1 Esdras (), also Esdras A, Greek Esdras, Greek Ezra, or 3 Esdras, is the ancient Greek

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

version of the biblical

Book of Ezra The Book of Ezra is a book of the Hebrew Bible which formerly included the Book of Nehemiah in a single book, commonly distinguished in scholarship as Ezra–Nehemiah. The two became separated with the first printed Mikraot Gedolot, rabbinic bib ...

in use within the

early church Early Christianity, otherwise called the Early Church or Paleo-Christianity, describes the historical era of the Christian religion up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Christianity spread from the Levant, across the Roman Empire, and bey ...

and among many modern Christians with varying degrees of canonicity. 1 Esdras is substantially similar to the standard Hebrew version of

Ezra–Nehemiah Ezra–Nehemiah (, ) is a book in the Hebrew Bible found in the Ketuvim section, originally with the Hebrew title of Ezra (, ), called Esdras B (Ἔσδρας Βʹ) in the Septuagint. The book covers the period from the fall of Babylon in 539&nbs ...

, with the passages specific to the career of

Nehemiah Nehemiah (; ''Nəḥemyā'', "Yahweh, Yah comforts") is the central figure of the Book of Nehemiah, which describes his work in rebuilding Jerusalem during the Second Temple period as the governor of Yehud Medinata, Persian Judea under Artaxer ...

removed or re-attributed to Ezra, and some additional material. As part of the Septuagint translation, it is now regarded as canonical in the churches of the

East East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...

, but

apocryphal Apocrypha () are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of scripture, some of which might be of doubtful authorship or authenticity. In Christianity, the word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to ...

in the

West West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...

; either presented in a separate section or excluded altogether. 1 Esdras is found in

Origen Origen of Alexandria (), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an Early Christianity, early Christian scholar, Asceticism#Christianity, ascetic, and Christian theology, theologian who was born and spent the first half of his career in Early cent ...

's ''

Hexapla ''Hexapla'' (), also called ''Origenis Hexaplorum'', is a Textual criticism, critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions, four of them translated into Ancient Greek, Greek, preserved only in fragments. It was an immense and complex wor ...

''. The Greek

, the Old Latin bible and related bible versions include both Esdras Αʹ (English title: 1 Esdras) and Esdras Βʹ (

) as separate books. There is scope for considerable confusion with references to 1 Esdras. The name refers primarily to translations of the original Greek 'Esdras A'. The

calls it Esdras A, and the

Vetus Latina The ''Vetus Latina'' ("Old Latin" in Latin), also known as ''Vetus Itala'' ("Old Italian"), ''Itala'' ("Italian") and Old Italic, and denoted by the siglum \mathfrak, are the Latin Bible translations, translations of biblical texts (both Old T ...

calls it 1 Esdras, while the

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

calls it 3 Esdras. It was considered apocryphal by Jerome.

1 Esdras contains the whole of Ezra with the addition of one section; its verses are numbered differently. Just as Ezra begins with the last two verses of

2 Chronicles The Book of Chronicles ( , "words of the days") is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Chronicles) in the Christian Old Testament. Chronicles is the final book of the Hebrew Bible, concluding the third section of the Jewish Tan ...

, 1 Esdras begins with the last two chapters; this suggests that Chronicles and Esdras may have been read as one book at sometime in the past. Ezra 4:6 includes a reference to a King

Ahasuerus Ahasuerus ( ; , commonly ''Achashverosh''; , in the Septuagint; in the Vulgate) is a name applied in the Hebrew Bible to three rulers of Ancient Persia and to a Babylonian official (or Median king) first appearing in the Tanakh in the Book of ...

. Etymologically, Ahasuerus is the same as Xerxes, who reigned between

Darius I Darius I ( ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West A ...

and Artaxerxes I. In 1 Esdras, the section is reorganized, leading up to the additional section, and the reference to Ahasuerus is removed. The additional section begins with a story variously known as the ' Darius contest' or 'Tale of the Three Guardsmen' which was interpolated into 1 Esdras 3:4 to 4:4. This section forms the core of 1 Esdras with Ezra 5, which together are arranged in a literary chiasm around the celebration in Jerusalem at the exiles' return. This chiastic core forms 1 Esdras into a complete literary unit, allowing it to stand independently from the

book of Nehemiah The Book of Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible largely takes the form of a first-person memoir by Nehemiah, a Hebrew prophet and high official at the Persian court, concerning the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the ...

. Indeed, some scholars, such as W. F. Albright and Edwin M. Yamauchi, believe that

came back to Jerusalem ''before'' Ezra.

Author and criticism

The purpose of the book seems to be retelling the

Return to Zion The return to Zion (, , ) is an event recorded in Ezra–Nehemiah of the Hebrew Bible, in which the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah—subjugated by the Neo-Babylonian Empire—were freed from the Babylonian captivity following the Fall of Babylon, ...

in a way that it revolved around the story of the dispute among the courtiers, the 'Tale of the Three Guardsmen'. Since there are various discrepancies in the account, most scholars hold that the work was written by more than one author. However, some scholars believe that this work may have been the original, or at least the more authoritative. Most scholars agree that the original language of the work was

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, with a few arguing for the originality of the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

. The text contains similarities to the vocabulary in the

Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. It is ostensibly a narrative detailing the experiences and Prophecy, prophetic visions of Daniel, a Jewish Babylonian captivity, exile in Babylon ...

and II Maccabees, and it is presumed that the authors came either from

Lower Egypt Lower Egypt ( ') is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, from El Aiyat, south of modern-day Cairo, and Dahshur. Historically, the Nile River split into sev ...

Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

and wrote during the Seleucid period. Assuming this theory is correct, many scholars consider the possibility that the book made use of an Aramaic chronicle.

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

makes use of the 1 Esdras which he treats as Scripture, while generally disregarding the canonical text of

. Some scholars believe that the composition is likely to have taken place in the second century BC. Many Protestant and Catholic scholars assign no historical value to the sections of the book not duplicated in

. The citations of the other

books of the Bible A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible. The English word ''canon'' comes from the Greek , meaning ' rule' or ' measuring stick'. The us ...

, however, provide an early alternative to the

for those texts, which increases its value to scholars. In the current Greek texts, the book breaks off in the middle of a sentence; that particular verse thus had to be reconstructed from an early Latin translation. However, it is generally presumed that the original work extended to the Feast of Tabernacles, as described in Nehemiah 8:13–18. An additional difficulty with the text appears to readers who are unfamiliar with chiastic structures common in Semitic literature. If the text is assumed to be a Western-style, purely linear narrative, then Artaxerxes seems to be mentioned before Darius, who is mentioned before

Cyrus Cyrus () is a Persian-language masculine given name. It is historically best known as the name of several List of monarchs of Iran, Persian kings, most notably including Cyrus the Great, who founded the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BC. It remains wid ...

. (Such jumbling of the order of events, however, is also presumed by some readers to exist in the canonical Ezra and Nehemiah.) The Semitic chiasm is corrected in at least one manuscript of Josephus in the ''

Antiquities of the Jews ''Antiquities of the Jews'' (; , ''Ioudaikē archaiologia'') is a 20-volume historiographical work, written in Greek, by the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus in the 13th year of the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, which was 94 CE. It cont ...

'', Book 11, chapter 2 where we find that the name of the above-mentioned Artaxerxes is called Cambyses. Some scholars, including Joseph Blenkinsopp in his 1988 commentary on Ezra–Nehemiah, hold that the book is a late 2nd/early 1st century BC revision of Esdras and Esdras β, while others such as L. L. Grabbe believe it to be independent of the Hebrew-language Ezra–Nehemiah.

Use in the Christian canon

The book was widely quoted by early Christian authors and it found a place in

's ''

''. In early Latin traditions, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras were known, respectively, as 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, 3 Esdras (‘the Greek Esdras’) and 4 Esdras. In the Vulgate, I Esdras is considered to be Ezra, II Esdras to be Nehemiah, III Esdras to be 1 Esdras, and IV Esdras to be 2 Esdras. For

Jerome Jerome (; ; ; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was an early Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. He is best known ...

, III Esdras and IV Esdras were apocryphal. As Jerome's

version of the Bible gradually achieved dominance in Western Christianity, III Esdras no longer circulated. From the 13th century onwards, Vulgate Bibles produced in Paris reintroduced a Latin text of 1 Esdras, in response to commercial demand. However, the use of the book continued in the Eastern Church, and it remains a part of the Eastern Orthodox canon. In the Roman rite liturgy, 1 Esdras is cited once in the Extraordinary Missal of 1962 in the Offertory of the votive Mass for the election of a Pope. ("Let them not take part in the holy things, until there arise a priest unto showing and truth.") (3 Esdras 5, 40). At the

Council of Trent The Council of Trent (), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation at the time, it has been described as the "most ...

, only 3 bishops voted for an explicit rejection of the books of Esdras; the overwhelming majority "withheld any explicit decision on these books". "The question of Esdras' canonical status was left theoretically open." Catholic theologians and apologists disagree, but some argue that these books could theoretically be added as "tritiocanonical" books by the Roman Catholic Magisterium (or pope) at a later time, most likely related to union with one or more of the churches who already hold these books to be canonical.

Nomenclature

The book normally called 1 Esdras is numbered differently among various versions of the Bible. In most editions of the

, the book is titled in Greek: and is placed before the single book of

, which is titled in Greek: Ἔσδρας Βʹ. 1 Esdras is called 3 Esdras in the Latin Vulgate, which was translation from the Greek version of the Septuagint called Esdras A. The Vulgate denoted 1 Esdras (Ezra) and 2 Esdras (Nehemiah) respectively. Vulgate Bible editions of the 13th century, and in what later became the usage of the Clementine Vulgate and the Anglican Articles of Religion, the

is applied to '1 Esdras'; while the

Book of Nehemiah The Book of Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible largely takes the form of a first-person memoir by Nehemiah, a Hebrew prophet and high official at the Persian court, concerning the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the ...

corresponds to '2 Esdras'; Esdras 1 (Esdras A in the Septuagint) corresponds to 3 Esdras and finally 2 Esdras, an additional work associated with the name Ezra, is denoted '4 Esdras' (It is called '2 Esdras' in the

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English Bible translations, Early Modern English translation of the Christianity, Christian Bible for the Church of England, wh ...

and in most modern English bibles). 3 Esdras continues to be accepted as canonical by Eastern Orthodoxy and the

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church () is the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. One of the few Christian churches in Africa originating before European colonization of the continent, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church dates bac ...

, with 4 Esdras varying in canonicity between particular denominations within the Eastern churches. Overwhelmingly, citations in early Christian writings claimed from the scriptural 'Book of Ezra' (without any qualification) are taken from 1 Esdras, and never from the 'Ezra' sections of

(Septuagint 'Esdras B'), the majority of early citations being taken from the 1 Esdras section containing the ' Tale of the Three Guardsmen', which is interpreted as

Christological In Christianity, Christology is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions such as whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of ...

prophecy.

Summary

and its derivative translations: *

and manyIncluding RSV,

NRSV The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is a translation of the Bible in American English. It was first published in 1989 by the National Council of Churches, the NRSV was created by an ecumenical committee of scholars "comprising about thirty ...

, NEB, REB, and GNB successive English translations: 1 Esdras * Clementine

and its derivative translations: 3 Esdras * Slavonic Bible: 2 Esdras * Romanian Synodal Version: III Ezdra * Ethiopic Bible: Ezra Kali

Ethiopian Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...

''Ezra Kali'' means "2 Ezra".

Notes

References

External links

Various translations of 1 Esdras
at the World Wide Study Bible

* ttp://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=463&letter=E&search=Books%20of%20Esdras#1248 Jewish Encyclopedia: Esdras, Books of: I Esdras* – NRSV
1 Esdras at Early Jewish Writings

at biblicalaudio * {{DEFAULTSORT:Esdras, 1 2nd-century BC books 1st-century BC books 1st-century books Anagignoskomena Texts in the Septuagint Jewish apocrypha Historical books Texts attributed to Ezra

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