Baruch

Baruch son of Neriah was the scribe of the prophet Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 36 he writes the prophet's words on a scroll and reads them in the Temple; King Jehoiakim cuts the scroll up and burns it, and Baruch writes it again. He went with Jeremiah to Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem.

His name was later attached to several books. The Book of Baruch, in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles and the Protestant Apocrypha, includes a poem on wisdom that mentions the famous giants of old, great in stature and expert in war, who perished because they lacked wisdom (Baruch 3:26–28). 2 Baruch and 3 Baruch are apocalypses from after 70 CE. The Paralipomena of Jeremiah, or 4 Baruch, tells how Jeremiah's servant Abimelech fell asleep for sixty-six years and woke to find his figs still fresh.

Scholars date these books centuries after the historical Baruch. Clay seal impressions reading "Berekhyahu son of Neriyahu the scribe" surfaced on the antiquities market in 1975 and 1996, but most scholars now consider them forgeries.