Texts in Conversation
Baruch presents Jerusalem as a mother whose children suffer exile through disobedience, her grief reflecting this loss. In Galatians, Paul uses similar language to describe a heavenly Jerusalem who is a mother, describing the community of believers.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Baruch 4:8
Deuterocanon
6 You were not sold to the nations for destruction, but because you moved God to wrath, you were delivered to your adversaries. 7 For you provoked him who made you by sacrificing to demons and not to God. 8 You forgot the everlasting God who brought you up. You also grieved Jerusalem, who nursed you. 9 For she saw the wrath that came upon you from God, and said, “Listen, you who dwell near Zion; for God has brought upon me great mourning. 10 For I have seen the captivity of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting has brought upon them.
Date: 200–50 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Galatians 4:26
New Testament
24 These things may be treated as an allegory, for these women represent two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery; this is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written: “Rejoice, O barren woman who does not bear children; break forth and shout, you who have no birth pains, because the children of the desolate woman are more numerousthan those of the woman who has a husband.” 28 But you, brothers and sisters, are children of the promise like Isaac.
Date: 54–55 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Jerusalem was the city of salvation in the eschatological age where God would take up his residence again and inaugurate his royal rule. The hope that the Diaspora would return to the lofty city was kept alive. For all Jews, in Palestine and in the Dispersion, Jerusalem is the ‘holy city’ or the ‘mother-city’. Mount Zion is called the ‘midst of the navel of the earth’ (Jubilees 8:19; compare also Josephus, Bellum judaicum 3, 52). In apocalyptic apocrypha, Zion-Jerusalem is called the mother of all Israelites (4 Ezra 10:7, 38–44; compare also 2 Baruch 3:1–3) who has brought up her children (Baruch 4:8–10). The Jews, though scattered throughout the ancient world, maintained the bond with the motherland and the holy city ... The earliest indication that Christians regarded themselves as aliens and pilgrims on earth is found in the letters of Paul. Paul believes that Christians belong to the Jerusalem above, or the heavenly community (Galatians 4:26; Philippians 3:20). They are not at home on earth but pertain to that heavenly domain where the glorified Lord dwells (compare 2 Corinthians 5:1–5, 6–9; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 4:17). In the polemical passage of Galatians 4:25–26, Paul is clearly attacking his opponents who claim that the present Jerusalem is their mother, probably suggesting that their views emphasizing the observance of the Law were supported by Jerusalem ..."
Huub van de Sandt, “Was the Didache Community a Group Within Judaism? An Assessment on the Basis of Its Eucharistic Prayers,” in A Holy People: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Religious Communal Identity, ed. Marcel Poorthuis and Joshua Schwartz, JCPS 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 85–107.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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