BARUCH, BOOK OF (Apocrypha), tha'ruk, tiarik eivt, follows next after the book of Jeremiah in the Septuagint Version.
(1) It is the only one of the deiitero-eano!ical books named in the catalogue of the celebrated fifty-ninth canon of the Council of Landicea u Baruch, the scribe of Jeremiah, be the author of this book, he must have removed front Egypt to Babylon immediately after the death of Jerenualt, inasmuch as the author of the book lived in Babylon in the fifth •ear after that event. unless We suppose, with Fachhorm Arnold and others that the reference (Baruch i :t) is the fifth year from the captivity of Jehmachim.
Jahn (Introductia in Epitome,' redorta, sec. 2t7, etc.) considers this latter opinion at variance with Baruch i where the ffrstruction of Jeru salem is spoken of as having already taken place. De Wette (Lchrbuch der Ein/eifung in dos A.
ftitel JV. T) ingeniously conjectures that gTEL (year) is a mistake or correction of some tran scriber for top/ (month); and there is no question that the present reading, which mentions the year, and the day of the month, without nam ing the month itself, is quite unaccountable.
(2) If Baruch, the friend of Jeremiah, was the author of the present work, it must be a transla tion from the Hebrew or Chaldee, and it is by no means impossible that this is the case, as the work abounds in Hebraisms. These Hebraisms, how ever, in the opinion of Jahn (Introduction), might have originated with a Jew writing Greek, although he leans to the opinion that, from the use of the word manna, and the frequent He braisms, this work not only does not belong to the Greek age of the Jews, but was actually writ ten in Hebrew. This is also the opinion of Cal met (Preface to Baruch), Huet (Demonstratio Evangclica), and others; while Grotius, Eich horn and most of the German writers favor the idea of a Greek original. They conceive that the writer was some unknown person in the reign of Ptolemy Lagos, who, wishing to confirm in the true religion the Jews then residing in Egypt, attributed his own ideas to Baruch the scribe.
There appears, however, no reason, on this latter hypothesis, why the author should speak of the return from Babylon. Grotius conceives that the book abounds not only in Jewish, but even in Christian interpolations. (See Eichhorn's leitnng in die Apokryfen Schriften.) (3) Although Cyril of Jerusalem speaks of the book of Baruch as canonical, it is not expressly named in any of the ancient catalogues of the canon of Scripture, except, as already observed, that of the Council of Laodicea, and the re markable circumstance of this being the only deuterocanonical book named in the canon of that council has given rise to various conjectures. Dean Prideaux, indeed, conceives that the words of the canon, 'Jeremiah, with Baruch, the Lamen tations and the Epistle,' were intended to express no more than Jeremiah's Prophecies and Lamenta tions; that by the Epistle is meant only the epistle in the 29th chapter of Jeremiah, and that Baruch's name is added only because of the part he bore in collecting them together, and adding the last chapter (Connexion, vol. i. p. so). But on ex amining the Alexandrian manuscript in the Brit ish Museum, it will be seen that the arrangement of these books exactly tallies with the words of the canon. Immediately after Jeremiah follows Baruch, with its title and subscription; then the Lamentations, with title and subscription, and. last of all, the Epistle, with the title, 'The Epistle of Jeremiah,' and the following subscription, 'Jeremiah, Lamentations and the Epistle.' (4) \Vhiston (Authentic Records, vol. i, p. i, etc.) strongly contends for the canonicity of this book, founding his opinion on Origen's mode of citing it, with the formula 'It is written,' as well as his testimony, recorded by Eusebius (Hut. Eccles. vi:25), that The Epistle (Baruch vi) was owned by the Jews, in addition to the fact that it is stated in the Apostolical Constitutions that the book of Baruch, together with the Lamenta tions, was publicly read in the synagogues on the tenth day of the month Gorpimus.