There are other teachings that were suppressed.
WRITINGS OF JEREMIAH THAT TESTIFY OF CHRIST
Six copies of the book of Jeremiah were found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls, along with a copy of the epistle of Jeremiah in
Greek. One of the Jeremiah scrolls has a Hebrew version that
follows the shorter Septuagint text. The Dead Sea Scrolls also
include fragments of two texts about Jeremiah that are not in the
Bible.
The idea that Jeremiah wrote more than is in the biblical
book that bears his name is supported by early Christian tradition
as well. We have, for example, the testimony of two second-century
Church Fathers, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Writing of Christ’s
preaching to the dead while his body lay in the tomb, each of them
attributed to Jeremiah a prophecy not found in the biblical account,
in which the prophet wrote that the Lord would descend to preach
salvation to the dead.
Justin Martyr wrote:
And again, from the sayings of the same
Jeremiah these have been cut out [by the Jews]:
“The Lord God remembered His dead people of
Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to
preach to them His own salvation.” (Dialogue with
Trypho 72; Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers (orig.
1885; reprint Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 1:235.)
This (prophet) during his life said to the
Egyptians, “a child shall be born—that is the
Messiah—of a virgin, and He shall be laid in a
crib, and He will shake and cast down the idols.”
From that time and until Christ was born, the
Egyptians used to set a virgin and a baby in a crib,
and to worship him, because of what Jeremiah
said to them, that He should be born in a crib.
(Ernest A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Bee 32 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1886), 72.)
The story is drawn from The lives of the Prophets 2:8-10, a
text that a number of scholars have suggested was originally written
in Hebrew by Egyptian Jews during the lifetime of Jesus himself. (For an English translation of the Jeremiah passage, see James H.
Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985),
2:387-88. Both The Lives of the Prophets and Book of the Bee include prophets of
Christ attributed to other Old Testament prophets but not found in the Bible
version of their books.)
Another Christian document known from medieval
manuscripts in various languages is 4 Baruch, which is subtitled
‘The Things Omitted from Jeremiah the Prophet.” The Ethiopic
version attributes the book to Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch, but the
Greek says it was written by Jeremiah. Chapter 9 has Jeremiah
prophesying of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, of his
selection of twelve apostles, of his death and resurrection after three
days, and of his return in glory to the mount of Olives. According
to the account, Jeremiah was stoned for this declaration. (Ibid., 1:424-25.)
The Most Correct Book: Insights from a Book of Mormon Scholar
Author: John A. Tvedtnes
Published by: Salt Lake City; Cornerstone Publishing, 1999 (1st Edition)
