Letter of Jeremiah: Why Protestant Bibles Leave It Out

Here’s a strange fact. A short book carries the name of a great prophet. It says nothing false about God. It laughs at idols as boldly as Isaiah does. Christians have read it for over 1,500 years, and it sits in the Bibles of more than a billion Catholic and Orthodox believers.

And yet it isn’t God’s Word.

The book is called the Letter of Jeremiah. The Protestant Bible doesn’t have it. Some say Protestants ‘cut it out’. So who’s right?

Let’s look at the evidence together. You’ll see why leaving it out isn’t a matter of taste but a matter of truth.

WORDS TO KNOW BEFORE WE START

Canon: The list of books God inspired—the books that belong in the Bible. The word comes from a Greek word for a measuring rod.
Apocrypha: A group of Jewish books, mostly written between the Old and New Testaments. Protestants do not count them as Scripture. The word means ‘hidden’.
Deuterocanonical: The Catholic name for the same books. It means ‘second canon’.
Septuagint: The Greek translation of the Old Testament, made by Jews before Jesus was born.

What Is the Letter of Jeremiah?

The Letter of Jeremiah is very short—just one chapter of about 72 verses. It opens by saying it’s a copy of a letter Jeremiah sent to the Jews who were about to be taken as prisoners to Babylon.

Its message: idols aren’t gods, so don’t fear them. The writer repeats this like the chorus of a song. In between he even makes fun of idols:

Idols cannot look after themselves. Dust covers their faces, and smoke from the temple lamps turns them black.
Animals do not respect them. Bats, swallows and birds sit on their heads—and so do cats (v. 22). This is the only place cats appear in any Bible.
Their own priests rob them. The priests take gold and silver from the idols and spend it on themselves.
They’re as useful as a scarecrow. The writer compares an idol to a scarecrow in a cucumber field that guards nothing (v. 70).

Every one of these points is true. So why isn’t it in our Bibles? Because a true book and a God-breathed book aren’t the same thing. ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God’ (2 Timothy 3:16). Many books say true things about God. Only some came from God’s own breath.

Where You Will Find It Today

Different Christian groups treat the Letter in different ways. This table shows where each group places the Letter in its Bible, and whether it counts the Letter as God’s Word.

CHRISTIAN GROUP	WHERE THE LETTER APPEARS	TREATED AS SCRIPTURE?
Roman Catholic	As chapter 6 of the book of Baruch	Yes—made official at the Council of Trent in 1546
Eastern Orthodox	As a separate book, placed after Lamentations	Yes
Ethiopian Orthodox	Inside a larger collection of writings linked to Jeremiah	Yes
Jewish (Hebrew Bible)	Not included at all	No
Protestant	Left out, or printed in a separate ‘Apocrypha’ section	No—good to read, but not Scripture

Notice the Jewish people—to whom God first gave the Old Testament—never included it. That matters a great deal.

6 Reasons the Letter Isn’t Scripture

We don’t reject the Letter because we dislike it. We reject it because the evidence points one way.

1. It Was Never in the Bible Jesus Used

Jesus had a Bible. He called it ‘the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms’ (Luke 24:44). This was the Hebrew Bible, divided into 3 parts. It had the same books as our Old Testament, just in a different order.

He also spoke of martyrs ‘from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah’ (Matthew 23:35). Abel is killed in Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. Zechariah is killed in Chronicles, the last book in the Hebrew order. Jesus was pointing to His whole Bible, first page to last. The Letter wasn’t in it.

Paul tells us who looked after that Bible: ‘the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God’ (Romans 3:2). Around AD 95, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus counted 22 holy books (the same as our 39, counted differently). Later writings, he said, lacked their authority, because there was no ‘exact succession of prophets’ after the Persian king Artaxerxes.

In 1588, Cambridge scholar William Whitaker pressed this point against the Catholic scholar Robert Bellarmine: if God gave the Old Testament to the Jews, the church should receive it as they received it. In our own time, Roger Beckwith studied the evidence in detail and agreed. The Bible of Jesus and the apostles was the Hebrew Bible we still have.

2. Jeremiah Didn’t Write It

Jeremiah lived about 600 years before Christ and probably died in Egypt soon after 586 BC. The Letter comes from a much later time.

The oldest copy we have is a tiny scrap of papyrus (an early kind of paper) found in Cave 7 at Qumran, near the Dead Sea. It holds 2 verses (vv. 43–44) in Greek and dates from about 100 BC. Experts such as Carey Moore and David deSilva think the Letter was written between 300 and 100 BC. That’s 2 to 4 centuries after Jeremiah died.

The Letter also borrows from Isaiah 44 and Jeremiah 10. Even its scarecrow picture comes straight from Jeremiah: ‘Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak’ (Jeremiah 10:5). One detail about Babylonian women by the roadside (v. 43) closely matches the Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote long after Jeremiah.

Even early Bible translator Jerome called the Letter pseudonymous—written under a false name. Jeremiah’s name on the front is a borrowed name, not a signature.

3. It Gets Jeremiah’s Prophecy Wrong

This is the strongest reason of all. In verse 3, the Letter says the Jews will stay in Babylon for ‘7 generations’. In the Bible, a generation is usually about 40 years (Numbers 32:13). So 7 generations would be around 280 years.

But the real Jeremiah gave a very different number. God told him: ‘When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfil to you my promise and bring you back to this place’ (Jeremiah 29:10; see also 25:11). Daniel later read Jeremiah’s scroll and found the same number—‘70 years’ (Daniel 9:2). And God kept His word: the Jews began returning home in 538 BC, about 70 years after the first exiles left.

So the Letter disagrees with the prophet whose name it carries. God gave a simple test for this: ‘when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken’ (Deuteronomy 18:22). God never contradicts himself. A book that gets Jeremiah’s own prophecy wrong cannot come from the God who spoke through Jeremiah.

‘BUT MAYBE A GENERATION MEANS TEN YEARS?’

Some try to rescue the Letter this way: 10 years times 7 makes 70. But there are 3 problems:

No Bible support: Not one verse says a generation is 10 years.
No reason to change the number: If the writer meant 70 years, why not simply say ‘70 years’, as Jeremiah did?
A clue to his own time: The writer lived long after the exile, when many Jews still lived far from home. ‘7 generations’ fitted his day—not Jeremiah’s prophecy.

4. It Isn’t Really a Letter—or Even a Prophecy

Jeremiah did write a real letter to the exiles. You can read it in Jeremiah 29. This table puts that real letter side by side with the Letter that borrows his name.

WHAT WE COMPARE	JEREMIAH’S REAL LETTER (JEREMIAH 29)	THE LETTER OF JEREMIAH
When it was written	Soon after 597 BC	Around 300–100 BC
Who it is sent to	Names the elders, priests, prophets and people in exile (29:1)	No names—only a short heading
‘Thus says the LORD’	Used again and again (29:4, 8, 10, 16)	Never used
How long the exile lasts	Seventy years (29:10)	Seven generations—about 280 years
Main message	Build houses, plant gardens and pray for the city (29:5–7)	Do not fear idols, because they are not gods
Kind of writing	A real letter about real people and places	A long sermon that mocks idols

Jeremiah uses ‘Thus says the LORD’ more than a 100 times. These words show a prophet is passing on God’s own message. The Letter talks about God, but never claims to speak for him.

5. The New Testament Never Quotes It

Jesus and the apostles quote the Old Testament hundreds of times. They often say ‘It is written’ or ‘Scripture says’. Not once do they quote the Letter of Jeremiah.

Silence alone doesn’t prove everything—Esther is never quoted either. But here the silence adds weight to everything else.

6. The Early Church Kept It Only Because It Thought Jeremiah Wrote It

Some early church leaders did include the Letter in their lists. Origen (early 200s), Athanasius (AD 367) and Cyril of Jerusalem all named Jeremiah together with Baruch, Lamentations and the Letter.

Why? Because they believed Jeremiah, or his helper Baruch, wrote these pieces, so they kept them as part of Jeremiah’s book. Take away that mistaken belief, and the reason for keeping the Letter disappears.

Athanasius placed other books, such as Wisdom, Judith and Tobit, outside the canon—good to read, but not Scripture. Around AD 400, Jerome left Baruch out of his Latin translation, noting that the Jews neither read it nor kept it. In 1532 Cardinal Thomas Cajetan—one of Martin Luther’s own opponents—still followed Jerome. Only in 1546, at the Council of Trent, did Rome make these books official. Even then, the Letter was not named as a book of its own. It slipped in as part of Baruch.

Who Decides What Belongs in the Bible?

Behind all this is a bigger question. Does the church decide which books are Scripture, or does God?

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) gives a clear answer. Scripture’s authority ‘dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof’ (1.4). The church does not make a book holy. It recognises the books God has already made holy.

A PICTURE WORTH REMEMBERING

‘The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.’—James Packer

Newton did not create gravity—he noticed it. The church did not create the canon—it noticed it. Packer wrote about the New Testament, but the same is true of the Old.

John Calvin went further. He said Scripture shows its own truth as clearly ‘as white and black do of their colour, sweet and bitter of their taste’ (Institutes 1.7.2). Michael Kruger calls this the ‘self-authenticating’ nature of Scripture: God’s Word carries its own marks of God’s authority.

Try a simple test. Read Jeremiah 10, then the Letter. Jeremiah 10 speaks with weight and fire. The Letter repeats its ideas and adds long lists. One is the voice of God. The other is a sermon about it.

‘But What About…?’ 4 Common Objections

‘The apostles used the Septuagint, and the Septuagint had the Letter.’ The Septuagint never had one fixed list. Our oldest complete copies were made by Christians in the 300s and 400s AD, and they disagree about which extra books to include. Albert Sundberg showed there was never a separate ‘Greek canon’. Philo, a Jewish thinker in Alexandria, quoted the Old Testament often but never the Apocrypha as Scripture.
‘Protestants removed books from the Bible.’ The Letter was never in the Hebrew Bible, so nobody removed it. Luther’s German Bible (1534), the Geneva Bible (1560) and the King James Bible (1611) all printed them in a separate section called the Apocrypha. Protestants simply kept the line Jesus and Jerome had already drawn.
‘It agrees with the Bible, so why not include it?’ A good sermon agrees with the Bible too, but we do not add it to the Bible. As the Westminster Confession says, the Apocrypha, ‘not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture’ (1.3).
‘It was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.’ So were writings no church accepts, such as the Qumran community’s own rule book. A library is not a canon.

The Letter’s Long Journey: A Timeline

Soon after 597 BC: Jeremiah sends his real letter to the exiles (Jeremiah 29).
About 300–100 BC: An unknown Jewish writer composes the Letter.
About 100 BC: Someone copies verses 43–44 in Greek. The scrap is later found at Qumran.
AD 367: Athanasius lists the Letter with Jeremiah, believing Jeremiah wrote it.
About AD 400: Jerome leaves Baruch and the Letter out of his Latin translation.
1546: The Council of Trent makes Baruch, with the Letter, official for Catholics.
1611: The King James Bible keeps the Letter in its Apocrypha section.
1646: The Westminster Confession says the Apocrypha is ‘no part of the canon’.
1826: The British and Foreign Bible Society stops printing the Apocrypha in its Bibles.

Credit Where It Is Due: What the Letter Gets Right

The Letter isn’t Scripture, but it’s not useless. Its message against idols is true—because it borrows it from Scripture.

In many lands, people still carry idols on their shoulders through the streets at festivals. The Letter describes this very sight (vv. 4, 26). If a god must be carried, how can it carry you? Isaiah asked the same question long before: ‘They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there; it cannot move from its place’ (Isaiah 46:7).

THE IDOL FACTORY INSIDE US

‘Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols… the mind begets an idol; the hand gives it birth.’—John Calvin, Institutes 1.11.8

Every human heart makes idols. Some are statues. Others are money, success or even our phones. The answer is the same: ‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols’ (1 John 5:21).

But we don’t need the Letter to learn this. Jeremiah 10, Isaiah 44 and Psalm 115 teach it with God’s authority: ‘Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see’ (Psalm 115:4–5).

A Borrowed Name Cannot Make a Book Holy

The Letter of Jeremiah wears a prophet’s name but not a prophet’s voice. It came centuries too late, was never in Jesus’ Bible, and breaks Jeremiah’s own seventy-year promise.

Protestant Bibles leave it out, not because we fear what it says, but because we love what God says. His Word needs no borrowed name.

Tough Questions, Honest Answers

What’s the difference between the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha?

Both words describe old Jewish religious writings that are not part of the Bible. The Apocrypha (meaning ‘hidden’) is a small group of books, such as Tobit, Judith and 1 Maccabees, that ended up in some Greek and Latin Bibles. The Pseudepigrapha (meaning ‘falsely titled’) is a much larger group of writings that claim famous authors like Enoch, Abraham or Moses. Most churches have never treated the Pseudepigrapha as Scripture, though the Ethiopian church accepts 1 Enoch and Jubilees. Both groups help us understand the Jewish world Jesus was born into. But neither carries God’s authority. Only the 66 books of the Bible do.

Why do Catholic Bibles have 73 books and Protestant Bibles 66?

The difference is only in the Old Testament. Both Bibles have the same 27 New Testament books. Catholic Bibles add seven books to the Old Testament: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees, plus extra chapters in Esther and Daniel. The Protestant Old Testament has exactly the same content as the Hebrew Bible that Jewish people use, even though they count it as 24 books. Orthodox Bibles include a few more books still, such as 3 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh. Protestants hold to the shorter list because it is the Old Testament Jesus and the apostles received.

Did Jesus or the apostles ever quote the Apocrypha?

They never quote any book of the Apocrypha as Scripture with words like ‘It is written’. Hebrews 11:35 may remember the brave Jewish martyrs described in 2 Maccabees, but remembering a true story is not the same as calling a book God’s Word. The book of Jude quotes a saying from 1 Enoch (Jude 14–15), which is not even in the Apocrypha. Jude used one true saying without approving the whole book. In the same way, Paul quoted Greek poets (Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12), and no one thinks their poems are Scripture.

Is it wrong for Christians to read the Apocrypha?

No, it is not wrong, as long as we read it for what it is. Martin Luther printed these books in his Bible and called them profitable and good to read, but not equal to Scripture. The Belgic Confession (1561) says the church may read them ‘so far as they agree with the canonical books’, but may not use them to prove any teaching. For example, 1 Maccabees gives helpful history about the time between the Testaments, including the story behind the Feast of Dedication in John 10:22. So read them as you would read a good history book. Keep your Bible open beside you, and test everything by it (Acts 17:11).

Who was Baruch, and is the book of Baruch Scripture?

Baruch, the son of Neriah, was Jeremiah’s faithful scribe. ‘Baruch wrote on a scroll at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the LORD that he had spoken to him’ (Jeremiah 36:4). God even gave Baruch a personal message of comfort in Jeremiah 45. But the book that carries his name was written centuries later, probably in the second or first century BC, and it borrows heavily from Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9. It was never part of the Hebrew Bible. If you want to honour the real Baruch, read the book of Jeremiah. His true work is there.

Are there ‘lost books’ of the Bible that should be added back?

The Old Testament does mention other books, such as the Book of Jashar (Joshua 10:13) and the Book of the Wars of the LORD (Numbers 21:14). But these were sources the writers used, not lost pieces of Scripture. Most popular ‘lost books’ today, such as the Gnostic gospels, were written in the second century AD or later, long after the apostles died. God has promised to protect his Word: ‘The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever’ (Isaiah 40:8). He has not lost any part of it.

Could God add a new book to the Bible today?

The Bible itself says no. ‘Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son’ (Hebrews 1:1–2). Jesus is God’s final Word, and the apostles wrote down his message for the church. Jude speaks of ‘the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3). The church is ‘built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets’ (Ephesians 2:20), and a foundation is laid only once. So any book that claims to be new Scripture today must be rejected, however holy it sounds.

Truths to die for

Letter of Jeremiah: Why Protestant Bibles Leave It Out

What Is the Letter of Jeremiah?

Where You Will Find It Today