It is listed in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. In the Daily Office Lectionary for Christmas Eve, Baruch 4:21–29 is read; on Christmas day, Baruch 4:30–5:9. (Both of these are considered Messianic Prophecy in the Anglican tradition)
In the Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite, a selection from Baruch (which is considered an extension of the Book of Jeremiah, and is announced in the services as “Jeremiah”) is read as one of the eight Paroemia (Old Testament readings) during the Vesperal Divine Liturgy on Christmas Eve.
__
Book of Judith
This is included in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testament Bible following the Septuagint, but is excluded from Jewish texts and assigned by Protestants to the Apocrypha. The book contains numerous anachronisms, and has been considered a parable or perhaps the first historical novel. The name Judith is the feminine form of Judah.
It is not clear whether the Book of Judith was originally written in Hebrew or in Greek. The oldest existing version is the Septuagint Greek version and might either be a translation from Hebrew or composed in Greek.
Details of vocabulary and phrasing point to a Greek text written in a language modeled on the Greek developed through translating the other books in the Septuagint. The extant Hebrew language versions, whether identical to the Greek, or in the shorter Hebrew version, date to the Middle Ages. The Hebrew versions name important figures directly such as the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, thus placing the events in the Hellenistic period when the Maccabees battled the Seleucid monarchs.
The Greek version uses deliberately cryptic and anachronistic references such as “Nebuchadnezzar”, a “King of Assyria”, who “reigns in Nineveh”, for the same king. The adoption of that name, though unhistorical, has been sometimes explained either as a copyist’s addition, or an arbitrary name assigned to the ruler of Babylon.
Although it was likely written by a Jew during the Second Temple period, there is no evidence that the Book of Judith was ever considered authoritative or a candidate for canonicity by any Jewish group. The Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible does not contain it, nor was it found among the Dead Sea Scrolls or referred to in any early Rabbinic literature. Reasons for its exclusion may include the lateness of its composition, possible Greek origin, open support of the Hasmonean dynasty (to which the early rabbinate was opposed), and perhaps the brash and seductive character of Judith herself.
However, after disappearing from circulation among Jews for over a millennium, references to the Book of Judith, and the figure of Judith herself, resurfaced in the religious literature of crypto-Jews who escaped capitulation by the Caliphate of Córdoba. The renewed interest took the form of “tales of the heroine, liturgical poems, commentaries on the Talmud, and passages in Jewish legal codes.” Although the text itself does not mention Hanukkah, it became customary for a Hebrew midrashic variant of the Judith story to be read on the Shabbat of Hanukkah.
That midrash, whose heroine is portrayed as gorging the enemy on cheese before cutting off his head, may have formed the basis of the Jewish tradition to eat dairy products during Hanukkah. In that respect, Medieval Jewry appears to have viewed Judith as the Hasmonean counterpart to Queen Esther, the heroine of the holiday of Purim. The textual reliability of the Book of Judith was also taken for granted, to the extent that Biblical commentator Nachmanides (Ramban) quoted several passages from a Peshitta (Syriac version) of Judith in support of his rendering of Deuteronomy 21:14.
