Bible Verse Lookup
Letter of Jeremiah
This short work is essentially a satire on idolatry, in the form of a letter supposedly sent by the prophet Jeremiah to Babylon. Thus it became associated with the canonical book of Jeremiah, along with Lamentations and Baruch. It may have taken its inspiration from Jer. 10: 11 (Moore 1977: 326). The original language must have been Hebrew or Aramaic (see Hurowitz 1999), since at times the Greek makes sense only if we assume that a mistranslation from a Semitic language has occurred. A small fragment in Greek from the Dead Sea Scrolls may relate to vv. 43–4, and has been dated palaeographically to c.100 BCE. There also seems to be an allusion to the Letter of Jeremiah in 2 Macc. 2: 1–3. In terms of content, the work is even more derivative than the book of Baruch, being dependent upon passages in Psalms, Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah, and it is not often mentioned by Christian writers.
