BARUCH

The Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah which it contains are definitely forgeries written long after the people whose names they bear were dead.

The Book of Baruch certainly claims to contain, if not be, God’s Word for it contains prophecy spoken in God’s name. This makes it unique among the Apocrypha.

Baruch is possibly the work of a forger who was reflecting on what was going on with God’s people in the time of Jeremiah. Or it was a forgery written in New Testament times that was trying to link events from these times with events in the time of Jeremiah. In other words, it looked at the needs of the New Testament times through the tinted glasses of Jeremiah's time. It is most likely that it is a New Testament forgery for it would not have been written except when history was repeating itself. That is when the calamities of the holy land that happened in the days of Jeremiah appeared to be happening again in 70AD for the book had to have been written to console people. The work was to edify the Jews and disguise what it had to say as if it was spoken to Jeremiah’s generation.
 
Baruch chapter 5 tells Jerusalem to stop mourning and being miserable and to put on the glory of God forever. She will be named forever as the place of holy people. This is clearly meant for Jerusalem of 70AD. Nobody who knew that Jerusalem went off the rails several times after Jeremiah would create or even preserve such a prophecy. The preservation of a book of false prophecy could only have been down to the illogical Christians who raved all sorts of nonsense. The Jews would have destroyed the book.

In Evidence that Demands a Verdict Vol 1 (page 34) we read that Baruch was written about 100 AD and was probably trying to interpret the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. It sees clues that the book was urging the Jews to submit to the Roman emperor and forget about fighting for that is God’s concern (4:25).

The book denies the validity of the prophets who spoke of the awful apostasy of Jerusalem. So it denies that Jesus who said that Daniel was a real prophet and predicted the apostasy was really the Son of God.  

The book says that the Law of Moses is everlasting and valid for as long as says that all who reject it will die and warns that acceptance of Gentiles is heresy (4:1-4). This is what a person who knew of the Christian Church would write. Jesus and the apostles accepted Gentiles.

He complains that Israel was worshipping other gods. Jesus and the Holy Spirit, no doubt.

The Letter of Jeremiah says that if anything bad happens to an idol or god that proves it was not a god. Jesus whether man or myth did not save himself from the cross so is that what he is getting at? He was the only serious problem the Jews of the time had with idolatry.

The silence of the work on the historical Jesus implies that he did not exist. It could have said something like, “The man that died at your hands has not saved you”.

Roman Catholicism sees Baruch as true scripture. That the Church has no power to divine true scripture is obvious from the fact that Baruch should be in the New Testament but altering the New Testament list is unthinkable even for Catholics. At the end of the day, Baruch is just a forgery. Rome says it was just a man writing in the name of Baruch in the first century who had no intention of forging but was just using a device to show he was in Baruch’s tradition. There is no evidence that the man didn’t mean to forge. When you put your name to a book and try to copy somebody else’s style and take their identity you are a forger. End of story.