Canon and the Letter of Jeremiah

The Book of Baruch belongs to the deuterocanonical Scriptures received by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and to the Apocrypha as reckoned by Judaism and the Protestant tradition, which follow the Hebrew canon in which it does not appear. In many Bibles it is closely associated with the Letter of Jeremiah, a separate anti-idolatry composition that Catholic tradition appends as the sixth chapter of Baruch, while other traditions keep the two apart.

Because of its attribution to Jeremiah's companion and its Jeremianic tone, Baruch was often treated in antiquity as closely bound up with the prophetic book, and its themes (the justice of God in the exile, repentance, the identification of Wisdom with the Torah, and hope for restoration), made it valued in both Jewish and Christian devotion. The Catholic and Orthodox churches read it liturgically, particularly in seasons of penitence and at the Easter vigil. Scholars study Baruch as a characteristic product of Second Temple Judaism's reflection on the meaning of the exile, and as an example of how the memory and authority of the classical prophets were extended in later writings.