AUTHENTICITY AND CANONICITY. — a) That the book is the work of Jeremiah’s secretary is asserted 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 between the historical circumstances described and presupposed by the book and the period to which it is attributed. It is true that in chaps. I and II, BALDASSARRE (v.) is called the son of Nabuchodonosor, whereas profane history makes him the son of Nabonide, the last Babylonian king (555–39), and calls Evil-Merodach (561–60) the son and immediate successor of Nabuchodonosor. To overcome the difficulty, one may suppose that Nabuchodonosor had another son, heir to the throne, who died before his father, but was still alive when B. composed his book. It does not seem possible to identify this Baltassar with the one in Daniel, for chronological reasons.
b) B. is one of the seven books called “deuterocanonical,” not included today in the Jewish canon. But it was read by the Jews among the sacred books as a continuation and appendix to Jeremiah. According to the apostolic constitutions (4th century or beginning of the 5th), B. was customarily read in the synagogues together with the Lamentations; the earliest Fathers recall and cite it as an inspired document (s. Ireneo, Atenagora, Origene, Clemente, Ales., s. Atanasio; V. BIBBIA: Canone).
Some Catholic critics (I. Goettsberger, Einleitung in das A.T., Friburgo in Br. 1928, p. 310, n. 1) hold that the celebrated verse 38 of chap. 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, for example, Teodoreto (PG 81, 773), without expressing any doubt about its genuineness.
APOCALYPSE of B. — Two apocryphal Apocalypses have come down to us under the name of B., the Syriac and the Greek.
SYRIAC APOCALYPSE OF B. — This is one of the most important apocryphal books of the Old Testament, a typical example of Jewish apocalyptic literature around A.D. 100. It is so called because it has been 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 published its Latin translation in 1866 (ibid., I, fasc. II, Milan 1866, pp. 73–98). It derives from an earlier 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 in common with IV Esd., with which it agrees in arrangement, purpose, and often also in ideas; but it is inferior to it in depth and loftiness of thought and in the nobility of the features of the Messiah’s figure. There is no doubt that the two apocrypha are interdependent, but it is difficult to establish their relative priority, although the greater probability favors IV Esd. The date of composition ranges between the end of the first century and the beginning of the second. The Apocalypse proper consists of 77 chapters, in dialogical form; this is followed (chapters 78–87) by the epistle to the nine and a half tribes in Assyria, already known from other manuscripts. Mention is also made (77:19) of a second epistle to the other two and a half 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 begins precisely with a description of the city’s fall, which nevertheless refers to the destruction of A.D. 70 (chapters 1–12). Then, while Jeremiah accompanies the exiles to Babylon, B. remains in Jerusalem, weeping beside the walls (chapters 13–20), where the Lord reveals to him that the day of punishment will also come for the pagans and that justice will be done to Israel. This first part bears a certain resemblance to the Book of Job in its treatment of the problem of the unhappiness of the good and the prosperity of the wicked. In the following chapters, the messianic-eschatological theme predominates in a succession of visions that are not always connected or harmonized. In a first vision (chapters 21–34), the signs preceding the Messiah are announced: great tribulations in twelve periods (the so-called “messianic woes”). 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, the vine and the spring, the fall of the pagan kingdoms is described, particularly that 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 destined for ruin reaches its end” (40:3). The fate of the righteous and the wicked after the resurrection is then described (chapters 47–52). In a third vision, that of the cloud with dark and clear waters (chapters 53–76), the various periods of the history of Israel and the world are described in twelve stages, culminating in the triumph of the Messiah, who will establish justice and bring peace and happiness; the peoples who submit to Israel will be saved, while its enemies will be put to death.
The vision of the Messiah in the Syriac Apocalypse of B., apocalyptic literature (v.), has an entirely political-national character; it envisages a temporal kingdom of Israel under the scepter of the Messiah, situated between the end of the present world and the beginning of the future world. Despite the frequent repetition of ideas and the new motifs that are not always closely connected, as well as some doctrinal discrepancies, there is no reason to posit multiple written sources and different compilers (R. Kabisch and E. De Faye speak of four distinct documents, R. H. Charles of six or seven). As in all apocalyptic writings, the notions are often jumbled together, and echoes of different traditions and disparate images are found that the authors were unable to harmonize. Since this is a law of the literary genre, the better critics (C. Clemen, E. Schürer, M. J. Lagrange, J. B. Frey) uphold the unity of the book and its author. Besides, amid the tangle of concepts and images, it is not difficult to discern a unified background in the ever-present vision of the Messiah, who
is the point of reference and the object of expectation. Within this messianic-eschatological framework, the entire history of Israel and the world is perceived, and important theological and moral notions are incorporated, for the most part derived from the Old Testament. Taken as a whole, its theology is essentially Jewish, though not free from Christian influences, and particularly reflects the eschatological notions of the Jews in the apostolic age, imbued with messianic hopes of a political-nationalist character.
The Syriac Apocalypse of B. and IV Esdr. are the only two Jewish apocrypha that explicitly affirm, despite certain inaccuracies, a connection between Adam’s sin and the death that followed from it for all human beings, as well as the inheritance of that first sin. Both describe the state of the afterlife more clearly than the others: Hades, or Sè'di, is the common dwelling place of the dead until the last judgment; but the good rest with the fathers in expectation of the resurrection, whereas the wicked are tormented together with Israel’s enemies. Because of the emphasis placed on the necessity and value of works, R. H. Charles holds that the Syriac Apoc. of B. presents the ordinary Judaism of the first century, that is, the doctrine that man is justified by the Law. The hypothesis that the Pauline conception of Christ—the Second Adam—depends on the Syriac B. is to be rejected (cf. A. Vitti, Apocal. B. siriaca, in Biblico, 7 [1926], pp. 384–92).
II. APOC. DI B. GRECA. - È una composizione giudaica con interpolazioni cristiane, scritta nei primi decenni del sec. II. Esiste mutila in un unico cod. greco edito da M. R. James (Apocrypha Anecdota, II [Texts and Studies, 5, 1], Cambridge 1897, pp. 84-94) e nella versione slavica (ed. Stojan Novakovic, Zagabria 1886). Ha dei punti di contatto con B. sir. e con Enoch slavo. B. racconta i suoi viaggi in spirito attraverso i 5 cieli: ma il testo è incompleto, e probabilmente trattasi di 7 cieli (Origene, De Principi, II, 3,6 accenna ad uno scritto di B. in cui si parla di 7 mondi o cieli). Nelle visioni s'inscrive alcune nozioni escatologiche e si descrive la sorte dei giusti e dei cattivi dopo la morte. Nell'attuale stesura il breve apocrifo presenta evidenti segni d'interpolazione cristiana (capp. 4, 13-16). Ma esagera M. R. James che lo giudica un'apologia cristiana del sec. II.