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Comments on Did any ancient Jewish writers address the differences in Jeremiah's source texts?
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Did any ancient Jewish writers address the differences in Jeremiah's source texts?
The Septuagint's version of Jeremiah is one eighth shorter than the Masoretic Text's version. In the Dead Sea Scrolls is evidence of both versions.
Did any ancient Jewish writers (such as in the Mishnah, Talmud or Midrash) address the origin of the different source texts or offer an explanation for them?
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The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash didn't use the Septuagint. The Septuagint is mentioned in Megilla 9a, which lists the changes made in the translation. The story only deals with the translation of the Pentateuch made for King Ptolemy. To my knowledge, the parts of the Septuagint outside of the Pentateuch are never as much as mentioned. The Greek-speaking rabbis used the literal translation of Aquila (עקילס), made for Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, at the dawn of rabbinic literature. His translation is mentioned a number of times in the midrashim (as an aid to interpreting the text, not for text-critical purposes). There were other Jewish translations made after the Septuagint used by other groups of Jews but not by the rabbis.
Jews who used the Septuagint did so mostly before the Christian age, and were mostly monolingual Greek speakers. Josephus used both the Hebrew text and the Septuagint, but he doesn't say much about differences even in the texts he uses.
There is an interesting but very brief comment on the text of Jeremiah put into the mouth of a Jew by a Christian author. Justin Martyr mentions differences between the Septuagint version of Jeremiah and the version used by Jews (he may be referring to a Greek version used by Jews), accusing Jews of erasing them. The Jew Trypho (who may or may not have been a real person) calls his accusation "incredible," apparently weakly disagreeing with the claim (Dialogue with Trypho, 72-73).
And from the sayings of Jeremiah they have cut out the following: 'I [was] like a lamb that is brought to the slaughter: they devised a device against me, saying, Come, let us lay on wood on His bread, and let us blot Him out from the land of the living; and His name shall no more be remembered.' And since this passage from the sayings of Jeremiah is still written in some copies [of the Scriptures] in the synagogues of the Jews (for it is only a short time since they were cut out), and since from these words it is demonstrated that the Jews deliberated about the Christ Himself, to crucify and put Him to death, He Himself is both declared to be led as a sheep to the slaughter, as was predicted by Isaiah, and is here represented as a harmless lamb; but being in a difficulty about them, they give themselves over to blasphemy. And again, from the sayings of the same Jeremiah these have been cut out: 'The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own salvation.'
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Here Trypho remarked, "Whether [or not] the rulers of the people have erased any portion of the Scriptures, as you affirm, God knows; but it seems incredible."
Make of that what you will. (The first verse quoted by Justin is in our Hebrew text of Jeremiah, and the second is absent from our present Greek text.)
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