Hananiah's supercessionist psalm

Jeremiah is a Prophet, however his opus has been mutilated in the Hebrew tradition. He had replyguys in his own time, too; where Jeremiah thought resisting Babylon was foolish, his detractors - chief of them Hananiah the Prophet - wanted resistance. Jeremiah proved correct. Which is why we own Jeremiah's oracles and know of Hananiah only through the conflict.

Hananiah had inherited a pro-war, pro-Israel library. This was King Josiah's library, or so Frank Moore Cross famously argued. This "Deuteronomic History" incorporates the Song of Miriam, the Song of Deborah, and several narratives in Joshua and Judges in which Israel (and not just Judah) had seen off threats to ha-Eretz. The earlier accounts, this narrative associates with collections like "The Wars of YHWH" and "Jashar" mostly poetic. One might also look to oracles now in Isaiah and Nahum.

So, the Historical Psalms: 78, 105, 106, 135, 136. I've come across these in Mass, which parallel the narrative of Torah. As always with parallel, we must ask in which direction. The Psalms after Psalm 88 MT are scrambled in Qumran, so raise suspicions as postexilic (Psalm 137, immediately beyond 136). Earlier, some Psalms look ancient - even northern, like Psalm 45 which everyone agrees is the marriage-song for Jezebel and Ahab. I'd look at Psalm 78.

This pulse-check has turned up Oded Tammuz from Beer-Sheva, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 79.2 (April 2017), 205-21, deeming Psalm 78 A Case Study in Redaction as Propaganda. Tammuz argues that Psalm 78 should be read alongside Judah's use of the Northern legends now in Judges. That is: it has been repurposed, with interpolations, to make it useful in a contemporary argument, which was Hananiah's argument.

The original had been a Psalm of God's mercy to Israel despite its failings. The canon version still has that theme, but now the "true Israel" is Judah in Jerusalem. God will not abandon Judah as He abandoned Israel because Judah is just that much more wonderful.

I cannot but imagine that Jeremiah, knowing the history of Israel and knowing his own people, would have detected an irony in this.

As for Tammuz' argument: this starts by recognising a generally pro-Israel text (as are most Asaph psalms) but interspersed with anti-Israel passages (which Asaph doesn't do). A glaring example, noted by earlier scholars, is vv. 67-71. Where the Lord had redeemed v. 60's abandonment of Shiloh vv. 65-6 and shamed Israel's enemies forever; from vv. 67f the Lord simply switches to the Davidic line and shrine. Whether that last pericope be a full interpolation or a reworking, Tammuz doesn't care; he simply flags the whole of it.

Tammuz translates v. 57 they recoiled like a qashit ramih, which in Assyrian times meant a loosened bow. The term is exactly GISHBAN ramîti or qashtum ramît in those transpotamian texts: a letter from Babylon and a hymn-commentary. I wonder if this qashtum ramît be an Aramaism, which can account for being shared in eighth-century Israel-Judah but not by any East Semite before Tiglath-Pileser III. Tammuz believes the term was also rare, known mainly to bowyers and archers. If the term were rare, and especially if the Near East had forgotten it (say, if the Israelites and Assyrians had both lost their kingdoms); an interpolator feeding off that term in a legacy Psalm would misunderstand that verse. Thus an interpolation, Tammuz considers vv. 9-10.

Tammuz associates these verses which he has flagged, with Jeremiah 7:1-15 and MT 26-27 / LXX 33-34. Here the Prophet cites Shiloh as a warning to Jerusalem. Here Tammuz defers to the scholarship of Anthony Chinedu Osuji's Where Is the Truth? (2010): that 27:1a/34:1a at the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim ben Josiah should be renumerated the last verse of ch. 26/34, that chapter's footnote; or simply omitted as many Greek MSS omit it. John Goldingay's New International Commentary (2021) accepts this too. With this renumeration, Osuji argued, 26-7/33-4 is of one piece; moreover, 26:1/33:1 is a mistake, such that the whole double-chapter needs redating to Zedekiah's reign.