BOOK OF BARUCH

If you look for the book of Baruch in your Bible, you will probably have a great deal of trouble finding it. For one thing, it is not considered a canonical book by Protestants, but is part of the Apocrypha. The apocryphal books were part of the Greek Septuagint, which was the main form of the Bible known in the early church. So when the Bible was translated into Latin by Jerome, they automatically became part of the official canon of the day. Jerome did attach a note reminding readers that these books were not part of the Hebrew Old Testament, but that note was deleted in subsequent editions of the Latin Vulgate. The early Protestant reformers carried over the Apocrypha into their translations, and it became part of the King James Bible of 1611 as well, until later Protestants deleted it from their official canons.

There are several modern English translations available which include the Apocrypha in case you are interested in reading it. But even there, you may have trouble locating Baruch. For example, the NEB with Apocrypha sandwiches all the apocryphal writings between the Old Testament and New Testament. But RSV with Apocrypha places it after the New Testament. Both of these English editions locate Baruch after the wisdom writings such as Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes).

But if you are consulting an index of a modern Catholic translation such as The Jerusalem Bible, you will not even find a separate section for the Apocrypha. That is because Catholic Bibles put the various Apocryphal books in their appropriate places within the OT. Thus, Baruch is found after Lamentations since both of these books are associated with the person of Jeremiah.

As if that weren't confusing enough, RSV and NEB follow the five-chapter book of Baruch with a short book entitled Letter of Jeremiah, another book of the Apocrypha. It only possesses one chapter, but strangely enough that chapter is labeled Chapter 6. The reason is that early editions of the Bible considered it to be the final chapter of Baruch. Thus, Catholic translations do not even have a separate listing for Letter of Jeremiah in their indexes; it is simply lumped together with Baruch instead. This demonstrates a fact that many people do not understand – some of the so-called books of the Apocrypha are actually only short writings that are inserted in various places into the canonical writings of the OT.

“The Book of Baruch was so closely associated with the Greek version of the book of Jeremiah that it was not known separately as the Book of Baruch until as late as the eighth century A.D. in some Christian circles.” (J.S. Wright)

So much for the “where” question concerning the book. What about the “who”? The book is said to have been written by a person called Baruch from Babylon during the days of captivity there. Baruch is one of the supporting characters in the Book of Jeremiah. He is mentioned in Jeremiah 32:12-16; 36; 43:1-7; 45. Wright says, “Because of [his] involvement in writing Jeremiah's revelations and sermons, some scholars have suggested that Baruch was responsible for editing at least some portions of the biblical book of Jeremiah as we know it.”

But closely related to the “who” question is the question of “when.” Dentan feels that it must have been written during some period when the Jews were being persecuted, either under the reign of Antiochus IV (175-164 B.C.) or after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70. H.G. May says that the final form of the book dates to about 150-60 B.C. And Wright dates it to as early as mid-second century B.C. Whichever scholar is correct, it is pretty obvious that the Baruch mentioned in Jeremiah could not have been the author of the book under his name. Thus, it falls into the category of what is called the pseudepigraphical (i.e. falsely attributed) writings. And there are even later writings attributed to Baruch, creatively called 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, and 4 Baruch.

Wright says about Baruch, “Although he was a relatively obscure character in the Bible, he became larger than life in postbiblical Jewish and Christian tradition. Not only were the few stories about him in the Bible creatively expanded, but...he came to be depicted as a learned sage and apocalyptic seer.” This same trend to take supporting players in the Bible and create fictional writings under their names continued well into the Christian era to give us such creations as Gospel of Barnabas, Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Nicodemus, Letters of Pilate and Herod, etc.

So lastly, “what” kind of book is it? In the first place, there is general agreement that the original book was written in Hebrew even though we only have a surviving Greek translation of it today. May states, “In fact, the Greek text, particularly in the first part, is often incomprehensible unless translated back into Hebrew.”

As to the contents of the book, Dentan expresses the opinion that its “chief interest is in showing us that, even in very late times, a period of national adversity could produce literature of comfort in the sober tradition of the older prophets as well as the extravagances of the newer apocalyptic.” But he concludes, “The book of Baruch has no particular historical or religious value.” Since I am personally interested in the literary qualities of the biblical books, I wondered if Dentan's same negative assessment would apply to the way the book is structured as well.

May breaks down Baruch in the following way, emphasizing the different genres present:

Prose

    A. Introduction (1:1-14)

    B. Confession of Israel's Guilt (1:15-3:8)

Poetry

    C. On Wisdom (3:9-4:4)

    D. Comfort and Restoration (4:5-5:9)

Wright utilizes the identical divisions and remarks that Section B utilizes quotations from Daniel 9 while Section C recalls Job 28,38, and Proverbs 1-9.

Dentan takes the following similar approach using slightly different descriptors for the individual sections, with a further breakdown of the last section based on key repeated phrases:

    Letter of Baruch (1:1-14)

    Liturgical Confession and Prayer (1:15-3:8)

    Essay on Wisdom (3:9-4:4)

    Encouragement to People and Promise

        “Be of good cheer” (4:5-29)

        “O Jerusalem” (4:30-5:9)

Thus, there is little disagreement regarding the major divisions of the book.

One common tip-off that a book has been created or edited with care taken as to its literary qualities is whether key phrases appear a symbolically significant number of times. And in this respect, Baruch does exhibit some of that key characteristic of biblical writings. Thus, in the prose portion of the book (A and B combined), the word “God” appears exactly 49 times. As the square of the highly significant number 7, this is a step in the right direction in indicating some amount of literary intentionality. The fact that “God” does not appear in the poetic section of the book may thus possibly be an artifact of this literary phenomenon rather than an indication that the poetic sections were composed by another author, as May asserts.

And as Dentan notes above, the last major section can be divided into two parts depending on the form that the address to the people takes. “Be of good cheer” (“take courage”) is found in 4:5,21,27, and 30a while it becomes “O Jerusalem” at 4:30b,36; 5:1,5.

But the next point to investigate is whether Baruch exhibits the same sort of literary symmetry that is present throughout the the canonical OT and NT writings. My own analysis is shown below:

I. Prose (Baruch 1:1-3:8)

    A. The people's response to Baruch's words (1:1-14)

    B. What the people should confess before God (1:15-2:10)

    C. Prayer for God's mercy (2:11-3:8)

        II. Poetry (Baruch 3:9-5:9)

            A. Hymn to Wisdom (3:9-4:4)

            B. “Take courage, Israel” (4:5-30a)

            C. “O Jerusalem” (4:30b-5:9)

This constitutes a good outline of the contents, but hardly represents the sort of symmetrical structure employed in canonical writings. One cannot even say that within each ABC triad the first and third sections are to be paired together. In fact, if anything, B and C in each section have the closest affinities to one another.

Some additional significant numerical observations: The only direct addresses to God are found in IC, and there are exactly twelve of them, and there are ten third person references to “the Lord our God” in IAB combined. Both of these are common symbolic numbers in the Bible.

Now, what happens if the so-called Chapter 6, Letter of Jeremiah, is taken into account? For one thing, since it is written in prose, it forms a perfect balance to Section I above. And it also can be divided into a triad. Thus,

I'. Prose (Letter of Jeremiah 6:1-73)

    A. 6:1-29

    B. 6:30-40

    C. 6:41-73

Section I' contains exactly 14 statement asserting that idols are not gods, and seven instances of the key word “fear.” The three-fold division above results in I'A and I'C as similarly sized units, both having six pairings of “gold, silver, and/or wood,” as well as one mention each of “purple.” “Six” is an appropriate symbolic number for descriptions of idols since it is one less than seven (=perfection), and thus stands for imperfection.

Treatment of 6:30-40 as a separate section is also an obvious move in light of the elaborate chiastic (mirror-image) arrangement that marks its boundaries:

    Why should they be called gods?

        Women serve them.

            Silver

                Gold

                    Wood (v. 30)

    --------------------------------------

                    Wood

                Gold

            Silver

        those who serve them

    “Why...call them gods? (vv. 39-40)

But although the Letter of Jeremiah possesses these formal characteristics of a canonical OT book, the same cannot be said of its actual contents. Dentan characterizes it as “a rambling polemic against idolatry, but of a far lower and much less imaginative character than in Wisdom 13-15 (another apocryphal writing). Thus, there is really no distinction in what the author says in I'A, B, or C. One can't even propose an ABA' structure for it since he repeats the same thought over and over again in a very heavy-handed manner – idols are not gods at all since they are just made out of physical materials.

The bottom line is that the only real symmetry one can detect by cobbling together three documents that were probably all written by different authors is a simple Prose-Poetry-Prose organization in which the two contrasting prose sections are of approximately the same length and deal, respectively, with how the Jews are to properly interact with God and with idols. Other than that, one can point to the possibility that certain key words and phrases were purposely embedded into the text a symbolically significant number of times.

Combined Baruch-Letter of Jeremiah does exhibit some of the hallmarks of canonical OT and NT books in terms of literary techniques, although certainly not to the same degree. But the poor quality of the writing coupled with the fact that it falsely claims to be by known OT personages certainly disqualifies it from consideration as a text to be included in the Bible. This is another demonstration that literary symmetry is a necessary, but not sufficient, characteristic of biblical writings.