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Begin Typing VigilThe Apocalypse of Baruch, which for the sake of convenience will be designated 2 Baruch in this edition, is a composite work written in the latter half of the first century of the Christian era. Its authors were orthodox Jews and it is a good representative of the Judaism against which the Pauline dialectic was directed.
In this Apocalypse we have almost the last noble utterance of Judaism before it plunged into the dark and oppressive years that followed the destruction of Jerusalem. For ages after that epoch its people seem to have been bereft of their immemorial gifts of song and eloquence, or to have had thought and energy only for the study and expansion of the traditions of the Fathers. But when our book was written, that evil and barren era had not yet set in; breathing thought and burning word had still their home in Palestine, and the hand of the Jewish artist was still master of its ancient cunning.
This beautiful Apocalypse, with the exception of nine chapters towards its close, which under the title ‘the Epistle of Baruch’ or a similar one, were incorporated in the later Syriac Bible, was lost sight of for quite 1,200 years.
Written originally in Hebrew, it was translated into Greek, and from Greek into Syriac. Of the Hebrew original every line has perished save a few still surviving in rabbinic writings. Of the Greek version, a small fragment has been recovered from the papyri, while many phrases and sentences have been preserved in the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (i.e. 3 Baruch) and in the Rest of the Words of Baruch (i.e. 4 Baruch). Happily the Syriac has come down to us in its entirety in a sixth-century manuscript, the discovery of which is due to Ceriani. Of this manuscript Ceriani published a Latin translation in 1866, the Syriac text in 1871, and the photo-lithographic facsimile in 1883. Though there are no adequate grounds for assuming a Latin version, it is demonstrable that our Apocalypse was the foundation of a Latin Apocalypse of Baruch, a fragment of which is preserved in Cyprian.
This Apocalypse is, as has already been stated, composite. The editor has made use of a number of independent writings, belonging to various dates between 50 and 90 A.D. They are thus contemporaneous with the chief New Testament writings, and furnish records of the Jewish doctrines and beliefs of that period, and of the arguments which prevailed in Judaism in the latter half of the first century, and with which its leaders sought to uphold its declining faith and confront the attacks of a growing and aggressive Christianity. Written by Pharisaic Jews as an apology for Judaism, and in part an implicit polemic against Christianity, it gained nevertheless a larger circulation amongst Christians than amongst Jews, and owed its very preservation to the scholarly cares of the Church it assailed. But in the struggle for life its secret animus against Christianity begat an instinctive opposition in Christian circles, and so proved a bar to its popularity. Thus the place it would naturally have filled was taken by the sister work 4 Ezra. This latter work, which forms in fact an unconscious confession of the failure of Judaism to redeem the world, was naturally more acceptable to Christian readers, and thus, in due course, our Apocalypse was elbowed out of recognition by its fitter and sturdier rival.
These apocryphal writings were preserved in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Ethiopic.