The History of the Captivity in Babylon is a pseudepigraphical text of the Old Testament that supposedly provides omitted details concerning the prophet Jeremiah. It is preserved in Coptic, Arabic, and Garshuni manuscripts. It was most likely originally written in Greek sometime between 70 and 132 CE by a Jewish author and then subsequently reworked into a second, Christian edition in the form of 4 Baruch. It is no. 227 in the Clavis apocryphorum Veteris Testamenti, where it is referred to as Apocryphon Jeremiae de captivitate Babylonis.Haelewyck 1998, 185; DiTommaso 2001, 302. However, the simple form Apocryphon of Jeremiah, which is sometimes employed, should be avoided as the latter is used to describe fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls.Other forms of the title include the French, Histoire de la Captivité de Babylone (Amélineau 1888, 2:97); the German, Geschichte der Gefangenschaft in Babylon (Graf 1944, 213); and the Latin, Narratio de capta Jerusalem (Schmid and Speyer 1974, 188).

Sources With the exception of Charlesworth, most scholars understand the History of the Captivity in Babylon to exist in two related versions.Charlesworth 1981, 88-89, sees them as "dissimilar Jeremiah apocrypha." Stegmüller 1950, may also be of this opinion, for he has nos. 91.7-10 (Historia captivitatis); 120, 120.1 (Jeremias, Historia deportationis); and 114.8 (Reliqua verborum Baruch) as distinct works. For the consensus opinion, see Kuhn 1970, 97, 103-4; Kuhn 1991, 170; Coquin 1995; Haelewyck 1998, 185-87; DiTommaso 2001, 302; Herzer 2005, xxiv-xxv.

Arabic version The first version to come to the attention of Western scholars (1888) is preserved in Arabic and Garshuni manuscripts. The French scholar Émile Amélineau translated an Arabic copy (British Museum Or. 3599)Amélineau rarely identified his sources. We are indebted to Rieu 1894, 28, for this information. Amélineau translated BM Or. 3589, fols. 81b-105, 116-125, 106-115, a manuscript dated to the 17th century. in his collection of Tales and Novels of Christian Egypt.Ch. XIII, Histoire de la Captivité de Babylone; Amélineau 1888, 2:97-151. The title, as discerned from the first sentence, would be, "History of the Captivity of the Sons of Israel in Babylon, of the Chaldees." In his brief introductory comments, Amélineau argued that certain expressions in the tale (e.g. "the whole earth" [la terre entière]) offered "convincing evidence that this story has been composed in Egypt" in Coptic.Amélineau 1888, 1:xix; cf. 1:lix-lxi. However, this view was challenged early on by Émile Galtier, who quipped, "one thing is certain—the primitive core of the account is neither Coptic, nor popular."Galtier 1905, 178. In 1910, two more Frenchmen, Lucien Leroy and Pierre Dib, translated a Garshuni manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (Syr. 65).For a description of the manuscript, see Zotenberg 1874, 32. Leroy and Dib 1910-11 first transliterate the Arabic text into Arabic characters (from the Syriac characters of Garshuni) and then offer a French translation. The title, as discerned from the first sentence, would be, "History of the Captivity of the Israelites in Babylon." Finally, in 1927, Alphonse Mingana produced an English translation of the aforementioned Paris BN Syr. 65 along with another Garshuni manuscript (Syr. 240) that Mingana had recently acquired in Kurdistan.Mingana and Harris 1927, 149, say that they were only aware of the earlier edition by Leroy and Dib "very late," and presumably made little use of it. Paris BN Syr. 65 is dated by a comment in the manuscript to 1594 CE, while Mingana Syr. 240 may be dated palaeographically to about 1650 (p. 148). He thought that Syr. 65, "which is now in Garshuni was transcribed from a MS. written in Arabic characters and executed in Egypt. The same, however, could not be said of Syr. 240." This observation, along with the fact that the two manuscripts preserve different recensions of the story, led Mingana to conclude that the surviving witnesses "may provisionally be divided into an Egyptian recension and a Syrian, Palestinian, or Mesopotamian recension."Mingana and Harris 1927, 148 (= BJRL 11 (1927): 352). Mingana notes: "The discrepancies and verbal differences which characterise the two recensions are profound and unmistakeable."

In recent times, René-Georges Coquin has confirmed Mingana's notion of two principal recensions. He has examined additional manuscripts and proposed the following classification:Coquin 1995, 81-83.

1. Syrian. These are principally the manuscripts written in Garshuni: A) three Garshuni manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France: Syr. 65, Syr. 273, and Syr. 276;For descriptions, see Zotenberg 1874, 32, 212, 214. B) three Garshuni manuscripts in the Mingana collection, University of Birmingham: Syr. 240, Syr. 369, and Syr. 500 and Christian-Arabic 20 (28).For descriptions, see Mingana 1933-36, 1:485-6, 679-80, 919-20; 2:24-5. To the latter are to be added the Arabic manuscript British Museum Or. 3599 and American University of Beirut 280, no. 26, 6. The Syrian version is characterized especially by the replacement of Astarte by Zeus in the text, a modification that Coquin sees as most likely of Palestinian origin.Coquin 1995, 82.

2. Egyptian. These are principally the manuscripts written in Arabic characters and are also classified in two groups: A) Cambridge University Library, Syr. Add. 2886 (written in Garshuni and incomplete),Wright 1901, 2:737. Trinity College Library, Dublin 1531, 9,Abbott 1900, 409. and the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, Strasbourg, Or. 4180 (Ar. 33); B) about twenty manuscripts in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.For details, see Coquin 1995, 82; Graf 1944, 214 (the Nachträge list additional manuscripts [p. 671, = vol. 2, p. 487, in earlier printings]).

Coquin argues that a special place in this categorization should be made for Paris BN Syr. 238.The account is found on folios 115r-137r; see Zotenberg 1874, 191. This version is written in Arabic characters for the first two thirds and then in Syriac characters for the final third. In addition to providing an older copy (dated to 1474 CE), it offers a redaction of the work much closer to the Coptic form.The similarity is closest to what Coquin calls Coptic 2. His examination of the manuscript revealed that "many readings are in conformity with the Coptic and in opposition to the Garshuni or Arabic manuscripts."Coquin 1995, 83. A century earlier, Zotenberg had noted in his catalog: "This copy differs by a great number of variants of words, and by whole passages, with the exemplar contained in MS no. 65."Zotenberg 1874, 191. Though noting this manuscript and the description in Zotenberg, Mingana decided to pay "no attention" to it, apparently not aware of its special nature.Mingana and Harris 1927, 148 (= BJRL 11 (1927): 352). "From this examination," Coquin concludes, "it appears now possible to specify that the archetype was Egyptian and that from it two recensions derive, one Egyptian, naturally more faithful to the original, and the other Syrian, having been subject to Palestinian and Mesopotamian influences."Coquin 1995, 83.

Coptic version

The Coptic version has usually been referred to in the scholarly literature as the Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon, due to the editio princeps published by Karl Heinz Kuhn in 1970. The first evidence of a Coptic version came from a manuscript folio (Vienna K. 9846) that was published in 1909 along with a German translation by Carl Wessely.Wessely 1909, 51-54. The manuscript, which is dated to the ninth century, is in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek and is written in Sahidic. That same year Walter E. Crum pointed out its relationship to the Arabic version translated by Amélineau and also revealed that another single folio, which directly preceded it in the original manuscript, may be found in Paris BN copte 1321, 16.Crum 1908/9, 55. The next folio, 1321, 17, also contains a portion of the work, though there is some doubt if it originally came from the same manuscript.Kuhn 1970, 96, thought it "originally formed part of one and the same codex," though Coquin 1995, 80, says, "some doubt still remains on this subject." The next year a Coptic manuscript was found (Pierpont Morgan Library M. 578)The manuscript, which is dated to the ninth century, is written in Sahidic, the work being found on folios 97v-130v. A brief but erroneous mention of the work was made in Hyvernat 1919, 18, which located the work in the wrong manuscript (cf. p. 11). There are photographic reproductions available in Hyvernat 1922, vol. 31, plates 194-260, though only twelve copies of this fifty-seven volume set were produced. that contained the complete text, though the existence of this version was not widely known until 1937. It was Crum who again called attention to the manuscript and further announced that remnants of a Fayyumic version were preserved on papyrus in British Museum Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities 10578.Crum 1937, 329. The latter manuscript is important as it is dated in the seventh century and thus serves as a terminus ante quem for the work.Kuhn 1970, 104. Finally Kuhn in 1970 produced a critical edition and English translation of P. Morgan M. 578, including in appendices the other Coptic witnesses.In his analysis, Coquin labels the complete version found in P. Morgan M. 578, "Coptic 1", and the version preserved in fragments, "Coptic 2". In 1980 Jean-Marc Rosenstiehl submitted a dissertation to the University of Strasbourg on the Coptic version, with French translation and notes, which regrettably still remains unpublished. The title of the Coptic version is, "Supplements to the Prophet Jeremiah" (Paralipomena Jeremiae prophetae), the same as the Greek work by that name, also known as 4 Baruch.

Origins