Trauma and the Failure of History

David Janzen blends history theory and trauma theory to apply them to the books of Kings and Lamentations. Janzen argues that Kings tells a story that explains the horrific events of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, but Lamentations reflects the perspective of trauma survivors and rejects any explanatory narrative refusing to let the trauma be part of a past. Interpreters of the Bible and historians of ancient Israel should take this trauma into account, even though it can never be a part of the biblical histories they write.