Baruch, Book of

The Book of Baruch is one of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament — included in the Septuagint and the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments but excluded from the Protestant and Jewish canons and classified as Apocrypha. It is attributed to Baruch son of Neriah, the secretary and companion of the prophet Jeremiah. The book as it stands is a composite work, comprising a prose confession and prayer on behalf of the Babylonian exiles (1:1–3:8), a wisdom poem praising the Law as the embodiment of divine Wisdom (3:9–4:4), and a poetic exhortation of encouragement to the exilic community (4:5–5:9).

The book claims to have been read to Jehoiachin and the exiles in Babylon (1:1–4), but critical scholars generally date it to the second century BC or later on the basis of its literary dependencies on other biblical texts. The deuterocanonical status of Baruch was held in little esteem among the Jews even in antiquity, and Jerome did not include it in his Vulgate translation of the canonical books, though it was later appended to Jeremiah in the Latin tradition. The Letter of Jeremiah (sometimes printed as chapter 6 of Baruch) is a separate composition mocking idolatry.