Invisible Manuscripts: Textual Scholarship and the Survival of 2 Baruch

Abstract

Trajectories in the History of Editing of the Epistle of Baruch . . . . . . 5.2.1 Trajectory A: The Epistle of Baruch as an Integral Part of 2 Baruch .

Epistles from Jerusalem: The Paratexts of Syriac 2 Baruch and the Peshitta Jeremiah Corpus

“…38 At this point, a closer look at the literary content of 2 Baruch is warranted, looking closer at Baruch's geographical location and the role of the two Baruchian epistles in the book. 2 Baruch underscores Baruch's location in the vicinity of Jerusalem (Lied 2008(Lied , 2021. In 2 Baruch, Baruch leaves Jerusalem with his followers just before the destruction of the temple and the city, gathering them in the nearby wilderness location (2 Bar 1:1-2:2; 5:5-6:1; 80:4-7).…”

“…The copies of these two epistles in the Codex Ambrosianus (on folios 176v-177v and 265v-267r, respectively) share 81.2% of the text. 22 This means that the text of these epistles in the Syriac tradition are clearly related, but that the Codex Ambrosianus identifies them by different titles and locates them in distinct collection contexts: they are in this sense different works (Lied 2017(Lied , 2021. 23 The full initial title of the First Epistle of Baruch the Scribe in the Codex Ambrosianus is the "First Epistle of Baruch the Scribe, Which He Sent from the Midst of Jerusalem to Babylon" (f. 176v).…”

“…Some Syriac Christian milieux employed 2 Baruch as an Old Testament book, prescribing lections from it in lectionary manuscripts. 35 These milieux read lections originating with 2 Baruch, for example, on Easter Sunday (Lied 2021). In other words, the manuscript tradition in which some groups preserved and employed 2 Baruch as an Old Testament book also included an additional writing of Baruch in the Jeremiah corpus.…”

“…In 2 Baruch, however, Baruch sends Jeremiah to Babylon to support the captives held there, while he himself remains behind in the Jerusalem area (2 Bar 10:2, 4-5; 33:1-2). As I have argued elsewhere (Lied 2021), this stress on the Jerusalem location may be one of the reasons why the Codex Ambrosianus contains a copy of 2 Baruch: 2 Baruch provides a detailed, alternative narrative about the fall of the first temple and continues with an account about the extraordinary events that took place in Jerusalem and Judah after the last inhabitants of the city were brought to Babylon. This information was probably valuable for Syriac Christian readers for historiographical reasons.…”

“…77. 36 For a larger and more nuanced debate, see (Bogaert 1969;Dedering n.d.;Whitters 2003;Henze 2011;Doering 2013;Lied 2017Lied , 2021. 37 London,British Library,Add 17,105 and Milan,Biblioteca Ambrosiana,B 21 inf.…”