VII. BARUCH AND THE EPISTLE OF JEREMIAH.
17. This is the only apocryphal book which assumes the character of prophecy. It is formed after the model of Jeremiah, and ascribed to Baruch his friend. But its spuriousness is generally admitted. Besides historical inaccuracies, such as are not conceivable in the case of Baruch, the fact that its author employed the Septuagint translation of Jeremiah and Daniel mark it as of a later date. Keil assigns it to about the middle of the second century B.C. The book professes to be a letter written by Baruch in the name of the captive Jews in Babylon to their brethren at Jerusalem, and consists of two well-marked divisions, the first of which, extending to chap. 3:8, is, in the opinion of some, a translation from an original Hebrew document. This part contains, after an introductory notice, a confession of sin with prayer for deliverance. The second part begins with an address to the covenant people, in which they are rebuked for neglecting the teachings of divine wisdom, and encouraged with the hope of returning prosperity when they shall obey her voice. Chaps. 3:9-4:8. Zion is then introduced lamenting over the desolations which God has brought upon her and her children (chap. 4:9-4:29), and afterwards comforting them with the hope of certain deliverance and enlargement (chaps. 4:30-5:9). It is generally agreed that the second part was originally written in Greek, and some think that the same is true of the first part also.
18. There is another Epistle of Baruch preserved to us in the Syriac, which is inserted in the London and Paris Polyglotts. It is addressed to the nine and a half tribes, and "made up of commonplaces of warning, encouragement, and exhortation." Smith's Bib. Dict., Art. Baruch.
19. There is a spurious Epistle of Jeremiah which appears in the Vulgate and our English version as the sixth chapter of Baruch. It is entitled: "Copy of an epistle which Jeremiah sent to those who were to be led captives into Babylon by the king of the Babylonians to make announcement to them, as it was commanded him by God." It purports to be a warning to these captives against the idolatrous practices which they shall witness in Babylon, and is made up of a long discourse on the impotence of the idols which the heathen worship, written in a rhetorical style, in imitation of Jer. 10:1-16. Its author is supposed to have been a Hellenistic Jew who lived towards the end of the Maccabean period.