BARUCH (Heb. "Benedetto"). - Son of Neriah, secretary of Jeremiah (v.), whose oracles he wrote down, and his faithful companion during the siege of Jerusalem (Jer. 32:12-16; 36:4-32; 43:3). For his fidelity to the great prophet, God assured him of special protection (Jer. 45:5). After the murder of Gedaliah (v.), he followed Jeremiah into Egypt (Jer. 43:6). It seems that he ended his days among the exiles of Babylon, where he was on the fifth anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem (Bar. 1:1-2). On that date (581 B.C.), he composed his brief writing, which he then read in the presence of Jeconiah, penultimate king of Judah, and of the nobles and the people, then exiles by the Sodi, a canal of Babylon (1:3). Then some messengers, with a collection of money, also brought the booklet of B. to Jerusalem, so that it might be read by the survivors on one of the solemn feasts (1:6, 14).
BOOK OF BARUCH
First part: after a historical proem (1:1-15a), a moving prayer (similar to that of Dan. 9:4-20) in which are acknowledged the sins of the fathers and of their children, now exiles by the deserved chastisement of God, whose mercy that pardons and power that saves are invoked, and whose supreme and unique wisdom, far different from human wisdom, is praised (1:15b-4:4).
In the second part (4:5-5:6) the prophet first has Jerusalem speak to her children enslaved among the Chaldeans, and finally he himself addresses words of comfort to the desolate city, extolling her future glory and foretelling the redemption of her children.
Chapter 6 (the last) contains a long Letter of Jeremiah, which in the Septuagint follows the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
We possess only the Greek text, from which the ancient versions derive, namely the Syriac pēfiṭṭā (2nd cent.) and the Syro-Hexaplar (7th cent.), and the Old Latin (2nd cent.), which passed over entire into our Vulgate.
That the book, despite the doubt expressed by St. Jerome (PL 28, 904), was composed in Hebrew, can be inferred from a justifying note repeated three times in the Syro-Hexaplar version (1:17; 2:3): "This (passage) is not found in the Hebrew"; it very probably refers to the Hebrew original. Sometimes variant readings are cited from the Greek version of the Jew Theodotion (v.), which was based solely on the Hebrew text. Moreover, in the Greek text of the Septuagint we find certain Hebraisms (2:6, 11, 26; 5:6) and even erroneous interpretations due to the Semitic language of the source; for example, 1:22: ἐργάζεσθαι = "to work" instead of "to serve" foreign gods (the Hebrew ābhadh indeed has both meanings); 4:20: "sack of supplication" for "sack of penance"; likewise also 1:10; 2:18, 25, 29. Furthermore, the poetic passages follow the well-known law of Semitic parallelism.
AUTHENTICITY AND CANONICITY
a) That the book is due to Jeremiah's secretary is affirmed by the title itself, which also specifies the date of composition (I, 1-2). This is confirmed both by the affinity of form and content with the book of Jeremiah, and by the correspondence of the historical conditions described and presupposed by the book with the era to which it attributes itself. It is true that in ch. I, II, Belshazzar (v.) is called son of Nebuchadnezzar, whereas profane history makes him the son of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king (555-39), and calls Evil-Merodach (561-60) the son and immediate successor of Nebuchadnezzar. To overcome the difficulty, one may suppose that Nebuchadnezzar had another son, heir to the throne but predeceased his father, still alive when B. composed his book. It does not seem that this Belshazzar can be identified with the one in Daniel, for reasons of chronology.
b) B. is one of the seven books called "deuterocanonical," not included today in the Hebrew canon. But it was read by the Jews among the sacred books as a continuation and appendix of Jeremiah. According to the Apostolic Constitutions (4th century or beginning of the 5th), B. was customarily read in the synagogues together with Lamentations; the earliest Fathers recall it and cite it as an inspired document (St. Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, St. Athanasius; v. BIBBIA: Canone).
Some Catholic critics (I. Goettsberger, Einleitung in das A.T., Freiburg im Br. 1928, p. 310, n. 1) hold that the famous verse 38 of ch. 3: "Post haec in terris visus est (that is, he who in v. 36 is called: Deus noster) et cum hominibus conversatus est," was added by some Christian. Many Fathers, however, cite it as a prophecy referring to the Incarnation and divinity of the Word, e.g., Theodoret (PG 81, 773), without raising any doubt about its genuineness.
Bibliography5 works
Ermenegildo Florit
APOCALYPSE of B
Under the name of B. two apocryphal Apocalypses have come down to us, the Syriac and the Greek.
SYRIAC APOCALYPSE OF B
It is one of the most important apocrypha of the Old Testament, a typical example of Jewish apocalyptic literature around 100 A.D. It is so called because it is preserved in the Syriac version and in a single manuscript, the famous Milanese codex of the Pēfiṭṭā, published in 1871 by A. Ceriani (Monumenta sacra et profana, V, fasc. II, Milan 1871, pp. 113-80), who had already in 1866 given its Latin translation (ibid., I, fasc. II, Milan 1866, pp. 73-98). It derives from a previous Greek version (of which only a few fragments remain, cf. R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha..., II, pp. 487-90), made from the Hebrew or Aramaic original. It has much affinity with IV Esd., with which it agrees in arrangement, in purpose, and often even in its thoughts; but it is inferior to it in depth and elevation of ideas and in the nobility of the features of the figure of the Messiah. There is undoubtedly interdependence between the two apocrypha, but it is difficult to establish their relative priority, although the greater probabilities favor IV Esd. The date of composition oscillates between the end of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd. The Apocalypse properly so called consists of 77 chapters, in dialogue form; there follows (chapters 78-87) the epistle to the 9 1/2 tribes in Assyria, already known from other manuscripts. Mention is also made (77:19) of a second epistle to the other 2 1/2 tribes in Babylon, which, however, has not come down to us.
The Apocalypse of B. claims to communicate the revelations made to B. immediately before and after the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Chaldeans (587 B.C.), and it begins precisely with the description of the fall of the city, which nevertheless refers to the destruction of 70 A.D. (chapters 1-12). Then, while Jeremiah accompanies the exiles to Babylon, B. remains in Jerusalem to weep by the walls (chapters 13-20), where the Lord reveals to him that the day of punishment will come also for the pagans and that justice will be done to Israel. This first part has a certain analogy with the book of Job on the problem of the unhappiness of the good and the prosperity of the wicked. In the following chapters the messianic-eschatological motif predominates in a succession of visions not always connected and harmonized. In a first vision (chapters 21-34) the signs precursor to the Messiah are announced, great tribulations in 12 periods (the so-called "messianic birth pangs"). With the coming of the Messiah an era of prosperity begins for Israel and for the whole earth. In another vision, under the symbols of the forest and the cedar, of the vine and the spring, the fall of the pagan kingdoms is described, particularly of the fourth and last, the Roman empire, and the victory of the Messiah (chapters 35-46), whose dominion "will last forever until the world doomed to ruin reaches its end" (40:3). Then the fate of the righteous and the wicked after the resurrection is described (chapters 47-52). In a third vision of the cloud with the dark and clear waters (chapters 53-76) the various periods of the history of Israel and of the world are described in 12 times, culminating in the triumph of the Messiah who will do justice and bring peace and happiness; the peoples who submit to Israel will be saved, the enemies will be killed.
The vision of the Messiah in the Syriac Apocalypse of B., as generally in Jewish apocalyptic literature (v.), is entirely on a politico-national background; it sets forth a temporal kingdom of Israel under the scepter of the Messiah, which falls between the end of the present world and the beginning of the world to come. Despite the frequent repetitions of ideas and the new motifs not always strictly connected and also some doctrinal discordance, there is no reason to think of multiple written sources and various compilers (R. Kabisch and E. De Faye speak of 4 distinct documents, R. H. Charles of 6 or 7). As in all apocalyptic writings, the notions are often mixed together at random, and one finds in it echoes of different traditions and disparate images that the authors were unable to harmonize. Since this is a law of the literary genre, the best critics (C. Clemen, E. Schürer, M. J. Lagrange, J. B. Frey) hold for the unity of the book and of the author. Moreover, it is not difficult to discern, amid the tangle of concepts and images, a unitary background in the ever-present vision of the Messiah who is the point of reference and the term of expectation. In this messianic-eschatological framework the whole history of Israel and of the world is recognized and important theological-moral notions are inscribed, for the most part derived from the Old Testament. On the whole the theology is essentially Jewish, not exempt from Christian influences, and particularly reflects the eschatological notions of the Jews in the apostolic age, imbued with messianic hopes of a politico-nationalist character.
The Syriac Apocalypse of B. and IV Esd. are the only two Jewish apocrypha that explicitly affirm, despite inaccuracies, a connection between the sin of Adam and the death that followed from it for all men, as well as the hereditary transmission of that first sin. Both describe, more clearly than the others, the state of the afterlife: Hades or Sè'di is the common dwelling of the dead until the last judgment; but the good rest with the fathers in expectation of the resurrection, while the wicked are tormented together with the enemies of Israel. Because of the insistence found in it concerning the necessity and value of works, R. H. Charles holds that the Syriac Apoc. of B. sets forth the ordinary Judaism of the 1st century, that is, the doctrine that man is justified by the Law. The hypothesis of the dependence of the Pauline conception of Christ - the second Adam - on the Syriac B. is to be excluded (cf. A. Vitti, Apocal. B. siriaca, in Biblico, 7 [1926], pp. 384-92).
II. APOC. DI B. GRECA
It is a Jewish composition with Christian interpolations, written in the first decades of the 2nd century. It survives in mutilated form in a single Greek codex edited by M. R. James (Apocrypha Anecdota, II [Texts and Studies, 5, 1], Cambridge 1897, pp. 84-94) and in the Slavonic version (ed. Stojan Novakovic, Zagreb 1886). It has points of contact with the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch and with the Slavonic Enoch. Baruch recounts his journeys in the spirit through the 5 heavens: but the text is incomplete, and it is probably a matter of 7 heavens (Origen, De Principiis, II, 3, 6 alludes to a writing of Baruch in which 7 worlds or heavens are mentioned). Into the visions are inserted certain eschatological notions, and the fate of the righteous and the wicked after death is described. In its present form the brief apocryphon displays evident signs of Christian interpolation (chaps. 4, 13-16). But M. R. James exaggerates in judging it a Christian apology of the 2nd century.
Bibliography14 works
Gaetano Stano