The Greek Apocalypse Of Baruch 3 Baruch In Hellenistic Judaism And Early Christianity

This study addresses the chief critical issues in the interpretation of 3 Baruch including text, genre, setting, function, literary integrity, and original authorship and offers a reading of the document as both a Jewish and a Christian text.

This work provides the key to one of the most enigmatic Jewish Hellenistic texts preserved in Greek and Slavonic. 3 Baruch, properly read, significantly enriches our understanding of the history of the motifs found in early Jewish lore, at times providing missing links between different stages of their development, and preserves important evidence on the roots of Jewish mysticism, proto-Gnostic and proto-Christian traditions. New volume of much valued commentary series Provides the key to one of the most enigmatic Jewish Hellenistic texts (so far neglected by modern scholarship for its complexity).

This study addresses the chief critical issues in the interpretation of 3 Baruch -- including text, genre, setting, function, literary integrity, and original authorship -- and offers a reading of the document as both a Jewish and a Christian text.

The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch or Second Baruch is a Jewish work of the late first century C.E., written in Israel in the aftermath of the Jewish War against Rome. It is part of a larger body of post-70 C.E. Jewish literature. The authors of these works had a difficult charge. They needed to re/imagine Judaism and its central symbols, take count of a thriving Diaspora, and articulate how Jewish life was to be lived from then on, without the benefit of a temple. Written at a time of religious reconstruction and mental reorientation, Second Baruch occupies a unique place in the history of early Jewish thought. In this highly original work, the author of Second Baruch developed an apocalyptic program that was intended for post-70 C.E. Judaism at large and not for a small dissident community only. The program incorporates various theological strands, chief among them the Deuteronomic promise of a prosperous and long life for those keeping the Torah and the apocalyptic promise of a new heaven and a new earth.In this book, Matthias Henze offers a close reading of some of the central passages in Second Baruch, exposes its main themes, explains the apocalyptic program it advocates, draws some parallels with other texts, Jewish and Christian, and locates Second Baruch 's intellectual place in the rugged terrain of post-70 C.E. Jewish literature and thought. For modern readers interested in Judaism of the late Second Temple period, in the Jewish world from which early Christianity emerged, and in the origins of rabbinic Judaism, Second Baruch is an invaluable source.

THE Apocalypse of Baruch is a composite work written in the latter half of the first century of the Christian era. It is thus contemporaneous with the chief writings of the New Testament. 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, and 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. And yet the intrinsic beauty of this book must to a great degree fail to strike the casual reader. Indeed, it could hardly be otherwise. For the present English version is a translation of the Syriac; the Syriac was a translation of the Greek, and the Greek in turn a translation from the Hebrew original.