Observations placeholder
The Book of Baruch
Identifier
000933
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The Book of Baruch, occasionally referred to as 1 Baruch, is called a deuterocanonical book of the Bible. Although not in the Hebrew Bible, it is found in the Septuagint and in the Vulgate Bible, and also in Theodotion's version. It is grouped with the prophetical books which also include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor prophets. It is named after Baruch ben Neriah, Jeremiah's scribe. Some scholars propose that it was written during or shortly after the period of the Maccabees. In the Vulgate, the King James Bible Apocrypha, and many other versions, the Letter of Jeremiah is appended to the end of the Book of Baruch as a sixth chapter; in the Septuagint and Orthodox Bibles chapter 6 is usually counted as a separate book, called the Letter or Epistle of Jeremiah.
A description of the experience
The Book of Baruch
'Erotic desire and its satisfaction is the key to the origin of the world. Disappointment in love and the revenge which follows in its wake are the root of all the evil and the selfishness in the world. The whole of history is the work of love. Beings seek and find one another; separate and hurt one another; and in the end, comes acute suffering which leads to renunciation'.