The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (Early Judaism and Its Literature 20)

326 Pages·2003·1.06 MB·English

by  Rivka Nir

The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption
in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch
Society of Biblical Literature
Early Judaism and Its Literature
Edited by
John C. Reeves
Number 20
The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption
in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch
The Destruction of Jerusalem
and the Idea of Redemption in the
Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch
Rivka Nir
Society of Biblical Literature
Atlanta
The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Idea of Redemption
in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch
Copyright © 2003 by the Society of Biblical Literature
All rights reserved
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photo copying and recording, or by
means of any information storage or retriev al system, except as may be expressly
permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests
for permission should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions
Offi ce, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA
30329, USA.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nir, Rivka.
The destruction of Jerusalem and the idea of redemption in the Syriac
Apocalypse of Baruch / by Rivka Nir.
p. cm. — (Early Judaism and its literature ; no. 20)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-58983-050-4 (pbk.)
1. Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2.
Redemption—Judaism. 3. Redemption—Christianity. 4. Eschatology,
Jewish. 5. Eschatology. 6. Temple of Jerusalem (Jerusalem) I. Title.
II. Series.
BS1830.B4 N57 2002b
229'.913—dc21
2002152549
This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper.
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 — 5 4 3 2 1
Manufactured in the United States of America
To my esteemed teacher, Prof. Joshua Efron

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................1
PART ONE: THE HEAVENLY JERUSALEM IN THE SYRIAC APOCALYPSE OF
BARUCH.........................................................................................................17
1. This Is Not the City I Have Engraved
on the Palms of My Hands (2 Bar. 4:1–7)...........................................19
2. The Hiding of the Temple Vessels...............................................................43
2.1. Syriac Baruch 6:7–10.............................................................................43
2.2. The Jewish Tradition.............................................................................48
2.3. Paralipomena Jeremiou...........................................................................56
2.4. Jeremiah Apocryphon..............................................................................59
2.5. Vitae Prophetorum..................................................................................66
2.6. Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum..............................................................71
3. The Abandonment of the Temple...............................................................79
3.1. “The Watchman Has Abandoned the House” (8:1–5).........................79
3.2. The Keys of the Temple (10:18)...........................................................83
a. The Christian Tradition.......................................................................83
b. The Jewish Tradition...........................................................................88
3.3. The Virgins Weaving in the Temple (10:19)......................................100
PART TWO: THE IDEA OF ESCHATOLOGICAL REDEMPTION.........................119
4. Description of the Appearance of Messiah (2 Bar. 24–30)........................121
4.1. The Catastrophes of the Eschaton.......................................................121
4.2. The Eschatological Feast.....................................................................132
4.3. The Beginning of the Messiah’s Revelation.........................................138
4.4. The Full Appearance of the Messiah...................................................151
4.5. The Resurrection of the Dead and the Final Judgment......................158
5. The Vision of the Forest, the Cedar, the Vine, and the Spring
(2 Bar. 36–40)....................................................................................165
6. The Vision of the Bright Waters and the Dark Waters (2 Bar. 53,
56–74)................................................................................................183
6.1. Description of the End and the Appearance of the Messiah................194
vii
viii INTRODUCTION
CONCLUSION..................................................................................................199
APPENDIX: The Tidings of the Christian Resurrection and Its Conditions
in Paralipomena Jeremiae.............................................................................203
ABBREVIATIONS..............................................................................................239
BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................241
INDEX OF SOURCES.........................................................................................281
INDEX OF MODERN AUTHORS.......................................................................307
SUBJECT INDEX...............................................................................................313
INTRODUCTION
Several pseudepigraphic works are associated with the name of Baruch son
of Neriah, the prophet Jeremiah’s scribe (Jer 32, 36, 43, 45), among them the
Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, known to scholars as 2 Baruch.1 This work is extant
in its entirety only in the Syriac language, an Aramaic dialect widely used in the
Eastern Christian church; hence its name, the Syriac Baruch. It is included
among the biblical pseudepigraphical works, that is, those anonymous works
whose composition is attributed to some ancient biblical personality, a group
that includes Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Martyrdom of Isaiah, the
Psalms of Solomon, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 4 Ezra, etc. In
keeping with this literary conceit, the overt content of the present book is
placed at the end of the First Temple period, the period during which Baruch
and Jeremiah lived and which was marked by Jerusalem’s conquest by
Nebuchadnezzar, the destruction of the temple in 586 BCE, and the Babylonian
exile. However, there is general agreement that this overt plot is no more than a
literary device used to allude to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second
Temple in 70 CE. The work incorporates three apocalyptic visions describing
the end of the world, the founding of the new world, and the coming of the
Messiah; it concludes with an epistle sent by Baruch to the nine and a half
tribes beyond the river, constituting a kind of précis of the ideas expressed in
the work as a whole.
This epistle was already known from the year 1645, when it was published
in the ninth volume of the Paris Polyglot (a Bible including the text in several
languages), and afterwards in 1657 in Walton’s Polyglot in London.2 Over the
———————
1The other works whose composition was attributed to Baruch are the apocryphal
book of Baruch (1 Baruch), the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch), and The Other
Words of Jeremiah the Prophet (Paralipomena Jeremiae Prophetae), which, according to its
Ethiopic fragments, was known as The Remaining Words of Baruch (4 Baruch). See R. H.
Charles, Apocalypse of Baruch (London, 1896), xix–xxii; R. J. Harris, The Rest of the
Words of Baruch, A Christian Apocalypse of the Year 136 A.D. (London, 1889), 9–11; P.
Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch, Introduction, Traduction du Syriaque et Commentaire (2
vols.; Paris, 1969), 1:451–57; L. H. Brockington, “The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,”
in The Apocryphal Old Testament (ed. H. F. D. Sparks; Oxford, 1984), 835. In this
book, this text will be referred to as the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, Syriac Baruch, or 2
Baruch.
2In the Ambrosian MS, the only complete version of the work that has survived in
Syriac, the epistle appears both separately and as an integral part of the apocalypse, from
which its independent existence may be inferred. This epistle has survived in thirty-eight
manuscripts. On the translation of the epistle, see Bogaert, Apocalypse, 1:28.
1
2 INTRODUCTION
course of some two centuries, various voices asserted its Christian origins.
Thus, Pierre Daniel Huet (1630–1721), bishop of Avranches, argued that
Baruch was written by a Syrian monk, while Augustin Calmet (1672–1757)
wrote that: “the Syrians have quite a lengthy epistle bearing the name Baruch,
but the author of this epistle speaks of the angels in such a way as to make one
suspect that he is a Christian.” Fabricius, who translated the epistle into Latin
in 1723, continued this tendency.3
In 1866 the entire work, of which the epistle was one part, was published
in Latin translation by the priest M. Ceriani (1828–1907). In 1871 he pub-
lished the Syriac text on the basis of the only extant Syriac manuscript, which
was discovered at the Ambrosian library in Milan and dated to the sixth or
seventh century CE.4 Upon the publication of the full work, the predominant
———————
3P. D. Huet, Demonstratio Evangelica (Leipzig, 1694), 450–51; A. Calmet,
Commentaire Litteral sur tous les Livres de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament (Paris, 1726)
6:324; J. A. Fabricius, Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti, Collectus, Castigatus
Testimoniisque, Censuris et Animadversionibus Illustratus (2 vols.; Hamburg, 1722–27),
2.145–55; and cf. J. G. Eichhorn, Einleitung in die apokryphischen Schriften des Alten
Testaments (Leipzig, 1795), 395; H. Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus, III,
Letzte Hälfte (Göttingen, 1852); G. A. Deissmann, Bibelstudien; Beiträge zumeist aus
den Papyri und Inschriften, zur Geschichte der Sprache, des Schrifttums und der Religion des
hellenistischen Judentums und des Urchristentums (Marburg, 1895), 234 n. 2.
4A. M. Ceriani, “Apocalypsis Syriaca Baruch,” Monumenta sacra et profana ex
codicibus praesertim Bibliothecae Ambrosianae 5.2 (Milan, 1871), 113–80. The
Ambrosian MS includes the Old Testament, 4 Ezra, Book 6 of Josephus’s Jewish War,
and the Apocalypse of Baruch, three works related to the conquest of Jerusalem by the
Romans in 70 CE. The number of the manuscript is Codex Ambrosianus 13.21 inf
(folio 257a–265b). On the dating of the MS, see Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch, 1:33–37.
A photolithograph facsimile of the entire Ambrosian Manuscript was published in
1876–1883, and another edition of Syriac Baruch was published by M. Kmosko in
Patrologia Syriaca, 1907. For a review of this edition, see T. W. Willett, The
Eschatologies in the Theodocies of 2 Baruch and 4 Esra (Sheffield, 1989), 78. For the
modern, updated edition of chs. 1–77 used in the preparation of this book, see S.
Dedering, Apocalypse of Baruch (Peshitta Institute, Part IV, Fasc. 3; Leiden, 1975). Parts
of the apocalypse are found in two Syriac manuscripts of thirteenth-century Jacobite
origin found in the British Museum: W. Baars, “Neue Textzeugen der Syrischen
Baruch,” VT 13 (1963): 477. There is also a Greek fragment among the papyrii
discovered in Oxyrhyncus in Egypt: B. P. Grenfell & A. S. Hunt, The Oxyrhyncus
Papyri (London, 1903) 3:3–7; cf. A. M. Denis, Fragmenta Pseudepigraphorum quae
supersunt graeca (PVTG 3; Leiden, 1970), 118–20. This fragment suggests that the
work was translated into Syriac from the Greek, as suggested by the heading in the
Ambrosian MS: “The book of revelations of Baruch son of Neriah, translated from
Greek to Syriac.” On the various MSS, see Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch, 1:33–55. There
is also an Arabic MS that was discovered at the library of the Santa Catherina monastery: