In the Vulgate and the Septuagint, four elegiac poems and one prayer, bewailing the fall of Jerusalem, written by Jeremias. The elegies are acrostics, each verse beginning with the consecutive letters of the alphabet. The Hebrew Bible places the book among the Kethubim or Hagiographa; all other versions connect it with Jeremias. According to Jewish tradition: "Jeremias wrote his own book and Kings and Qinoth." Origen, in his exposition to Psalms 1, states: "Jeremias with Lamentations and his Epistle are one book." Josephus's statement that they were composed after the death of Josias (608), and the statement of some modern critics that 4,5 date from the Machabean period (after 175), are without foundation. They are all the work of Jeremias after the fall of Jerusalem (588). They are sung lessons in the tenebrae of Holy Week.