BARUCH, BOOK OF

ancient text purportedly written by Baruch, secretary and friend of Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet. The text is still extant in Greek and in several translations from Greek into Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and other languages. The Book of Baruch is apocryphal to the Hebrew and Protestant canons but was incorporated in the Septuagint (q.v.; Greek version of the Hebrew Bible) and was included in the Old Testament for Roman Catholics. The work is a compilation of several authors and is the only work among the apocrypha that was consciously modeled after the prophetic writings of the Old Testament. A brief introduction reports that Baruch wrote the book five years after the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylonia in 586 BC. A long prayer (1:153:8) is a national confession of sins similar to the lamentation in chapter nine of the Old Testament Book of Daniel. The original Hebrew text perhaps dates from the late 2nd century BC. In the next section, a poem identifies God with universal wisdom and names the Judaic Law as God's gift of wisdom to men (3:94:4). In poems of lamentation and consolation that follow (4:55:9), Jerusalem is personified as a widow who weeps for her lost children, and God speaks words of comfort to the Jews. These latter poems may date from the 1st century BC.