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Letter of Jeremiah
The Letter of Jeremiah, also known as the Epistle of Jeremiah, is a deuterocanonical book of the Old Testament; this letter is attributed to Jeremiah and addressed to the Jews who were about to be carried away as captives to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. It is included in Catholic bibles as the final chapter of the Book of Baruch (Baruch 6). It is included in Orthodox and Assyrian Church of the East bibles as a separate book, and is in the Apocrypha of the King James Version.
According to the text of the letter, the author is the biblical prophet Jeremiah. The biblical Book of Jeremiah itself contains the words of a letter sent by Jeremiah "from Jerusalem" to the "captives" in Babylon (Jeremiah 29:1–23). The Letter of Jeremiah portrays itself as a similar piece of correspondence.
As E. H. Gifford puts it, "The fact that Jeremiah had written one such letter to the captives seems to have suggested the idea of dignifying by his name another letter not written in reality till many ages after his death." Against the traditional view, most contemporary scholars agree that the author was not Jeremiah: one exception is the Catholic commentator F. H. Reusch.
The chief arguments put forward are literary quality, as well as the religious depth and sensitivity. J. T. Marshall adds that the use of "seven generations" (v. 3) rather than "seventy years" (Jer 29:10) for the duration of the exile "points away from Jeremiah towards one who deplored the long exile". The author may have been a Hellenistic Jew who lived in Alexandria, but it is difficult to say with certainty. The earliest manuscripts containing the Epistle of Jeremiah are all in Greek. The earliest Greek fragment (1st century BC) was discovered in Qumran.
Gifford reports that in his time "the great majority of competent and impartial critics" considered Greek to be the original language. As one of these critics O. F. Fritzsche put it, "If any one of the Apocryphal books was composed in Greek, this certainly was." The strongest dissenter from this majority view was C. J. Ball, who marshalled the most compelling argument for a Hebrew original. However, Yale Semitic scholar C. C. Torrey was not persuaded: "If the examination by a scholar of Ball's thoroughness and wide learning can produce nothing better than this, it can be said with little hesitation that the language was probably not Hebrew." Torrey's own conclusion was that the work was originally composed in Aramaic. In recent years the tide of opinion has shifted and now the consensus is that the "letter" was originally composed in Hebrew (or Aramaic).
The date of this work is uncertain. Most scholars agree that it is dependent on certain biblical passages, notably Isa 44:9–20, 46:5–7, and thus can be no earlier than 540 BC. Since a fragment (7Q2) was identified among the scrolls in Qumran Cave 7, it can be no later than 100 BC. Further support for this terminus ad quem may be found in a possible reference to the letter in 2 Maccabees 2:1–3.
As mentioned above, the use of "seven generations" rather than "seventy years" points to a later period. Ball calculates the date to be c. 317–307 BC. Tededche notes: "It is well known that many Jews were attracted to alien cults throughout the Greek period, 300 BC onward, so that the warning in the letter might have been uttered any time during this period."
The epistle is one of four deuterocanonical books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (see Tanakh at Qumran). (The other three are Psalm 151, Sirach, and Tobit.) The portion of the epistle discovered at Qumran was written in Greek. This does not preclude the possibility of the text being based on a prior Hebrew or Aramaic text. However, the only text available to us has dozens of linguistic features available in Greek, but not in Hebrew; this shows that the Greek text is more than a minimalist translation.
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Letter of Jeremiah
The Letter of Jeremiah, also known as the Epistle of Jeremiah, is a deuterocanonical book of the Old Testament; this letter is attributed to Jeremiah and addressed to the Jews who were about to be carried away as captives to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. It is included in Catholic bibles as the final chapter of the Book of Baruch (Baruch 6). It is included in Orthodox and Assyrian Church of the East bibles as a separate book, and is in the Apocrypha of the King James Version.
According to the text of the letter, the author is the biblical prophet Jeremiah. The biblical Book of Jeremiah itself contains the words of a letter sent by Jeremiah "from Jerusalem" to the "captives" in Babylon (Jeremiah 29:1–23). The Letter of Jeremiah portrays itself as a similar piece of correspondence.
As E. H. Gifford puts it, "The fact that Jeremiah had written one such letter to the captives seems to have suggested the idea of dignifying by his name another letter not written in reality till many ages after his death." Against the traditional view, most contemporary scholars agree that the author was not Jeremiah: one exception is the Catholic commentator F. H. Reusch.
The chief arguments put forward are literary quality, as well as the religious depth and sensitivity. J. T. Marshall adds that the use of "seven generations" (v. 3) rather than "seventy years" (Jer 29:10) for the duration of the exile "points away from Jeremiah towards one who deplored the long exile". The author may have been a Hellenistic Jew who lived in Alexandria, but it is difficult to say with certainty. The earliest manuscripts containing the Epistle of Jeremiah are all in Greek. The earliest Greek fragment (1st century BC) was discovered in Qumran.
Gifford reports that in his time "the great majority of competent and impartial critics" considered Greek to be the original language. As one of these critics O. F. Fritzsche put it, "If any one of the Apocryphal books was composed in Greek, this certainly was." The strongest dissenter from this majority view was C. J. Ball, who marshalled the most compelling argument for a Hebrew original. However, Yale Semitic scholar C. C. Torrey was not persuaded: "If the examination by a scholar of Ball's thoroughness and wide learning can produce nothing better than this, it can be said with little hesitation that the language was probably not Hebrew." Torrey's own conclusion was that the work was originally composed in Aramaic. In recent years the tide of opinion has shifted and now the consensus is that the "letter" was originally composed in Hebrew (or Aramaic).
The date of this work is uncertain. Most scholars agree that it is dependent on certain biblical passages, notably Isa 44:9–20, 46:5–7, and thus can be no earlier than 540 BC. Since a fragment (7Q2) was identified among the scrolls in Qumran Cave 7, it can be no later than 100 BC. Further support for this terminus ad quem may be found in a possible reference to the letter in 2 Maccabees 2:1–3.
As mentioned above, the use of "seven generations" rather than "seventy years" points to a later period. Ball calculates the date to be c. 317–307 BC. Tededche notes: "It is well known that many Jews were attracted to alien cults throughout the Greek period, 300 BC onward, so that the warning in the letter might have been uttered any time during this period."
The epistle is one of four deuterocanonical books found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (see Tanakh at Qumran). (The other three are Psalm 151, Sirach, and Tobit.) The portion of the epistle discovered at Qumran was written in Greek. This does not preclude the possibility of the text being based on a prior Hebrew or Aramaic text. However, the only text available to us has dozens of linguistic features available in Greek, but not in Hebrew; this shows that the Greek text is more than a minimalist translation.