3 Baruch (Greek Apocalypse of Baruch)

The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, written by an unknown author, probably in the 1st-3rd century AD (most likely about AD 100-175, in Egypt or Palestine), as a Jewish work later worked over by a Christian hand; it survives complete in Greek and in a shorter Slavonic form. The prophet Baruch, weeping over the fall of Jerusalem, is taken by an angel through five heavens: the plains of the builders of the Tower of Babel, the serpent and Hades, the chariot of the sun with the phoenix that screens the world from its rays, the pool of the righteous souls, and at the last the archangel Michael weighing the merits of human beings in a great vessel. Square brackets mark passages Hughes judged to be Christian additions (chapters 4, 13 and 15). This is H. M. Hughes's English as printed in R. H. Charles's Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1913); his Introduction and notes are not reproduced. Charles prints verse numbers in the margin beside the line, not at the exact start of a verse, so each chapter is given here as one text; the unnumbered Prologue opens chapter 1. Not part of any canon; not the same book as 2 Baruch (Syriac) or 4 Baruch (Paraleipomena of Jeremiah).