As E. H. Gifford puts it, “The fact that Jeremiah had written one such letter to the captives seems to have suggested the idea of dignifying by his name another letter not written in reality till many ages after his death.”[full citation needed] Against the traditional view, most contemporary scholars agree that the author was not Jeremiah. The chief arguments put forward are literary quality, as well as the religious depth and sensitivity. J. T. Marshall adds that the use of “seven generations” (v. 3) rather than “seventy years” (Jer 29:10) for the duration of the exile “points away from Jeremiah towards one who deplored the long exile.” The author may have been a Hellenistic Jew who lived in Alexandria, but it is difficult to say with certainty. The earliest manuscripts containing the Epistle of Jeremiah are all in Greek. The earliest Greek fragment (1st century BC) was discovered in Qumran.
Gifford reports that in his time “the great majority of competent and impartial critics” considered Greek to be the original language. As one of these critics O. F. Fritzsche put it, “If any one of the Apocryphal books was composed in Greek, this certainly was.” The strongest dissenter from this majority view was C. J. Ball, who marshalled the most compelling argument for a Hebrew original.
However, Yale Semitic scholar C. C. Torrey was not persuaded: “If the examination by a scholar of Ball’s thoroughness and wide learning can produce nothing better than this, it can be said with little hesitation that the language was probably not Hebrew.” Torrey’s own conclusion was that the work was originally composed in Aramaic. In recent years the tide of opinion has shifted and now the consensus is that the “letter” was originally composed in Hebrew (or Aramaic).
Date
The date of this work is uncertain. Most scholars agree that it is dependent on certain biblical passages, notably Isa 44:9–20, 46:5–7, and thus can be no earlier than 540 BC. Since a fragment (7Q2) was identified among the scrolls in Qumran Cave 7, it can be no later than 100 BC. Further support for this terminus ad quem may be found in a possible reference to the letter in 2 Maccabees 2:1–3.
As mentioned above, the use of “seven generations” rather than “seventy years” points to a later period. Ball calculates the date to be c. 307 – 317 BC. And Tededche notes: “It is well known that many Jews were attracted to alien cults throughout the Greek period, 300 BC onward, so that the warning in the letter might have been uttered any time during this period.”
Although the “letter” is included as a discrete unit in the Septuagint, there is no evidence of it ever having been canonical in the Masoretic tradition.
The earliest evidence we have of the question of its canonicity arising in Christian tradition is in the work of Origen of Alexandria, as reported by Eusebius in his Church History. Origen listed Lamentations and the Letter of Jeremiah as one unit with the Book of Jeremiah proper, among “the canonical books as the Hebrews have handed them down,” though scholars agree that this was surely a slip.
Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion writes that Jews had in their books the deuterocanonical Epistle of Jeremiah and Baruch, both combined with Jeremiah and Lamentations in only one book.
Athanasius of Alexandria mentions the same, he includes the deuterocanonical Epistle of Jeremiah and Baruch as a part of the Old Testament Canon, both combined with Jeremiah and Lamentations in only one book.
