Thesis Report: Andrew Klein and the Relationship Between Prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel

This academic year, I’ve had the opportunity to oversee the master’s thesis undertaken by Anderson University School of Theology student and MTS degree candidate Andrew J. Klein. Andrew’s burgeoning specialty is in Hebrew Bible prophetic literature, and his thesis focuses on the possibility that Ezekiel, both the prophet writing from Babylonian exile in the early 6th century BCE and the Ezekielian “school” that was seemingly responsible for extending and completing his work, was dependent upon his predecessor Jeremiah for both thematic material and prophetic developments in Yahwism relating, significantly, to the realities of exile, displacement, judgment, theological disappointment, and hope for a just future. I’m very pleased to share that Andrew passed his defense on April 7, 2026, and is well on his way to having his thesis—entitled “Prophecies, Proverbs, and Polemics: Exploring Ezekiel’s Dependence on Jeremiah”—catalogued by ProQuest for the world of biblical scholarship to discover.

Andrew applies the methodology of inner-biblical allusions, developed primarily for discerning references from one book of the Hebrew Bible to another, as expressed by Michael Fishbane, Gary Edward Schnittjer, Matthew Swale, and others, to evaluate five different pericopae/passages from Ezekiel for the potential that their content betrays an allusion to texts and excerpts from Jeremiah:

*Parallel*	*Ezekielian Passage*	*Jeremianic Passage*
1. The Boiling Pots	Ezek 24:1-14	Jer 1:13-19
2. “Bad Shephed” Polemics	Ezek 34	Jer 23:1-8
3. Popular “Sour Grapes” Proverb	Ezek 18	Jer 31:29-30
4. “New Hearts” Prophecy	Ezek 36:22-38	Jer 31:31-34
5. Northern Foe / Gog Oracle	Ezek 38–39	Jer 4–6, 8, 10 and 25 (excerpted poetic passages)

The method involves comparing the Hebrew lexemes, verbal roots, and terminology shared in the passages between Ezekiel and Jeremiah, evaluating their usages contextually and rhetorically, and determining whether Ezekiel’s perspective qualifies as a repetition of Jeremianic themes alone or if it contains exegetical advancement of the apparent source text, which may entail expansion, correction, critique, recasting, or enhancement/amplification on Ezekiel’s part. Andrew found that each of these passages features an allusion to Jeremiah’s prophecies from Ezekiel, although some are categorized as more exegetically significant than others per his analysis. Andrew’s thesis statement reads as follows:

These passages [in Ezekiel, as listed above] each have a thematic and linguistic relationship with the appropriate texts in Jeremiah, and an analysis of the shared language, context, and rhetoric between these pericopae will demonstrate this. Each passage examined displays such significant lexical and contextual connections so as to qualify as allusions to Jeremiah. This project concludes that Ezekiel is dependent upon his prophetic predecessor, affirming the observations of [Michael B.] Shepherd and other scholars with fresh evidence from and analysis of the texts of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Andrew did not stop or content himself with the evaluation of Hebrew witnesses to Jeremiah and Ezekiel, however. An important piece of his analysis found that two of the comparable passages exhibit further development beyond the initial composition of Ezekiel solidifying or embellishing the allusions discoverable in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible alone, in one case where the Greek translator of Ezek 24:5 seemingly has the Septuagintal text of Jer 1:13 in mind when he makes translation choices, and in another case where the MT itself showcases an extended awareness of Jer 31:31-34 not apparently present in a manuscript of LXX Ezek 36 or, presumably, its Hebrew/Old Greek Vorlage.

Andrew combines these observations with a philosophical openness to blurring the lines of composition and textual transmission and calls for an increased awareness of the pluriformity of witnesses to the books of the Hebrew Bible. Text-critical projects aiming to produce a singular “original” text of the Old Testament, he argues, must be supplemented to showcase the readings of multiple Jeremiahs and Ezekiels, for example, as enabled by Ronald Hendel’s The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition series with SBL Press. This is particularly convincing in light of the comparison to eclectic scholarly endeavors in New Testament textual criticism, which produce a best text from a mix of ancient sources, whereas Hebrew Bible textual criticism still mainly reproduces so-called exemplar manuscripts like Leningradensis or Aleppo—“diplomatic” editions that are more deferential to prominent Hebrew texts rather than plumbing the fruits of the Septuagint and their Vorlagen, as scholars like Andrew would prefer.

Andrew’s scholarship shows immense potential, and he was a pleasure to work with during this academic year! Openness to feedback that ranges from grammar/syntax to presentation and argumentation are not universal features in graduate studies, but I found that Andrew was eager to allow his already keen scholarly instincts to benefit from further refinement and sharpening, even from an interloper to Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies like myself. Fortunately, Andrew’s committee was rounded out by specialists with expertise in facets of Hebrew Bible studies, including Dr. Adam Harger of Anderson University and Dr. Matthew Swale of Warner University in Florida, who also served as the inspiration for Andrew’s interest in the prophets and inner-biblical allusions during his undergraduate experience in biblical studies courses.

Furthermore, Andrew’s work opens avenues for continued exploration of the relationship between Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Although Andrew documents how scholars preceding him observed and theorized the dependency in isolated ways, Andrew’s data-driven approach and methodology open the door for deeper comparison between the two books that extends not only to other passages from Ezekiel that might allude to Jeremiah, but also a renewed interest in Ezekielian composition that utilizes and assumes this relationship. What, then, might the transmission of a written or oral book of Jeremiah might have looked like in its earliest years? How does it travel from the Judahite context of the late southern kingdom, from which Jeremiah prophesied, to Ezekiel’s Babylonian context? If we presume Ezekiel’s familiarity with some version of Jeremiah, what other Ezekielian passages become more exegetically explicable? And finally, although Ezekiel surely stems from the prophet’s idiosyncratic variety of catalysts, would it be of any probative value to depict Ezekiel as inspired to translate the Jeremianic experience of Judah’s doomed final days to the exiled Israelites’ lamentable plight-turned-theological revitalization by the River Chebar in Babylon? The potential that Ezekiel is broadly motivated to extend Jeremiah’s prophecies to exiled Judahites is tantalizing and enabled by reflection on the cases that Andrew has unveiled in this fashion.

As of our last conversation, Andrew anticipates applying to doctoral programs in the year to come, and also forthcoming is his debut publication, “The Problem of Translation and Transliteration of Architectural Terms in LXX Ezek 40–42 and a Proposed Solution,” an open-source article in SBL’s TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism this December. His actual thesis will be under embargo for at least a year from its anticipated submission in May 2026, but I am sure he would be willing to share it in limited settings with fellow scholars and interested parties—just contact me and I’ll be happy to connect you with Andrew.

Congratulations Andrew Klein on your academic achievement, graduation from Anderson University’s School of Theology, and on the scholarly endeavors that lie ahead! Andrew’s abstract appears below.

Ezekielian dependence on Jeremiah has often been asserted, but few studies defend this claim and demonstrate this dependence via an analysis of lexical data. Even the most recent scholarship has relied on individuated observations to assert a relationship of dependence between the prophets. This study seeks to fill that empirical gap, conducting a full analysis of several pericopae in Ezekiel and the Jeremianic texts that may be influencing them (sorted by Jeremianic order): Jer 1:13-19 and Ezek 24:1-14; Jer 23:1-8 and Ezek 34; Jer 31:29-30 and Ezek 18; and Jer 31:31-34 and Ezek 36:22-38. Each potentially parallel text is evaluated through an examination of shared lexical data and shared contextual/structural features. Then, if an inner-biblical allusion is present, the rhetorical function of the allusion is treated. Additionally, the diffuse parallels to the Jeremianic “Enemy from the North” tradition in the Gog Oracle of Ezek 38–39 are examined. Through a full analysis of these features, it is demonstrated that certain passages in Ezekiel are dependent upon and intentionally allude to texts from Jeremiah, often in an exegetically significant fashion. This demonstrable dependence has great bearing on text-critical issues related to the different editions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel preserved in the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and its Vorlagen. In order to evaluate these text-critical matters, innovative ways of viewing the growth and transmission of the biblical texts must be incorporated.

Why We Dig: A Professional Addendum

A week or so ago I published a blog post explaining why we dig in the ancient soil of Israel, from the material objects we seek to the immaterial motivations for excavating the remains of civilizations past. In doing so, I jotted down my own ideas, shaped as they necessarily are by my own participation in academia. Ultimately, I explained that we dig to allow these ancient peoples–Hazorites, in my specific case–a voice through which to tell their individual and collective stories, and so that through this discovery we can learn more about their civilization and ours.

On Wednesday, before leaving Anderson, I spent a few hours at the university library collecting journal articles, book chapters, essays and other materials published about Hazor by various scholars and archaeologists who have worked at the site for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1955. These articles, written both for scholarly audiences in more obscure publications like the Israel Exploration Journal and for relatively popular audiences in Biblical Archaeology Review, have been listed among the basic bibliography provided to me in advance by the dig directors, given that I have opted to take the excavation as a formal course through the Hebrew University.

I began to read these articles on my bus ride to Chicago, and the following comes verbatim from Dr. Sharon Zuckerman, co-director of the Hazor excavation. At the time of the article’s publication, she was exploring the interesting possibility that Hazor’s destruction may not have been entirely by Joshua and the Israelites, but also (if not predominantly so) by a revolution of the common Hazorites:

This different possible interpretation of one crucial event in the history of Israel has led me to delve deeper in the search after “the common people.” The ordinary people, those shaping the existence and form of society by simply “being there,” form the “silent majority” of all ancient (and modern) civilizations. Their daily activities and mundane chores, conducted in the context of domestic quarters and simple dwellings, are often hidden from current research in Ancient Near Eastern and Israeli archaeology [and] as a result, the Canaanite and Israelite commoners–men, women and children–usually remain voiceless and their stories untold.
…

Through the combination of both archaeology and related sciences (such as archaeobotany, archaeozoology and geoarchaeology), I hope to suggest a comprehensive reconstruction of the functions of the simple households of the humble Hazorites and their daily activities. Such a reconstruction might shed a different light on every aspect of the life of these people: What did they eat, and where did they cook and consume their food? What kinds of artifacts did they produce and use? What was the nature of their domestic ritual activities? Where and how were they buried? In short, how did the ordinary Hazorites live and die, and how were they affected by the large political processes of the rise and decline of the kingdom?

I hope those common households will be “given a face” and can contribute to our understanding of the history of the city. I believe that investigating “from the bottom up” might afford us new insights to the processes of the rise and the fall of Canaanite Hazor, the mighty kingdom whose impression on the history of ancient Israel lasted for millennia.

Sharon Zuckerman, “Giving Voice to the Silent Majority of Ancient Generations,” Biblical Archaeology Review 34.1 (Jan/Feb 2008), 26; 82.

I’m taking it as a positive sign that I will be digging for the same explicit purpose as one, if not both of, my directors. Surely, it can’t be a negative sign.

Contact Me in Israel

I’m getting ready to board the (delayed) plane for Poland now, so this’ll be my last blog post from the states for a while! Since some have asked, I thought I would compile a post about my contact information while in Israel. You have several options, and I’d love to hear from you! Easiest and most efficient will be email, of course: heatonrd (at) gmail (dot) com. (Note: change the (at) to @ and the (dot) to a period, as you would for a normal email address. I’ve typed it this way to, if possible, avoid generating random spam to my inbox.) For those desiring different options, read on.

Except for emergencies, my phone’s regular capabilities (calling and traditional texting) will be switched off. But If you have an Apple device (iPhone, iPad, etc.), you can reach me through iMessage, which is like texting except it’s free. Send a message to rdheaton (at) anderson (dot) edu. If you’re brave enough, you can also try to FaceTime me with this same address.

I may get a calling card or Israeli cell phone, but I expect that the cost might be too silly. I can chat with voice over Skype, though. If you’d like to Skype with me at some point, drop me an email and we can try to figure something out.

Of course, if you’re Facebook or Twitter savvy, I’ll be checking those regularly as well. I keep my Facebook pretty restricted to people I know, but anyone is welcome to tweet me @heatonrob.

Like to write letters with pen and paper? You’re in luck as well. Snail mail to Israel takes 7-12 days, but if you plan ahead, you’ll be able to catch me at the two locations where I will have scheduled extended stays. Make sure to buy the appropriate amount of postage!

Mail to the kibbutz for the Hazor dig, where I’ll stay June 24-July 13 (send by July 1):

Guest Rob Heaton
Hazor Archaeological Expedition
Kibbutz Kefar HaNassi Village Inn
Kibbutz Kefar HaNassi 12305 ISRAEL

Mail to the convent/hostel in Jerusalem, where I’ll stay July 14-25 (send by July 13, but not before July 7):

Guest Rob Heaton
Ecce Homo Convent
Via Dolorosa 41
Jerusalem 91190 ISRAEL

And now, it’s time for some other details that I simply haven’t written elsewhere yet…

Time Zones: Israel is 2 hours ahead of Greenwich time, which means it’ll be 7 hours ahead of the current Eastern time and 8 ahead of Central time. If you’re in another time zone, or just want to know exactly what time it is where I am, check out the Time Zone Converter.

Dig Schedule: In another post I alluded to the dig hours and schedule, but a complete and detailed schedule is available (along with a bunch of other great information) from the Hebrew University’s Hazor Excavations Project website (click on “2012 Season Information” and scroll down).

My Itinerary: I’ve had a slight change of plans from those I posted a month ago. When I scheduled my flights back in early May, I wasn’t smart enough to realize I’d be landing in Tel Aviv on the Sabbath, which means that I generally wouldn’t be allowed to check into a hotel until sundown. (Oops.) So instead of spending Saturday night in Tel Aviv, where I’ve found only Jewish-owned hotels, I’ll spend my first night in Haifa, where I found a Christian-owned establishment. Nothing against Jewish-owned hotels, of course–I’ll stay at them later in my trip–but after 38 hours in planes, trains, and automobiles, I think I’m going to need some quicker sleep! As an added bonus, I’ll get to do some touristy Old Testament-related things around Haifa (Mt. Carmel is located nearby) that day.

I’ll type at you next from Poland or perhaps Israel; thanks for reading!

The Road To Israel, Part 3: Five Centers of Recreation and Exploration

My departure for Israel is fast approaching (i.e., in the next few hours!), and given the groundswell of interest in my trip, I decided to create a three-part series to provide more information about what exactly I’ll be doing there. Part one covered basic facts about the history of Hazor, while part two covered the intentions and goals of modern archaeology (especially for biblical sites). Part three features some ideas and details about my journey around Israel once my three-week excavation is complete. (See also, my basic itinerary.) So, let’s dig in, shall we?

***********************************

Except for two free weekends during which I may or may not schedule trips with my dig comrades, the next three weeks are pretty well accounted for. Wake up at 4:15 am, begin digging at 5:00 am, finish at 1:00 pm, in bed by 10:00 or 11:00. But soon enough, July 14 will roll around, and I’ll be on my own! Though I’m scheduled to stay in Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa (i.e., the Way of the Cross, at least by the record of tradition), this will primarily be my nightly anchor spot for various trips around Israel.

To make this subject matter as easy to follow as possible, I have grouped the “attractions” I may or may not see/visit directionally from my post in Jerusalem. And I put “attractions” in quotation marks, because the word doesn’t seem quite right for the Holy Land. But, it’s the best I have for now, so we’ll work with it.

Jerusalem Itself: I reckon that you could spend an entire 12 days in Jerusalem and not exhaust your options, but I will self-limit to about 4 or 5 in order to see the other “centers” of Israel as well. Must-visit highlights include Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial and Museum), the Israel Museum (where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed–I may try to find the curator of this museum and introduce myself, because he is coming to Anderson University in the fall), the Western Wall (thanks for the yarmulke, Jasmine), King Hezekiah’s Water tunnel system, and of course, the numerous holy sites associated with Jesus’ last week. These include the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, the Via Dolorosa, the Upper Room, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and many more.

Galilee (North): My dig is taking place in Upper Galilee, so I’ll get many chances to tour around the region of Jesus’ origin. I am excited to kayak or canoe on the Sea of Galilee, as well as touring towns along its banks: Tiberius, Chinnereth, and Capernaum (including the traditional home of Simon Peter), and more. Certainly, I will also visit Sepphoris, Nazareth (including the Church of the Annunciation) and Mt. Tabor, where Jesus was said to have been transfigured before Peter, James and John.

Beersheba, Masada and the Negev (South): Two main cities south of Jerusalem that I plan to visit include Beersheba, which is strongly associated with, and may contain a well used by, Abraham, and Masada, where the last stages of the Jewish-Roman War took place around 70 CE. Since the Negev is basically desert, I think I’ll put this last on my list of priorities.

The Mediterranean Coast (West): There are a number of great locations to visit along the coast of what the Israelites knew as the “Great Sea”: the remains of the ancient Philistine cities Ashkelon and Ashdod, Tel Aviv, Caesarea, where an inscription of Pontius Pilate’s name was found, and Haifa. In Haifa, I may visit the cave where Elijah was said to have hidden, the Baha’i Shrine, and a naval museum dedicated to Jews who sought refuge from Europe during World War II. The entire coast is also full of amazing beaches, judging from the photos I’ve seen.

The River Jordan and Dead Sea (East): I will have to be most careful about travel to this region of Israel, as it includes the West Bank. I would like to visit Jericho and some towns along the west bank of the Dead Sea, but I will have to ask around to see if it’s safe for Westerners. Either way, I will be able to float in the Dead Sea at the very least while I tour Masada. In addition, my mother-in-law found a very interesting restaurant while looking in my Fodor’s travel book: in a town called Abu Ghosh, there is an American-style diner called the Elvis Inn. I may visit in tribute to my aunt, who is an Elvis fanatic.

I haven’t planned out an exact recreation/exploration schedule for myself to allow for flexibility where necessary, either as it is financially prudent or as my interest drives me (or the need to do laundry prevents me). In some cases, I may make reservations for scheduled tours from one of the tour companies in Israel, while in others I will travel mostly solo. So the exact details may be few and far between in this post, but for the time being, these are the ideas I’ve got bouncing around in my head. Rest assured, there will be more to come, and I’ll do my best to capture it with words and pictures right here on the blog.

Got any great ideas I didn’t mention? Want to encourage me to go somewhere I have mentioned, or just want a postcard from my travels? I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments below.

The Road To Israel, Part 2: Why We Dig

My departure for Israel is fast approaching, and given the groundswell of interest in my trip, I decided to create a three-part series to provide more information about what exactly I’ll be doing there. Part one covered basic facts about the history of Hazor, while part two covers the intentions and goals of modern archaeology (especially for biblical sites). Part three, tentatively, will feature some ideas and details about my journey around Israel once my three-week excavation is complete. (See also, my basic itinerary.) So, let’s dig in, shall we?

***********************************

Leave it to my grandma to ask the most basic, fundamental question imaginable after I announced that I would be traveling thousands of miles to participate in the excavation at Hazor: What on earth are you digging for?

Sometimes I tend to forget that not everyone is a student in biblical studies. The question seemed so preposterous to me, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made, both in terms of material items we hope to find and the intentionality behind excavations.

In his 2002 autobiography Doors to Life, Dr. Gustav Jeeninga (the late professor for whom my fellowship is named) defines archaeological data as “human thought objectified and then fossilized.” If you ask me, this is a fantastic definition. Archaeology, then, becomes an endeavor not to uncover ancient writing samples, intact pottery or elaborate municipal structures, though the discovery of such items is certainly rewarding and of principal importance to academia. Rather, we seek these material objects only as clues to the ideas of cultures long left dormant and livelihoods of people long silenced. And specifically in regard to the Ancient Near East, our secondary interests include affirming the biblical record (or, at times, weighing the evidence against the biblical record) and attempting to fill its gaps. Such is the case for Hazor, a biblical town for which the gaps are numerous.

With Dr. Jeeninga’s definition in mind, we must note that we can only access this “fossilized human thought” through physical objects. The simple answer to my grandma’s question, in a material sense, is that we’re searching for whatever we might find. But certain items will be more valuable than others. Any objects containing writing will provide the most direct access to the ideas, needs, intentions, and daily life of the ancient people of Hazor, but it will be extremely unlikely to find writing on any intact items. More than likely, we could find writing on broken pieces of pottery or the ruins of old structures.

Potsherds: think of them like the garbage of the ancients.

At this point, it is necessary to explain a little bit about how cities were built, conquered and rebuilt over in the Ancient Near East. When people first settled a location, much like the North American settlers of the 17th century, location was everything. For the purpose of protecting a settlement from military bombardment, the highest points were often chosen for fortification. In some cases, these high points may not be any more than a hill or a mound (which we call tels), as opposed to a mountain or plateau, but any advantage the people could grab would be vital for security from adversaries. When a town would be overrun and rebuilt with frequency, new settlers–who were accustomed to first destroying or plundering everything of value from a previous settlement–would simply build on top of that previous settlement, either with completely new structures, or by incorporating the previous structures into their (perhaps only slightly) different vision for what civilization should look like.

As a result, there are two significant observations about doing archaeology at biblical sites that I should stress. First, with the exception of physical structures, which, if not destroyed by military edict, are easily preserved over time because of their intentional construction, we are digging through ancient peoples’ trash. Hazor is not Pompeii; the entire town was not flash-fossilized for posterity. It was conquered and plundered violently, and its new occupants would not have consciously built over items they regarded as valuables.

A second observation is that when you dig deeper and deeper at a location, you access more and more ancient strata of livelihood. Because the Hebrew University has sponsored excavations at Hazor for more than 20 seasons (usually six-week periods in the summertime), my dig will be exploring the 13th and 14th centuries BCE, which theoretically should not include any distinctly Israelite settlement. This is appropriately called the Canaanite Period, as it is associated with the time in which scholars believe Joshua wrote that Hazor stood as “the head of all those kingdoms” (Joshua 11:10 NRSV).

What is typically found when rummaging through ancient trash is pottery, pottery, and more pottery. Shattered pottery, mostly. If we’re lucky, we’ll find large pieces of pottery that can be later reconstructed and studied to understand its precise utility to the civilization. Pottery was also the paper of the day, so we will be highly interested in any engraving that we may find on the sherds of pottery. We could find anything from ancient business contracts to royal decrees to scribal alphabet writing practice!

Other items we may find include both municipal and private structures, human and animal remains, oil lamps, weapons, coinage, and deities (idols). In addition to preserved writing, these items would constitute the real gold of the excavation and, if found, will necessitate several pages of ink in the end-of-season report.

So as I’ve come to understand, though we dig for physical objects, we are simultaneously (and primarily) digging to learn more about ancient people who can no longer speak for themselves. We wish to understand their way of life, their beliefs, what they beheld as important, how they met their end, and, ultimately, what we can learn about our humanity from their activity and their temporality. In short, we dig to grant ancient peoples a voice.