is infinite, sustaining creation and directing history. God's word is itself an energy: "Is not my word like fire, declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" (23:29). Reversible: God can destroy and rebuild — "I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not uproot them" (24:6).
Attributes
VI. Information
The word of God is substantival and conserved: even when the scroll is burned by King Jehoiakim, Jeremiah dictates it again with additions (36:32) — the divine word cannot be destroyed. The new covenant writes the law on the heart (31:33), making information internal and indelible. Personal information is conserved: God "knows" the prophet before birth (1:5).
Attributes
Classified works
Works in the atlas that Jeremiah authored or that draw on this persona's writings, with full attribute fingerprints of their own.
Computed school proximity
The persona's attribute fingerprint scored against all 208 schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated influences above.
Philosophical neighbors
Other personas whose attribute fingerprint sits closest to Jeremiah's — intellectual neighbors across traditions and eras.
How Jeremiah resolves each dilemma
47 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 4 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 10 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 4 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
30 mainstream positions
3 unaligned
Experiments Engaging This Persona's Schools
Surface via influence-schools that respond to the experiment. Each entry shows the school through which the connection runs.