BARUCH IS A COLLABORATOR OR THE ‘EDITOR’ OF THE BOOK OF JEREMIAH

1. In the Masoretic text of the Book of Jeremiah that has come down to us, a mysterious character appears who, in the LXX text, has a book with his own name, Baruch. Surely the Hebrew text that they translated for the Israelites of Egypt B.C., was different from the Masoretic one. But, it is only this mania of absolute fidelity to the “verus textus haebraicus”, which was introduced by the not always impartial Jerome, which has made the current ‘specialists’ of the Old Testament have reduced the problem to discover what there is in an unsolved problem: that of the stories that speak of Jeremiah, but, in the third person, in the untouchable Masoretic version.

2. In this conditional “archaeological search” ante-textum receptum, some biblical specialists believe that “in the beginning” the Hieremian book was a story, combined with another in the first person, about the martyrdom of Jeremiah, because of his sermon in Tophet: cf. Jer 12-15; 20,1-6.

3. This doubly groundbreaking story, without a reliable date, is followed by the story of Jer 26, 24, which is situated at the beginning of the reign of Jehoiachin. All this is retained as a “report” of the circumstances that accompanied the temple discourse (Jer 7,1-8,3).

4. Other questions follow: the stories of the cc. 36 and 45, which also take place in the fourth year of Jehoiachin. Then come the accounts of Zedekiah’s fourth year: with Jeremiah’s confrontation with Ananias (c. 28), the letter to Babylon (c. 29), the curse against Babylon sent to the head of Zedekiah’s mayor (51, 59-64). Finally, the account, after the siege of Jerusalem, of the Jerusalemites’ failure to keep their promise and the threat of punishment (34,8-22).

5. Those ‘fearful’ researchers, always subject to the “veritas haebraica”, have presented a curious hypothesis about the aforementioned pardon and its own text. It would be Baruch’s narrative work that would have included the following passages: Jer 20,1-6; 26; 36; 4528-29; 51,59-64; 34,8-22; 37-44.
Consequently, c. 36, 45, 28 (which now appears as 51,31-35, at the end of Jeremiah’s prophecies and 51,59-64, which would now be found in places that do not correspond chronologically to them.

6. However, in the case of 51,59-64, there is a quite logical explanation: these words of Jeremiah against Babylon are related to the threats of 50,1-51,58 and that is why they were left behind.
The displacement of chapter 45 also has an explanation. Chapter 44 contains threats against the Jews living in Egypt. Since Baruch lived with them (cf. 43,5.6), to avoid the possible misunderstanding of considering Baruch under a curse, an editor took this favorable oracle from its original place and joined it to chapter 44, thus freeing Baruch and eliminating such threats.

7. Finally, chapter 36 It may owe its present position to the following reason: its ending, which mentions the addition of many words similar to the primitive scroll, was interpreted as containing all the previous words (from chapters 1-35).The attribution of the above-mentioned accounts to Baruch is based on the fairly widespread and probable idea that this person, so closely linked to the fate of Jeremiah and mentioned as his secretary in chapter 36, took an active part in the writing of the Book of Jeremiah.

8. Some deny this and consider Baruch only as a notary who wrote the original scroll at Jeremiah’s dictation, but who is not the author of any part of the Book of Jeremiah. However, such skepticism is unjustified in the face of the idea that Baruch wrote a life story, or rather, a “Passion Story” of his revered master, which has been preserved as part of the present Book of Jeremiah.

9. In any case, both this discussion and the case of the primitive scroll, since the stories in question surely formed an independent book at first, coincide with source B, which according to some was composed in Egypt between 580 and 480 BC.
Therefore, the attribution to Baruch of the biographical work that we have just described has many data in its favor.

19. But some commentators would like to attribute to him an even broader collaboration in the composition of the Book of Jeremiah. Some attribute to him the basic nucleus of chapters 1-45 and believe that it was Baruch who composed the three parts of the book, different in their form and content:
a) Chapters 1-25, key words.
b) Chapters 26-36, stories that frame words of the prophet Jeremiah.
c) Chapters 37-45, a story followed by the last years of Jeremiah. Baruch concluded each of these three parts with a kind of colophon of his own.

11. But, according to others, it is possible that the author of the sections that both they and others attribute to “Source C” was the one who did the main editing of the entire Book of Jeremiah and they are intended to show the fundamental criteria by which this editor of the entire work was guided.

12. But, some of us think that, in reality, the process of formation of the Book of Jeremiah must have been much more complicated.
a) It is not possible to determine the number of hands or editorial stages.
b) But, we can identify with a fair degree of certainty the different parts that, at first, were independent and, later, were brought together by an editor.
c) We already know two of them, the autobiographical stories contained in the primitive scroll in its new edition and the stories of Baruch.

13. Can we add something about the origin of the passages that do not fit into these two collections? a) To answer this question, we will begin by limiting ourselves to chapters 1-25, that is, to the words of Jeremiah that remain in them after separating the primitive scroll and that someone attributes mainly to his source A.
b) As Source B, a ‘tutum ’ arose in Egypt between 580 and 480 BC. Partly, these oracles and poems appear in small groups, organized according to their content, and it is possible that they were previously independent. Three of them have titles:
1) 14,1-15,4 “on the drought”.
2) 21,11-23,8 “to the Royal House of Judah”.
3) 23,9-40 “to the prophets”.
c) But it is probable that chapters 1-25 also contained other small collections, although we cannot isolate them with certainty due to lack of titles.

14. Is the Book of Baruch a deuterocanonical book that the Hebrews and, much later, the Protestants call apocryphal? Or is it a book that existed first as three separate and independent parts that were later put together and resulted in the present book?
a) The oldest piece (two poems, Bar. 3, 9-5, 9) belong to the 3rd century BC.
b) During the time of the Maccabees, a last editor added the prologue and the final part and attributed the whole to the prophet Baruch, secretary and amanuensis of Jeremiah.
c) The Septuagint shows chapter 6 of Baruch separately, as “Letter of Jeremiah.” The Vulgate, from the 9th century, joins it with the book of Baruch and numbers it as another chapter.

15. The Book of Jeremiah in the Septuagint is one-seventh shorter than that of the Masoretic or Vulgate texts, and the chapter order is very different, with sections from the middle of the book in the LXX (the Oracles against the Nations) found at the end of the book in the Masoretic and Vulgate.
a) Since Hebrew fragments have been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls corresponding to both the LXX and the Masoretic, it is commonly accepted that the two versions derive from two distinct Hebrew traditions, and that the Septuagint form of the text is probably the older. The Book of Baruch is appended to the Septuagint version of Jeremiah, following as a natural continuation of the Septuagint narrative (51:31-35 of the LXX, corresponding to the truncatedchapter 45 in the Masoretic text).

16. 17. En consecuencia, la recopilación de secciones del final de la Septuaginta de Jeremías en un libro distinto de ‘Baruc’ fue una innovación de la práctica bíblica cristiana en la iglesia griega alrededor del siglo III en adelante; pero la versión de Jeremías en la Vetus Latina precedió a esta práctica y, por lo tanto, no designó el Libro de Baruc como una obra distinguida, sino que incluyó su texto dentro del Libro deJeremías.​

17. La gran pregunta es Baruc fue sólo el secretario de Jeremías, o es el verdadero redactor del Libro de Jeremías​?

Mgr. Jaume González-Agàpito