Book of Baruch


The Book of Baruch is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible, used in many Christian traditions, such as Catholic and Orthodox churches. In Judaism and Protestant Christianity, it is considered not to be part of the canon, with the Protestant Bibles categorizing it as part of the Biblical apocrypha. The book is named after Baruch ben Neriah, the prophet Jeremiah's scribe who is mentioned at Baruch 1:1, and has been presumed to be the author of the whole work. The book is a reflection of a late Jewish writer on the circumstances of Jewish exiles from Babylon, with meditations on the theology and history of Israel, discussions of wisdom, and a direct address to residents of Jerusalem and the Diaspora. Some scholars propose that it was written during or shortly after the period of the Maccabees.
The Book of Baruch is sometimes referred to as 1 Baruch to distinguish it from 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch and 4 Baruch.
Although the earliest known manuscripts of Baruch are in Greek, linguistic features of the first parts of Baruch have been proposed as indicating a translation from a Semitic language.
Although not in the Hebrew Bible, it is found in the Septuagint, and also in Theodotion's Greek version. It is considered to be a canonical book of the Old Testament by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. In 80-book Protestant Bibles, the Book of Baruch is a part of the Biblical apocrypha. Jerome, despite his misgivings about the deuterocanonical books, included Baruch into his Vulgate translation. In the Vulgate it is grouped with the books of the prophets alongside Jeremiah and Lamentations. In the Vulgate, the King James Bible Apocrypha, and many other versions, the Letter of Jeremiah is appended to the Book of Baruch as a sixth chapter; in the Septuagint and Orthodox Bibles chapter 6 is usually counted as a separate book, called the Letter or Epistle of Jeremiah.

Authorship and date

Baruch 1:1–14 gives a narrative account of an occasion when Baruch ben Neriah reads the book of "these words" before the Israelites in Babylon, and then sends that book to be read in Jerusalem. Where the Book of Baruch is considered to be a distinct work of scripture, it is commonly identified as the book that Baruch reads; and hence Baruch himself has traditionally been credited as the author of the whole work. However, the syntactical form of Baruch 1 has been held rather to imply that "these words" correspond to a preceding text—which might then be identified with Lamentations or with the Book of Jeremiah; in which case, comparison may be made with a corresponding episode in Jeremiah 36, wherein Baruch records and reads from the prophecies of Jeremiah, at the latter's instruction. These considerations underlie an alternative tradition in which all four works are credited to Jeremiah himself as author.
Critical scholarship is, however, united in rejecting either Baruch or Jeremiah as author of the Book of Baruch, or in dating the work in the period of its purported context. Rather, they have seen clear thematic and linguistic parallels with later works: namely, with the Book of Daniel and the Book of Sirach. Many scholars have noted that the restoration of worship in the Jerusalem Temple following its pollution by Antiochus Epiphanes could provide a counterpart historical context in which the narrative of Baruch may equally be considered to apply; and, consequently, a date in the period 200–100 BC has been proposed.

Basic structure

The basic outline of the book of Baruch:
  • 1:1–14 Introduction: "And these are the words...which Baruch...wrote in Babylonia.... And when they heard it they wept, and fasted, and prayed before the Lord."
  • 1:15–2:10 Confession of sins: "he Lord hath watched over us for evil, and hath brought it upon us: for the Lord is just in all his works.... And we have not hearkened to his voice"....
  • 2:11–3:8 Prayer for mercy: "or the dead that are in hell, whose spirit is taken away from their bowels, shall not give glory and justice to the Lord..."
  • 3:9–4:14 A paean for Wisdom: "Where are the princes of the nations,... that hoard up silver and gold, wherein men trust?... They are cut off, and are gone down to hell,..."
  • 4:5–5:9 Baruch's Poem of Consolation: messages for those in captivity, for the "neighbours of Zion", and for Jerusalem: "You have been sold to the Gentiles, not for your destruction: but because you provoked God to wrath.... or the sins of my children, he hath brought a nation upon them from afar...who have neither reverenced the ancient, nor pitied children..." "Let no one gloat over me , a widow, bereft of many, for the sins of my children I am left desolate, for they turned from the law of God". "Look toward the east, O Jerusalem, and see the joy that is coming to you from God".
  • Chapter 6: see ''Letter of Jeremiah''

    Early evidence of use

No reference to the Book of Baruch is found in Rabbinic literature, nor is its text cited. A fragment of the Letter of Jeremiah in Greek has been excavated amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, but no counterpart fragments survive of the Book of Baruch. It is generally argued that there are no references to, quotations from, or allusions to the Book of Baruch in the New Testament, although Adams proposes a general similarity between themes in the later parts of the book and some in the Pauline Epistles, particularly Galatians and 1 Corinthians. The earliest evidence for the text of the Book of Baruch is in quotations in the works of early Christian Church Fathers; the earliest citation being in the Legatio pro Christianis: 9 of Athenagoras of Athens, dated 177. Much the most extensive use of the Book of Baruch in patristic literature is in the Adversus Haereses: 5.35.1 of Irenaeus of Lyons, which draws extensively on Baruch 4:36 to 5:9. Both Athenagorus and Irenaeus cite these readings as being from the Book of Jeremiah. A brief quotation appears also in the Paedagogus by Clement of Alexandria. Increasingly from the 4th century onwards, however, Greek Fathers tend to cite such readings as from a 'Book of Baruch', although Latin Fathers consistently maintain the former practice of citing these texts as from Jeremiah, and where they do refer to a 'Book of Baruch' are to be understood as denoting the apocalyptic work, 2 Baruch.

Manuscripts

Both the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah are separate books in the great pandect Greek Bibles, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus, where they are found in the order Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Letter of Jeremiah. In the Codex Sinaiticus Lamentations follows directly after Jeremiah and Baruch is not found; but a lacuna after Lamentations prevents a definitive assessment of whether Baruch may have been included elsewhere in this manuscript. Neither of the two surviving early Latin pandect Bibles and Leon palimpsest includes either the Book of Baruch or the Letter of Jeremiah; the earliest Latin witnesses to the text being the Codex Cavensis and the Theodulfian Bibles. Baruch is also witnessed in some early Coptic and Syriac manuscripts, but is not found in Coptic or Syriac lectionaries.

Language

The Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Arabic, Bohairic and Ethiopic versions of Baruch are all translated directly from the Greek; the text of which survives in Vaticanus and Alexandrinus, and is highly consistent. Jerome states that no Hebrew text was in existence, and Origen appears to know of no Hebrew text in the preparation of the text of Baruch in the Hexapla Old Testament. Nevertheless, there are a number of readings in the earlier sections of Baruch where an anomalous reading in the Greek appears to imply a mistranslation of a Hebrew or Aramaic source; as at chapter 3:4, where 'hear now the prayers of the dead of Israel' is assumed to be a mistranslation of, 'hear now the prayers of the men of Israel'. Since the 19th century, critical scholars have assumed a Semitic original for these earlier parts of the book, and a number of studies, such as that of Tov, have sought to retrovert from the Greek to a plausible Hebrew source text. Whereas in the Revised Standard Version of Bible, the English text of Baruch consistently follows the Greek in these readings; in the New Revised Standard Version these readings are adjusted to conform with a conjectural reconstruction of a supposed Hebrew original.
Nevertheless, some more recent studies of Baruch, such as those by Adams and Bogaert, take the Greek text to be the original. Adams maintains that most of the text of Baruch depends on that of other books of the Bible; and indeed it has been characterised by Tov as a "mosaic of Biblical passages" especially in these early sections. Consequently, variations from the literal Hebrew text could have found their way directly into a dependent Greek version, without having to presume a Semitic intermediary stage. Moreover, Adams takes issue with the presupposition behind conjectural retroversions to conform to a supposed Hebrew text; that the author of Baruch understood the principle of literal translation, and aspired to follow that principle; and yet lamentably failed to do so.

Canonicity

In the Greek East, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, and Epiphanius of Salamis listed the Book of Baruch as canonical. Athanasius credits "Jeremiah with Baruch, Lamentations, and the Epistle" with canonicity; the other Fathers offer similar formulations.
Baruch is mentioned by the Synod of Laodicea ; appended to Canon 59 is a list of canonical books, in which Jeremiah, and Baruch, the Lamentations, and the Epistle are stated as canonical. This list is found in compendiums of the decrees of Laodicea circulating in the Ethiopic church, and in all later Greek compendiums; but is absent from counterpart compendiums of Laodicea circulating in the Latin, Coptic and Syriac churches, as too from some earlier Greek compendiums. In the decrees of the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent, "Jeremias with Baruch" is stated as canonical.
The Council of Rome, the Synod of Hippo, and Pope Innocent I, followed by the Council of Carthage and the Council of Carthage, all mention Jeremiah as a canonical book without mentioning Baruch; however, it is commonly accepted that the absence of specific mention of Baruch, in canon-lists then circulating in the West, cannot be interpreted as intended to assert that the Book of Baruch was non-canonical—only that it was being subsumed within Jeremiah. Most of the Church Fathers considered Jeremiah, along with Baruch, Lamentations, and the Epistle, to be a single book.
Augustine of Hippo, in his The City of God 18:33, discusses the text of Baruch 3: 36–38, noting that this is variously cited to Baruch and to Jeremiah; his preference was for the latter attribution. Jerome did not consider the Book of Baruch to be a canonical book, but he included it in his Vulgate.
There was also an extensive body of pseudepigraphal Baruch apocalyptic literature, which are frequently classed in Latin lists as apocryphal.