1 Esdras and the Books of Ezra

Explore 1 Esdras, its account of the return from exile, its connections with Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and its different names and place in Christian Bibles.

60 min read

The Books Called Esdras

The books named after Ezra have traveled under different names in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and English Bibles. The account with Zerubbabel’s contest and the later apocalypse can therefore share a number without being the same book.

What 1 Esdras Is

Greek Bibles tell the return of the Jews from Babylonian exile twice, preserving a close translation of Ezra and Nehemiah alongside the freer account called 1 Esdras, where Zerubbabel secures permission to rebuild Jerusalem by winning a debate at the Persian court. Much of the story is familiar from Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, but Zerubbabel has a larger role here because his explanation of why truth is stronger than anything else wins the king’s favor. The contest occupies the middle of a history that begins with worship in the temple before its destruction and ends with Ezra teaching the returned community the Torah, the teaching attributed to Moses.^[1]^[2]

1 Esdras 1:1-2

1 Josiah kept the passover to his Lord in Jerusalem; he killed the passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month, 2 having placed the priests according to their divisions, arrayed in their garments, in the temple of the Lord.

The opening belongs to the reign of Josiah, the king of Judah who gathers the priests and Levites for a Passover celebration in Jerusalem. What follows carries the community through the loss of that sanctuary, the Babylonian conquest, and the exile, before Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of Babylon, permits the Jews to return and rebuild. Chapters 5 through 7 describe the returning families, the altar they establish, and the temple they eventually dedicate, while chapters 8 and 9 follow Ezra’s journey to Jerusalem and his response to marriages with foreign women. His public reading of the Torah, an episode placed in Nehemiah 8 in the Hebrew Bible, follows directly after these reforms.^[3]

Between Cyrus’s permission and the returning families stands the episode found in none of the other biblical accounts. Three young bodyguards at Darius’s court write down their answers to the question of what is strongest, then argue their cases before the king and his assembled officials. Their answers begin with powers recognizable in daily life: wine can overcome a person’s judgment, a king can command armies, and women can influence the men who possess those other powers.^[4]

1 Esdras 3:10-12

10 The first wrote, “Wine is strongest.” 11 The second wrote, “The king is strongest.” 12 The third wrote, “Women are strongest, but truth is victor over all things.”

Zerubbabel’s answer moves from women to truth, and his victory gives him an opportunity to ask Darius for help on behalf of his people. He uses the reward to secure the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its temple, so the success of a Jewish courtier becomes the event that allows the restoration to proceed. Nehemiah, the governor who rebuilds the walls in the Hebrew account, has no comparable role here; his name appears only in lists associated with Zerubbabel’s time. The work of restoring the community is divided chiefly between Zerubbabel and Ezra, whose reading of the Torah concludes the surviving narrative.^[5]^[6]

The book survives in Greek, along with Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Arabic translations made from Greek, although features of its language suggest an earlier Hebrew and Aramaic source that has not survived. Its Greek translation is usually placed in the second century BCE, probably in Egypt, while one account of its composition places the underlying work in third-century BCE Jerusalem. These dates concern different stages of the book’s history, and the time and place of the earlier composition remain uncertain.^[7]

In the Greek Septuagint translation, the collection of Jewish scriptures translated into Greek, 1 Esdras stands alongside a second account that follows Ezra and Nehemiah more closely. Greek manuscripts call the first Esdras A and the second Esdras B, using Esdras as the Greek form of Ezra’s name. The fourth-century Greek manuscript called Codex Vaticanus places them after Chronicles, with A followed by B, so its readers encounter the return from exile twice, in accounts that differ both in their Greek language and in the history they include.^[8]^[9]

Citations

[1] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 106–109) Oxford University Press, 2021
[2] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 144) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[3] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 107, 110–112) Oxford University Press, 2021
[4] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 108) Oxford University Press, 2021
[5] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 191) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[6] Wooden, R. Glenn 1 Esdras, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (pp. 392) Oxford University Press, 2007
[7] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 141–142) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[8] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 24) Brill, 2012
[9] Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (pp. 269) Oxford University Press, 2017

The Books Called Esdras

The Four Names of 1 Esdras

The same account of Zerubbabel and Ezra can appear under four different names, depending on the Bible in which it is preserved. English Bibles that include an Apocrypha, a collection of books outside the Hebrew Bible, call it 1 Esdras, while it is Esdras A in Greek Bibles, 3 Esdras in Latin, and 2 Esdras in Slavonic. The changing number comes from the other books placed beside it, since traditions differ over whether Ezra and Nehemiah count as one book or two and over where to place the later apocalypse also attributed to Ezra.^[1]^[2]

In Greek, Esdras A is the narrative with Josiah’s Passover and the bodyguard contest, while Esdras B translates Ezra and Nehemiah together. A begins earlier and B continues further, but their accounts overlap through much of the return from exile, including Cyrus’s decree at the beginning of the Ezra material. Cyrus’s decision consequently appears in both Greek books, each describing the king’s permission in its own translation of the decree.^[3]^[4]

1 Esdras 2:1-2

1 In the first year of Cyrus as king of the Persians, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, 2 the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of the Persians, and he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing:

LXX Ezra 1:1

1 And in the first year of Cyrus, the king of Persia, in order to fulfill what had been spoken from the mouth of Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, the king over Persia, and he commanded a proclamation in all his kingdom, and indeed in writing, saying,

Latin copies originally treated Ezra and Nehemiah as one book too, before manuscripts copied in Spain began separating them in the tenth century. The later Vulgate numbering gives Ezra the title 1 Esdras and Nehemiah the title 2 Esdras, leaving the Greek Esdras A as 3 Esdras and the apocalypse as 4 Esdras. A reference to the first book of Esdras in this system therefore points to the familiar Hebrew book of Ezra, with no bodyguard contest, while a reference to the third points to the account that contains it.^[5]

Slavonic numbering separates Nehemiah under its own name, which changes the numbers assigned to the remaining Ezra books. In the Russian Bible published by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1956, Ezra is 1 Esdras, the narrative from Greek Esdras A is 2 Esdras, and the apocalypse is 3 Esdras. The title 2 Esdras consequently names a different work from Latin 2 Esdras, even though both collections preserve the book of Nehemiah.^[6]

English Protestant Bibles generally retain the names Ezra and Nehemiah for the Hebrew books and place the additional Ezra writings in the Apocrypha when that collection is included. The Greek narrative then becomes 1 Esdras and the apocalypse 2 Esdras, a numbering used in the Geneva Bible of 1560, the King James Version, and later English editions such as the Revised Standard Version. The change grew out of the Reformation arrangement of books outside the Hebrew collection, which gave those writings a separate place and a new beginning to their numbering.^[7]^[8]

Older references to 2 Esdras therefore need their language and tradition identified before the book can be recognized: Greek usage can mean Ezra and Nehemiah together, Latin usage Nehemiah alone, Slavonic usage the narrative with the contest, and English usage the apocalypse. The different names also persist in modern discussions, where English authors usually write 1 Esdras for the Greek narrative and German authors commonly write 3 Esra, following the Latin number.^[9]^[10]

Citations

[1] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 179) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[2] Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (pp. 269) Oxford University Press, 2017
[3] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 106) Oxford University Press, 2021
[4] Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (pp. 269) Oxford University Press, 2017
[5] Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (pp. 269) Oxford University Press, 2017
[6] Metzger, Bruce M. The Fourth Book of Ezra, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1 (pp. 516) Doubleday, 1983
[7] Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (pp. 8) Fortress Press, 2013
[8] Metzger, Bruce M. The Fourth Book of Ezra, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1 (pp. 516) Doubleday, 1983
[9] Wooden, R. Glenn 2 Esdras, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (pp. 405) Oxford University Press, 2007
[10] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 179) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015

The Books Called Esdras

The Unrelated Apocalypse of 2 Esdras

The two books placed together as 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras in English Apocrypha belong to different moments in the history of Jerusalem’s temple. The first tells how the sanctuary destroyed by Babylon was rebuilt under Persian rule, while the central work in the second responds to the destruction of that rebuilt temple by Rome in 70 CE. Its Jewish author, writing near the end of the first century CE, places the questions raised by the Roman conquest in the mouth of Ezra, who appears to be mourning the much earlier Babylonian destruction.^[1]

4 Ezra 3:1-2

1 In the thirtieth year after the fall of Jerusalem, I, Salathiel (who am also Ezra), was in Babylon. As I lay on my bed I was troubled; my mind was filled with perplexity, 2 as I considered the desolation of Zion and the prosperity of those who lived in Babylon.

Ezra looks at ruined Zion and prosperous Babylon and asks why the people who received God’s commandments suffer while their conquerors flourish. The angel Uriel answers him with arguments about the limits of human understanding and revelations about judgment and the world to come, but the discussions repeatedly return to the injustice Ezra sees around him. Babylon belongs to the story’s ancient setting, while the questions reflect a Jewish community living under Rome, after a catastrophe that had again left Jerusalem without its temple.^[2]

4 Ezra 4:1-2

1 The angel who was sent to me, whose name was Uriel, replied: 2 ‘You are at a loss to explain this world; do you then expect to understand the ways of the Most High?’

The work unfolds in seven major episodes separated by periods of fasting, beginning with three extended disputes between Ezra and Uriel before moving into visions. Ezra sees the heavenly Jerusalem, an eagle representing imperial power, and a figure who defeats the nations gathered against him. In the final episode he dictates ninety-four books, of which twenty-four are to be made public and seventy reserved for the wise, giving the ancient scribe a role in restoring both public scripture and knowledge withheld from ordinary circulation. These are the concerns of an apocalypse, a work describing revelations about the hidden world and the future, rather than a history of the returning exiles.^[3]

The title introduces a further complication because the sixteen chapters found in Latin and many English editions contain three separate compositions. The Jewish apocalypse occupies chapters 3 through 14 and is usually called 4 Ezra in modern scholarship; chapters 1 and 2 are a Christian introduction called 5 Ezra, while chapters 15 and 16 form a later addition called 6 Ezra. The central apocalypse circulated separately in other ancient translations, although a Greek fragment of 5 Ezra also survives. The opening title in 5 Ezra belongs to the Christian introduction, which was attached to a Jewish work written earlier.^[4]

4 Ezra 1:1

1 The second book of the prophet Ezra, son of Seraiah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, son of Shallum, son of Zadok, son of

Neither the probable Hebrew original of 4 Ezra nor its Greek translation survives complete, leaving the work known through translations from Greek into Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Georgian, Armenian, and Arabic. Its history of copying is therefore different from that of 1 Esdras, whose Greek text still survives, although the names attached to the two books repeatedly bring them together. The apocalypse is 4 Esdras in Latin and 3 Esdras in Slavonic, while Latin 3 Esdras is the other book, the narrative with Zerubbabel’s contest.^[5]^[6]^[7]

The apocalypse prompted further Ezra revelations, including the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra, the Apocalypse of Sedrach, and the Questions of Ezra. In Catholic Vulgate editions after the sixteenth-century Council of Trent, it also appeared in an appendix after the New Testament alongside the narrative 3 Esdras, although neither belonged to the canon established by the council. Books written about different destructions of Jerusalem thus continued to share a place in Latin Bibles because both carried Ezra’s name.^[8]^[9]

Citations

[1] Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (pp. 1–3) Fortress Press, 2013
[2] Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (pp. 3–4) Fortress Press, 2013
[3] Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (pp. 2–4) Fortress Press, 2013
[4] Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (pp. 7–8) Fortress Press, 2013
[5] Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (pp. 4–5) Fortress Press, 2013
[6] Metzger, Bruce M. The Fourth Book of Ezra, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1 (pp. 516) Doubleday, 1983
[7] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 142) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[8] Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (pp. 7–8) Fortress Press, 2013
[9] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 145) Jewish Publication Society, 2013

The Story From Josiah to Ezra

1 Esdras follows worship in Jerusalem from Josiah’s Passover before the temple’s destruction to Ezra’s teaching after its rebuilding. Along the way, a debate at Darius’s court gives Zerubbabel permission to restore the city and sanctuary.

Beginning With Josiah’s Passover

Before the temple is burned and its vessels carried away, 1 Esdras describes it in use, with Josiah gathering the priests and Levites for Passover in the eighteenth year of his reign. The opening follows 2 Chronicles 35, where the king provides animals for sacrifice and requires the priests and Levites to follow commands associated with Moses and David during the festival. The arrangements for the priests, the work of the Levites, and the observance of the festival occupy much of the account, giving the later destruction a sanctuary and a community whose earlier worship has already been described.^[1]

The same years appear in 2 Kings 23 through 25, but Kings gives Josiah’s Passover three verses where Chronicles gives it nineteen. By following Chronicles, 1 Esdras begins with the detailed celebration before carrying the account through Josiah’s death, Judah’s final kings, and the Babylonian conquest. It also changes the inherited narrative at points where the explanation of Judah’s loss is at issue, adding an assessment of Josiah and recalling the sins that brought judgment upon Israel.^[2]^[3]

1 Esdras 1:23-24

23 And the deeds of Josiah were upright in the sight of the Lord, for his heart was full of godliness. 24 The events of his reign have been recorded in the past, concerning those who sinned and acted wickedly toward the Lord beyond any other people or kingdom, and how they grieved the Lord deeply, so that the words of the Lord rose up against Israel.

This assessment has no counterpart in the surviving Hebrew Chronicles, although similar material appears in 2 Kings, where praise of Josiah is followed by a declaration that Manasseh’s sins still require Judah’s destruction. Greek Chronicles contains material from that passage of Kings as well, which leaves room for an earlier Hebrew copy of Chronicles to have included it before either Greek account was made. On that explanation, 1 Esdras expressed inherited material more freely, so the extra passage would reflect the source available to the translator as well as the way the book retells it.^[4]

Josiah’s death receives a different explanation too. In Chronicles, Pharaoh Necho warns him against interfering with a war on the Euphrates, declaring that God has sent him, but Josiah enters the battle, is wounded, and dies after being taken to Jerusalem. The warning thus comes through an Egyptian king whom Josiah refuses to take seriously, even though the account identifies it as a message from God.^[5]

2 Chronicles 35:22

22 But Josiah did not turn back from him; he disguised himself for battle. He did not take seriously the words of Necho that he had received from God; he went to fight him in the Plain of Megiddo.

1 Esdras leaves the Egyptian king unnamed and attributes the ignored warning to Jeremiah, although it has supplied no earlier scene in which the prophet delivers it. The changed attribution places an Israelite prophet behind the warning and makes Josiah’s conduct an act of disregard for a familiar source of divine instruction. The Greek account also uses the names Lord and Lord God where the Hebrew account uses the more general God, changes that bring the explanation of the king’s death into the language of Israel’s own religious history.^[6]

1 Esdras 1:28

28 But Josiah did not turn back to his chariot, but tried to fight with him, and did not heed the words of Jeremiah the prophet from the mouth of the Lord.

The loss of the dynasty, the burning of the temple, and the exile then lead directly into Cyrus’s permission to return. In the Hebrew Bible, that decree closes Chronicles and appears again at the beginning of Ezra; in 1 Esdras it occurs once, between the destruction and the rebuilding. When the account later describes the return of the temple vessels and the resumption of worship, those details recover things whose loss it has already narrated in its opening chapter.^[7]^[8]

Citations

[1] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 147–148) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[2] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 147, 151) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[3] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 107) Oxford University Press, 2021
[4] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 188) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[5] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 151–152) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[6] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 152) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[7] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 108) Oxford University Press, 2021
[8] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 144) Jewish Publication Society, 2013

The Story From Josiah to Ezra

The Letter to Artaxerxes Appears Earlier

A letter ordering the work in Jerusalem to stop comes much earlier in 1 Esdras than in Ezra, changing what has happened before Zerubbabel appears. In Ezra, the returning families have already established an altar and begun rebuilding the temple when officials complain to Artaxerxes about Jerusalem’s walls. In 1 Esdras, their complaint follows Cyrus’s permission to return, before the list of families or any description of their building work, and it includes a temple among the projects the king is asked to halt.^[1]^[2]

Ezra 4:12

12 Now let the king be aware that the Jews who came up to us from you have gone to Jerusalem. They are rebuilding that rebellious and odious city. They are completing its walls and repairing its foundations.

1 Esdras 2:18

18 Now be it known to our lord the king that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem and are building that rebellious and wicked city, repairing its market places and walls and laying the foundations for a temple.

The officials present Jerusalem as a threat to royal revenue and control, warning that a rebuilt city will stop paying tribute and oppose the king. They appeal to records of its earlier resistance, and Artaxerxes replies that the records confirm their accusation, making the dispute a question of imperial security. The Greek account’s mention of marketplaces and temple foundations extends that complaint beyond the city walls, so the royal response stops the temple work before the narrative has described its beginning. The correspondence is also shortened, with Ezra’s separate notice about Ahasuerus omitted and the officials’ names combined into one list.^[3]^[4]

1 Esdras 2:30

30 Then, when the letter from King Artaxerxes was read, Rehum and Shimshai the scribe and their associates went in haste to Jerusalem, with horsemen and a multitude in battle array, and began to hinder the builders. And the building of the temple in Jerusalem ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius king of the Persians.

The order presents a historical difficulty because Artaxerxes ruled after Darius, although the letters appear between Cyrus and Darius in both books. Darius reigned from 522 to 486 BCE, while the first Artaxerxes reigned from 465 to 424 BCE. Ezra places the correspondence inside an account of opposition during Cyrus’s reign and then returns to the rebuilding under Darius, allowing the letters to be read as later examples of resistance. In 1 Esdras, their earlier position leaves the stop order immediately before the story in which Darius permits the restoration to proceed.^[5]

That position gives Zerubbabel’s success at court a direct consequence for the unfinished work in Jerusalem. When he wins the bodyguard contest and asks for the city and temple to be rebuilt, Darius’s permission answers the obstruction described just before the contest. His return is consequently associated with Darius, while Ezra lists him among the families returning under Cyrus, a difference that makes him the courtier who secures a renewed royal authorization in the Greek narrative.^[6]

Moving the letters also brings the opposition in chapter 5 directly into Haggai and Zechariah’s activity in chapter 6, where the rebuilding resumes. The arrangement connects those episodes more closely while leaving the Persian kings out of historical order, which is one reason the difference has been difficult to explain as a simple correction of Ezra. It also belongs to a larger difference between the accounts: 1 Esdras allows Jerusalem and its temple to be restored under Zerubbabel, whereas Ezra and Nehemiah separates the temple’s restoration from the rebuilding of the walls under a later governor.^[7]^[8]

Citations

[1] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 143) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[2] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 189) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[3] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 108) Oxford University Press, 2021
[4] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 189) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[5] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 179, 189) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[6] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 109) Oxford University Press, 2021
[7] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 189) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[8] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 116) Oxford University Press, 2021

The Story From Josiah to Ezra

The Contest of the Three Bodyguards

The bodyguard contest begins with three young men waiting near a sleeping king, after Darius has entertained his officials and the guests have gone home. They agree to write down what each considers strongest and leave their sealed answers beneath his pillow, hoping that the answer judged wisest will win a reward. When Darius wakes, he reads the answers and summons the officials back, turning the guards’ private discussion into a debate before the assembled court.^[1]

1 Esdras 3:4-5

4 Then the three young men of the bodyguard, who kept guard over the person of the king, said to one another, 5 “Let each of us state what one thing is strongest; and to him whose statement seems wisest, Darius the king will give rich gifts and great honors of victory.

The prizes imagined by the guards describe a promotion into the royal household: purple clothing, golden vessels and a couch, a chariot with golden bridles, a turban and necklace, and finally a seat beside the king with the title of his kinsman. Clothing, wealth, and proximity to the ruler belong to the same picture of courtly success, familiar from the honors given to Joseph, Daniel, and Mordecai. The guards have already described the position they hope to gain before any of them has explained why his answer deserves it.^[2]

The first speaker argues for wine because it can overcome distinctions that otherwise govern human life, bringing kings and orphans, slaves and free people, the rich and the poor under the same loss of judgment. Drinkers forget their grief and debts, imagine themselves wealthy, and quarrel with friends, whose friendship matters less to them than it did before they drank. The second speaker argues for the king through the work his subjects perform at his command, from soldiers who kill and die and bring back spoils to farmers who surrender their produce as tribute. His example of the ruler eating and sleeping under guard returns the argument to the young men’s own employment, protecting the man whose authority they are trying to explain.^[3]

The court itself resembles a setting already familiar from Esther, whose opening describes Ahasuerus ruling provinces that extend from India to Ethiopia. 1 Esdras assigns Darius the same extent of empire and the same number of provinces, even though those details do not fit the early stage of his reign in which the story is placed. The resemblance suggests that the account took shape using descriptions of Persian court life already circulating in Jewish literature.^[4]

Esther 1:1

1 The following events happened in the days of Ahasuerus. (I am referring to that Ahasuerus who used to rule over 127 provinces extending all the way from India to Ethiopia.)

1 Esdras 3:2

2 and all the satraps and generals and governors that were under him in the hundred and twenty-seven satrapies from India to Ethiopia.

Stories about capable Jews winning favor under foreign rulers appear in Esther, Judith, and Daniel, while the Letter of Aristeas places discussions of wisdom around a royal table. The arguments about human conduct also have parallels in Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, works that explore the value of wisdom in ordinary life. The contest brings those interests together by allowing the young men to test familiar sources of power before a king whose decision can change their standing at court.^[5]^[6]

Its earlier form remains uncertain, with features of the Greek suggesting that some material may derive from Aramaic, although another account treats the story as a Greek addition to a translated book. Details of the present narrative are awkward too, including two notices that Darius wakes and the guards’ assumption that they can determine the rewards he will give. The third speaker alone receives a name, Zerubbabel, which connects the contest to the returning exiles and gives his victory a place in the rebuilding of Jerusalem.^[7]^[8]^[9]

Citations

[1] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 162–164) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[2] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 163) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[3] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 165–167) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[4] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 162–163) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[5] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 6) Brill, 2012
[6] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 108) Oxford University Press, 2021
[7] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 184) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[8] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 115) Oxford University Press, 2021
[9] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 162–164) Jewish Publication Society, 2013

The Story From Josiah to Ezra

Zerubbabel’s Speech on Women and Truth

Zerubbabel answers the guards who praised wine and the king by pointing to the women on whom those powers depend. Women give birth to kings and to the men who grow grapes, raise the children who will later wield power, and influence husbands who may leave parents, country, and wealth for them. His examples turn the discussion away from the authority men possess in public toward the attachments that govern their conduct at home, including the conduct of Darius himself.^[1]

The description of a man leaving his father and mother echoes Genesis 2:24, where he attaches himself to his wife, but here the connection becomes evidence in a contest about power. Zerubbabel describes the risks and sacrifices men undertake for women before giving an example he claims to have observed in the royal household, where Darius’s concubine Apame can treat the king in a way his officials could hardly attempt. Her name and that of her father Bartacus are supplied, although attempts to identify them with historical people remain inconclusive.^[2]

1 Esdras 4:30

30 and take the crown from the king’s head and put it on her own, and slap the king with her left hand.

Apame takes the crown from Darius’s head, puts it on her own, and strikes his face, while he watches her and tries to regain her favor. The example is potentially insulting in front of the assembled court because it describes the ruler praised by the previous speaker submitting to someone else’s wishes. After a pause, Zerubbabel changes the subject again, describing the earth, the heavens, and the sun before asking about a power that endures beyond the people whose behavior filled the earlier speeches.^[3]

1 Esdras 4:35-38

35 Is he not great who does these things? But truth is great, and stronger than all things. 36 The whole earth calls upon truth, and heaven blesses her. All God’s works quake and tremble, and with him there is nothing unrighteous. 37 Wine is unrighteous, the king is unrighteous, women are unrighteous, all the sons of men are unrighteous, all their works are unrighteous, and all such things. There is no truth in them and in their unrighteousness they will perish. 38 But truth endures and is strong for ever, and lives and prevails for ever and ever.

Truth receives the authority that wine, kings, and women could possess only temporarily, since it is described as enduring and free from the injustice attributed to human conduct. This new answer also changes the subject of the debate, moving from examples of social power to the order of the world and its creator. A contest that called for one answer has given Zerubbabel two, which supports the possibility that the speech about truth was added to an earlier tale, either before it entered 1 Esdras or during the book’s composition.^[4]^[5]

The speech uses biblical language to describe this greater authority. The sun’s daily course echoes Psalm 19 and Ecclesiastes 1:5, the absence of partiality resembles Jehoshaphat’s instructions about God’s justice in 2 Chronicles 19:7, and the strength and majesty assigned to truth recall David’s blessing in 1 Chronicles 29. Only at the end does the speaker name the God of truth, a designation also found in 2 Chronicles 15:3, after describing divine attributes throughout an argument presented to a Persian court.^[6]

1 Esdras 4:39-40

39 With her there is no partiality or preference, but she does what is righteous instead of anything that is unrighteous or wicked. All men approve her deeds, 40 and there is nothing unrighteous in her judgment. To her belongs the strength and the kingship and the power and the majesty of all the ages. Blessed be the God of truth!”

Darius offers the promised honors and an additional request, which Zerubbabel uses to ask for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple and the return of the temple vessels. He appeals to a vow the king supposedly made when he received the kingdom, although the book has not narrated it earlier, and Darius responds with letters providing assistance for the journey, building work, and sacrifices.^[7]

The transition to the returning families leaves another difficulty unresolved. Although the contest names Zerubbabel as the speaker, the list that follows identifies the person who spoke wisely before Darius as Joakim, son of Zerubbabel, so the court story and the genealogy do not agree fully about the identity of the man whose success made the return possible.^[8]

Citations

[1] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 168–169) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[2] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 168–169) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[3] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 169–170) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[4] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 165, 170–171) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[5] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 109) Oxford University Press, 2021
[6] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 170–171) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[7] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 172–173) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[8] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 109) Oxford University Press, 2021

The Story From Josiah to Ezra

Ezra Reads the Law Without Nehemiah

Ezra’s reading of the Torah follows directly after his reforms in 1 Esdras, keeping his arrival, his response to marriages with foreign women, and his public teaching within one account of his work. In the Hebrew Bible, the marriages conclude the book of Ezra, while the reading appears in Nehemiah 8, after another leader has arrived and rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls. Removing that intervening history allows the Greek account to end with the priest teaching the community whose temple and worship have been restored.^[1]

Nehemiah 8:1

1 all the people gathered together in the plaza which was in front of the Water Gate. They asked Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had commanded Israel.

1 Esdras 9:39

39 and they told Ezra the chief priest and reader to bring the law of Moses which had been given by the Lord God of Israel.

The Greek account has prepared for that authority through Ezra’s arrival in Artaxerxes’s seventh year, carrying gifts for the temple and permission to appoint judges and teach the Torah. His ancestry connects him to Aaron, and the journey includes attention to priests, Levites, temple vessels, and the safe delivery of the king’s gifts. When he stands before the assembly, 1 Esdras calls him the chief priest, where the Hebrew passage calls him a priest and scribe, and describes his position as one of honor where Nehemiah describes his height above the people on a wooden platform.^[2]^[3]

Another change appears when the people begin to weep at what they hear. In Nehemiah, the governor joins Ezra and the Levites in telling them to treat the day as holy, while 1 Esdras has someone named Attharates address Ezra with the instruction. The scene retains an official who speaks to the priest, but the name Nehemiah has disappeared.^[4]

Nehemiah 8:9

9 Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priestly scribe, and the Levites who were imparting understanding to the people said to all of them, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping when they heard the words of the law.

1 Esdras 9:49

49 Then Attharates said to Ezra the chief priest and reader, and to the Levites who were teaching the multitude, and to all,

Attharates appears to reproduce the Hebrew title for the governor as though it were a person’s name, preserving the office without identifying its holder as Nehemiah. Ezra remains the chief priest and reader before an assembly of men and women, with Levites helping explain the teaching and an official calling for celebration. The people are told to eat, drink, and share food with those who have none, turning their understanding of what they have heard into a communal observance at the end of the account.^[5]^[6]

The prominence given to Ezra may reflect the later world in which the book took shape, when Judea lived under foreign kings and the high priest stood at the head of its community. His role as priest and teacher provides a form of leadership suited to that setting, after Zerubbabel has secured the restoration through his success with a foreign ruler. Yet the absence of Nehemiah also allows another account of the book’s origin, in which an Ezra narrative circulated before being joined to Nehemiah’s memoirs, rather than losing the governor through a later editor’s choice.^[7]^[8]^[9]

Other Jewish writings show that the two leaders’ reputations could travel separately. Sirach 49:13 honors Nehemiah for rebuilding the fallen walls, and 2 Maccabees 2:13 connects him with the preservation of books, without naming Ezra in either passage.^[10]

Citations

[1] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 143, 145) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[2] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 111–112) Oxford University Press, 2021
[3] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 186) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[4] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 112) Oxford University Press, 2021
[5] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 112) Oxford University Press, 2021
[6] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 145) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[7] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 145) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[8] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 190) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[9] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 116) Oxford University Press, 2021
[10] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 116) Oxford University Press, 2021

The Story From Josiah to Ezra

The Book Ends in the Middle of a Sentence

The last phrase of 1 Esdras describes the people gathering together after they have heard Ezra explain the Torah, but supplies no further account of what they do. Read beside Nehemiah, it looks like the beginning of an episode whose continuation has been lost, since the Hebrew account goes on to describe a second gathering and the observance of a festival.^[1]

1 Esdras 9:54-55

54 Then they all went their way, to eat and drink and enjoy themselves, and to give portions to those who had none, and to make great rejoicing; 55 because they were inspired by the words which they had been taught. And they came together.

At the corresponding point in Nehemiah, family leaders, priests, and Levites meet around Ezra on the second day to study the Torah. They find the command to live in shelters during the seventh-month festival, arrange its observance, and build shelters in which the people dwell while Ezra continues reading each day. If 1 Esdras once followed that account through Nehemiah 8:18, its surviving final phrase would be the opening of a festival narrative, cut off before the gathering’s purpose was explained.^[2]

Nehemiah 8:13

13 On the second day of the month the family leaders met with Ezra the scribe, together with all the people, the priests, and the Levites, to consider the words of the law.

Josephus’s account has often been brought into the discussion because he follows 1 Esdras in his history of Ezra and continues through the festival. Writing in the first century CE, he describes the people dwelling in shelters for eight days and then records Ezra’s death in old age, giving his history a conclusion beyond the point where the Greek book now stops. A few Greek manuscripts and some Vulgate editions also preserve additional material, although none of this establishes the exact language of an original ending.^[3]

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Book 11 5:5

… So upon Esdras’s exhortation, they began to feast; and when they had so done for eight days, in their tabernacles, they departed to their own homes: singing hymns to God; and returning thanks to Esdras, for his reformation of what corruptions had been introduced into their settlement. …

The festival would give the work an arrangement recognizable from its opening, where Josiah leads the people in Passover before the temple is destroyed. Passover falls at the beginning of the festival year and Tabernacles is its final major festival, allowing the history of destruction and restoration to stand between communal observances led by Josiah and Ezra. That arrangement makes a longer ending plausible, although Josephus was a historian adapting his sources and could have added the continuation from elsewhere.^[4]^[5]

The Greek sentence also permits a reading that leaves nothing missing. Its final phrase can belong to the explanation of the people’s rejoicing, so they celebrate because they understand the teaching and because they have assembled together. The apparent break arises when the Greek is treated as the beginning of the Hebrew sentence in Nehemiah, whereas the phrase can be understood within the Greek sentence already underway. On that reading, the public assembly supplies the book’s conclusion without requiring another festival episode.^[6]

An uncertain ending leaves the same kind of question as the abrupt beginning, where Josiah’s celebration appears without any introductory history of his reign. Those boundaries have helped support the view that 1 Esdras is a surviving portion of a longer work, while readers who find a complete Greek sentence at the end can treat it as a book organized around its own account of restoration. The copies preserve the phrase on which the disagreement turns, but no surviving Hebrew or Aramaic manuscript can show where the underlying account stopped.^[7]^[8]

Citations

[1] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 112) Oxford University Press, 2021
[2] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 190) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[3] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 190) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[4] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 113, 117) Oxford University Press, 2021
[5] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 190) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[6] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 190) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[7] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 182, 190) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[8] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 2) Brill, 2012

The Two Greek Books of Ezra

Greek Bibles preserve the return from exile in both Esdras A and Esdras B, whose accounts differ in language and contents. Daniel and Esther also survive in more than one Greek form, providing other examples of how biblical books developed through translation and copying.

The Differences Between Esdras A and Esdras B

Cyrus gives permission to rebuild Jerusalem’s temple in both Greek accounts of Ezra, yet the language of his decree shows how differently they handle the same material. Esdras B follows the Hebrew and Aramaic of Ezra and Nehemiah closely, while Esdras A, the book called 1 Esdras, more often expresses the sense in a Greek sentence that need not reproduce every part of the original construction. Even a royal title can change, making the God named in the decree more explicitly the God of Israel.^[1]^[2]

LXX Ezra 1:2

2 “Thus said Cyrus, king over Persia, ‘The God of the heavens has given me all the kingdoms, and he himself has oversaw me over me to build for him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

1 Esdras 2:3-4

3 “Thus says Cyrus king of the Persians: The Lord of Israel, the Lord Most High, has made me king of the world, 4 and he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judea.

Esdras B preserves the title God of the heavens, while 1 Esdras identifies the deity with Israel and calls him Most High. Elsewhere 1 Esdras frequently uses Lord where Ezra and Esdras B use God, and it names the temple with Greek expressions that identify a sanctuary directly, where the closer translation preserves the Hebrew description of it as a house.^[3]^[4]

The same freedom appears inside sentences, where a sequence repeatedly linked by and in Hebrew may become a Greek sentence with a dependent phrase, or an expression with two Hebrew elements may be represented by one Greek expression. The long lists of names receive less consistent treatment, with some names transliterated, some given established Greek forms, and others supplied with Greek endings. A name that looks different may therefore reflect a translator’s choice, although errors during the copying of the source or the Greek account can produce differences too.^[5]^[6]

Agreement between the Greek versions can be as revealing as their differences. When Darius threatens anyone who alters his decree in Ezra 6:11, the surviving Aramaic describes the offender’s house becoming a rubbish heap, but both Greek accounts make the penalty confiscation. Their language differs, yet each leaves the house or property in the king’s possession, suggesting that both translators may have used an Aramaic text different from the one preserved in the Hebrew Bible.^[7]

Ezra 6:11

11 “I hereby give orders that if anyone changes this directive a beam is to be pulled out from his house and he is to be raised up and impaled on it, and his house is to be reduced to a rubbish heap for this indiscretion.

1 Esdras 6:32

32 And he commanded that if any should transgress or nullify any of the things herein written, a beam should be taken out of his house and he should be hanged upon it, and his property should be forfeited to the king.

LXX Ezra 6:11

11 And from me a decision was established that any person who changes this word, and a timber shall be pulled down from his house, and he shall be lifted up to be struck upon it, and his house shall be made my possession.

A different Greek reading need not always come from a different source. An Aramaic expression without written vowels, for example, can be understood as referring either to the Jewish elders or to the captivity of Judah, and 1 Esdras sometimes appears to preserve both possibilities. The comparison has to allow for interpretation as well as copying, especially in a book whose translator could express the meaning freely enough to conceal close dependence on the same Hebrew and Aramaic passages.^[8]^[9]

The Greek language of 1 Esdras resembles Greek Esther, Sirach, Judith, and the books of Maccabees, helping place its translation in the second century BCE, probably in Alexandria. It appears independent of Esdras B and may be the earlier Greek translation, although that date cannot determine the age of every episode in its source. Individual passages give different results when compared, and later copies of 1 Esdras were themselves revised toward the Hebrew and Esdras B, leaving another stage of change between the earlier translation and the manuscripts that survive.^[10]^[11]^[12]

Citations

[1] Wooden, R. Glenn 2 Esdras, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (pp. 405) Oxford University Press, 2007
[2] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 185) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[3] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 108) Oxford University Press, 2021
[4] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 191) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[5] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 186–187) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[6] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 142) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[7] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 110) Oxford University Press, 2021
[8] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 110) Oxford University Press, 2021
[9] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 185) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[10] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 183, 187) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[11] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 106) Oxford University Press, 2021
[12] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 5) Brill, 2012

The Two Greek Books of Ezra

Daniel and Esther in Two Greek Versions

Ezra is one of several biblical books preserved in more than one Greek form, alongside Daniel and Esther, whose surviving versions also differ in language and contents. These are often called the double traditions of the Greek Septuagint translation, although the phrase does not imply that each pair developed in the same way. With Ezra, the comparison includes a freer account containing the bodyguard story and a close translation of Ezra and Nehemiah; with Daniel and Esther, the differences include passages that have no counterpart in their Hebrew forms.^[1]

Daniel’s earlier version is called the Old Greek, while a later version conventionally called Theodotion follows the Hebrew and Aramaic more closely. Both contain Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and the prayer and song of the young men in the furnace, additions that are absent from the Hebrew and Aramaic book. The Old Greek survives in only three witnesses, and chapters 4 through 6 contain especially substantial differences, including details of the court in which Daniel serves.^[2]

LXX Daniel 3:24-25

24 In this manner, therefore, Hananiah and Azariah and Mishael prayed, and they sang to the Lord when the king commanded them to be thrown into the furnace. 25 And standing still, Azariah prayed in this manner, and when he opened his mouth he acknowledged the Lord together with his companions in the middle of the blazing fire, the furnace having been ignited by the Chaldeans very much with fire, and they said,

The description of Darius provides a connection with 1 Esdras that can be seen in the numbers and honors assigned to his court. The Aramaic Daniel gives him 120 satraps, the provincial officials appointed over his kingdom, while the Old Greek gives him 127 and describes Daniel clothed in purple. The same number of provinces and the same royal clothing appear in the bodyguard story, where the contest’s hoped-for reward would place a successful speaker among the king’s honored companions.^[3]^[4]

Daniel 6:1

1 It seemed like a good idea to Darius to appoint over the kingdom 120 satraps who would be in charge of the entire kingdom.

LXX Daniel 6:1-3

1 Then Darius, full of days and glorious in old age, also set up one hundred and twenty-seven satraps over his entire kingdom. 2 And he set over them three men as their overseers, and Daniel was one of the three men 3 over all who had authority in the kingdom. And Daniel was clothed with purple, and he was great and highly esteemed before King Darius. He was highly esteemed and skilled and wise, and a holy spirit was in him, and he was prosperous in the business of the king that he was performing. At that time, the king was resolving to set Daniel over all of his kingdom, and the two men whom he had set up with him, and also the one hundred and twentyseven satraps.

Greek Esther likewise survives in the Greek Septuagint form and in another form known as the Alpha Text, preserved in four manuscripts, whose relationship remains disputed. The Septuagint form includes six substantial passages absent from Hebrew Esther, including prayers by Mordecai and Esther and the full text of royal decrees, making the story more than half as long again. Neither Greek form is generally treated as a straightforward revision of the other, so their comparison involves the development of different accounts as well as the choices of translators.^[5]

The language of royal officials, written correspondence, and the temple in 1 Esdras has parallels in Greek Esther, the Old Greek of Daniel, and the books of Maccabees. Those similarities help date the translation, but the contents of the Ezra books remain a different kind of comparison: both Greek Daniels include the twelve chapters of the Hebrew and Aramaic book and their additions, whereas Esdras A begins in Chronicles and leaves out most of Nehemiah. Esdras B carries the history further because it translates Ezra and Nehemiah together.^[6]^[7]^[8]

The Greek forms also received different treatment in later Christian Bibles. Jerome translated Esther from Hebrew and moved the Greek additions to the end, separating them from their places in the Greek account, while rejecting 1 Esdras as a book outside the Hebrew collection. The Council of Trent subsequently included the additions to Esther in Catholic scripture but excluded 1 Esdras, so the survival of an expanded Greek account did not produce the same canonical decision for every book.^[9]^[10]

Citations

[1] Wooden, R. Glenn 1 Esdras, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (pp. 392) Oxford University Press, 2007
[2] McLay, R. Timothy Daniel (Old Greek and Theodotion), in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 544–545) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[3] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 183) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[4] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 163) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[5] Boyd-Taylor, Cameron The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 204, 211) T&T Clark, 2015
[6] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 183–184) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[7] McLay, R. Timothy Daniel (Old Greek and Theodotion), in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 545) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[8] Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (pp. 269) Oxford University Press, 2017
[9] Boyd-Taylor, Cameron The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 204) T&T Clark, 2015
[10] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 145) Jewish Publication Society, 2013

Explanations for the Book’s Origin

The overlap with Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah has produced different accounts of how 1 Esdras was composed. Its repeated passages, changed sequence, and uncertain ending supply the evidence for proposals about a lost longer history, a later compilation, or an earlier Ezra narrative.

A Surviving Part of a Longer History

Cyrus’s permission to rebuild the temple appears twice across the boundary between Chronicles and Ezra in the Hebrew Bible, closing one book and opening the next. In 1 Esdras it appears once, after the Babylonian destruction and before the return, which made the Greek narrative useful to readers who thought the Hebrew books had originally belonged to a continuous history. On that older account of the book’s origin, 1 Esdras would preserve a fragment of the larger work, while the rest of its Greek translation had been lost.^[1]

The proposed history was attributed to an author or group called the Chronicler, whose work would have carried Israel’s earlier past into the return from exile. Interests shared by Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, including temple worship, genealogies, and written records, supported the proposal, while the repeated decree supplied a visible place where one continuous account could have been divided. Joining the end of Chronicles to the beginning of Ezra removes that repetition and produces the sequence found in 1 Esdras.^[2]^[3]

2 Chronicles 36:22

22 In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in fulfillment of the Lord’s message spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord motivated King Cyrus of Persia to issue a proclamation throughout his kingdom and also to put it in writing. It read:

Ezra 1:1

1 In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in fulfillment of the Lord’s message spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord motivated King Cyrus of Persia to issue a proclamation throughout his kingdom and also to put it in writing. It read:

The abrupt beginning with Josiah and the disputed ending after Ezra’s reading could then be explained as the surviving edges of a damaged work. A continuation through the festival in Nehemiah 8 would allow the account to end with communal observance, matching the Passover celebration at its beginning, while the longer history would have supplied material before Josiah. Comparisons made under this explanation concentrated on which surviving account preserved an earlier reading, a more original order of events, or a more reliable historical report, often giving less attention to the Greek book’s own choices of contents.^[4]^[5]

The explanation depends on Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah having belonged to that common work, a connection challenged through differences in their Hebrew grammar and other features. If the books came from different authors or groups, a Greek narrative joining their material could no longer be treated as a fragment of their original continuous history. The grammatical argument remains disputed, however, and disagreement over common authorship leaves the reconstruction dependent on a question the surviving Greek account cannot settle by itself.^[6]

Other difficulties arise from the copying of the Greek books. The reconstruction requires two translations of closely connected material, apparently made at similar dates and in the same place, and leaves uncertain why the fragment would have continued circulating alongside a complete history. The opening festival and concluding assembly can also be read as an arrangement chosen for this book, rather than accidental limits imposed by loss, allowing its account of destruction and restoration to have a purpose of its own.^[7]^[8]

A modified account separates the age of the shared material from the order in which it now appears. It allows 1 Esdras to preserve older readings while treating the bodyguard story as an addition that disturbed the sequence, leaving Hebrew Ezra with the earlier arrangement at points where the Greek retains an earlier text.^[9]

Citations

[1] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 108, 113) Oxford University Press, 2021
[2] Wills, Lawrence M. Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles (pp. 111) Yale University Press, 2021
[3] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 113) Oxford University Press, 2021
[4] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 112–114) Oxford University Press, 2021
[5] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 141) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[6] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 113–114) Oxford University Press, 2021
[7] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 181) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[8] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 114, 119) Oxford University Press, 2021
[9] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 181) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015

Explanations for the Book’s Origin

A Book Assembled Around the Bodyguard Story

The contest gives Zerubbabel a way to secure the rebuilding of Jerusalem, which has led to another account of 1 Esdras as a book assembled to include that story. A compiler working with Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah could have selected the history from Josiah onward, moved the Artaxerxes correspondence, and placed the court debate before the returning families. The public reading from Nehemiah 8 would then complete Ezra’s work, while most of Nehemiah’s own history would be left out.^[1]

This kind of retelling is often called rewritten Bible, where inherited narratives receive changes, omissions, and additions as they enter a new account. Jubilees, the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo, the Genesis Apocryphon, and Josephus’s Antiquities provide other examples of the practice, although giving it a name still leaves the particular selection to explain. In 1 Esdras, a contest that displays Zerubbabel’s wisdom also gives him royal influence, making a leader connected by ancestry with David responsible for the recovery of the city.^[2]^[3]^[4]

1 Esdras 4:47-48

47 Then Darius the king rose, and kissed him, and wrote letters for him to all the treasurers and governors and generals and satraps, that they should give escort to him and all who were going up with him to build Jerusalem. 48 And he wrote letters to all the governors in Coelesyria and Phoenicia and to those in Lebanon, to bring cedar timber from Lebanon to Jerusalem, and to help him build the city.

The permission to build Jerusalem assigns Zerubbabel work that the Hebrew account gives to Nehemiah, allowing the contest to explain more than the rebuilding of the sanctuary alone. Other proposed purposes include repairing the sequence of the Hebrew narrative or expressing priestly opposition to Nehemiah, although evidence for that opposition remains uncertain and other Jewish writings give the governor considerable importance. The extensive history of Ezra also requires a reason for its inclusion if Zerubbabel’s victory was the principal motive for assembling the book.^[5]^[6]

A compiler free to select and rearrange material might also have corrected more of the surviving chronological difficulties. The Artaxerxes correspondence still stands before Darius, while references to Cyrus remain in episodes now placed after the court story under Darius.^[7]^[8]

The argument for use of a combined Ezra and Nehemiah becomes more specific when the returning families are compared with the final assembly. Hebrew Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 contain the list of returnees twice, each with surrounding material about their settlement, and 1 Esdras retains similar introductions to gatherings even though it includes the list only once. The first introduction leads into the establishment of the altar, while the second leads into Ezra’s reading.^[9]

1 Esdras 5:46-47

46 The priests, the Levites, and some of the people settled in Jerusalem and its vicinity; and the temple singers, the gatekeepers, and all Israel in their towns. 47 When the seventh month came, and the sons of Israel were each in his own home, they gathered as one man in the square before the first gate toward the east.

1 Esdras 9:37

37 The priests and the Levites and the men of Israel settled in Jerusalem and in the country. On the new moon of the seventh month, when the sons of Israel were in their settlements,

Retaining an introduction from the second list while omitting the list itself would make sense if a compiler had the combined Hebrew work before him. Yet the two Greek introductions are appropriate to the episodes they begin, since settled families can gather first for worship and later to hear the Torah, without either gathering needing the same list repeated. Their language is similar but not identical, leaving the repetition open to explanation as the reuse of a fitting introduction as well as evidence of dependence on Ezra and Nehemiah after those accounts were joined.^[10]

Citations

[1] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 114–115) Oxford University Press, 2021
[2] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 8) Brill, 2012
[3] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 114–115, 119) Oxford University Press, 2021
[4] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 182) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[5] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 144) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[6] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 114–115) Oxford University Press, 2021
[7] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 109, 115) Oxford University Press, 2021
[8] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 189) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[9] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 117) Oxford University Press, 2021
[10] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 117–118) Oxford University Press, 2021

Explanations for the Book’s Origin

Which Version of the Ezra Story Came First

Jerusalem’s temple and its walls are restored at different times in Ezra and Nehemiah, while 1 Esdras gives Zerubbabel permission to rebuild the city and temple together. That difference has supported an account in which the Greek book preserves an earlier Ezra narrative, before Nehemiah’s memoirs were incorporated into the history. The opening from Chronicles and the bodyguard story could still be later additions, while the shared material about Zerubbabel, the temple, and Ezra would come from a source that developed differently in the surviving books.^[1]

1 Esdras 4:63

63 to go up and build Jerusalem and the temple which is called by his name; and they feasted, with music and rejoicing, for seven days.

Ezra 4:21

21 Now give orders that these men cease their work and that this city not be rebuilt until such time as I so instruct.

Nehemiah 1:3

3 They said to me, “The remnant that remains from the exile there in the province are experiencing considerable adversity and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem lies breached, and its gates have been burned down!”

In the Hebrew account, Darius’s authorization concerns the temple, the complaint to Artaxerxes halts work on the city, and Nehemiah later finds the walls breached and their gates burned. Those details leave a task for the governor whose arrival supplies the next part of the history. In 1 Esdras, the royal permission extends to both city and sanctuary, and no subsequent account of Nehemiah has to explain why the rebuilding remains incomplete. The difference fits the leaders each book describes, although it does not by itself establish which arrangement came first.^[2]

The proposed earlier account would have joined the restoration under Zerubbabel to Ezra’s arrival and teaching, while a later editor made room for Nehemiah by separating the rebuilding of the temple from that of the city. This concerns the development of the inherited narrative, whose age cannot be identified simply from the date of its Greek translation. A Greek book translated in the second century BCE can contain material older than its surviving Hebrew counterpart, just as it can contain additions made later than that shared source.^[3]

Ezra’s place in the final episode supplies another argument. A compiler with the whole book of Nehemiah available and an interest in Ezra could have included his participation in the dedication of the wall in Nehemiah 12, yet 1 Esdras takes only the public reading in chapter 8. That choice is easier to explain if the reading already belonged to an Ezra account without the surrounding Nehemiah narrative. The reconstruction would allow Nehemiah’s memoirs to be added in some copies and Chronicles and the court story in others, without requiring a single history extending through all three Hebrew books.^[4]

The differing Hebrew and Greek forms of Jeremiah provide a comparison, since the Greek account is shorter and places some material in a different order. They show how copies of a book can preserve different stages in its development, although the comparison cannot determine the age of the Ezra accounts. The freer translation in 1 Esdras also makes brevity a difficult guide, because a shorter Greek expression may come from the translator’s way of handling Hebrew or Aramaic rather than from a shorter source.^[5]

No Hebrew or Aramaic copy of 1 Esdras survives to test that reconstruction directly. The relevant Dead Sea Scrolls preserve only three small fragments of Ezra, including portions of chapter 4 and chapters 5 through 6, with many expressions incomplete. Their few variants do not settle the relationship between the narratives, leaving the accounts of their development dependent on comparisons of the surviving books.^[6]

Citations

[1] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 116–117) Oxford University Press, 2021
[2] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 116) Oxford University Press, 2021
[3] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 106, 116–117) Oxford University Press, 2021
[4] Grabbe, Lester L. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha (pp. 117, 119) Oxford University Press, 2021
[5] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 181, 185) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[6] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 190) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015

Later Readers and Canonical Status

Josephus retold the history of the returning exiles from 1 Esdras, while Christian authors used its praise of truth in their own arguments. Greek and Latin copies continued preserving the book even as communities disagreed about its place in scripture.

Josephus Follows 1 Esdras

When Josephus retells the return from exile in the Antiquities of the Jews, written in the 90s CE, the court of Darius includes the same debate about wine, kings, women, and truth found in 1 Esdras. His history follows the Greek book through Judah’s last kings in book 10 and from Cyrus through Ezra in book 11, making the contest a particularly useful sign of his source because it has no counterpart in Hebrew Ezra and Nehemiah.^[1]^[2]

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Book 11 3:2

… Darius feasted those that were about him, and those born in his house, with the rulers of the Medes, and princes of the Persians, and the toparchs of India and Ethiopia, and the generals of the armies of his hundred and twenty seven provinces. …

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Book 11 3:6

… For which cause we also ought to esteem truth to be the strongest of all things; and that what is unrighteous is of no force against it. …

Josephus likely knew the Hebrew accounts but preferred the history preserved in 1 Esdras, perhaps partly because its Greek was more fluent. His choice gave a Greek-speaking audience the restoration as a history in which Zerubbabel’s wisdom brings royal assistance, followed by Ezra’s leadership of the returned community.^[3]^[4]^[5]

One adaptation repairs a gap in the contest’s aftermath. Zerubbabel asks Darius to honor an earlier vow in 1 Esdras, although the vow has not previously been narrated; Josephus introduces it before Darius becomes king and gives Zerubbabel an old friendship with him. The request can then refer back to a commitment already present in the history, rather than supplying new background at the moment the reward is claimed.^[6]

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews Book 11 3:1

… Now he, while he was a private man, had made a vow to God, that if he came to be King, he would send all the vessels of God that were in Babylon to the temple at Jerusalem. …

The Persian kings receive changes as well. Josephus sends the complaint addressed to Artaxerxes in 1 Esdras to Cambyses, Cyrus’s son, and places Ezra’s arrival under Xerxes, Darius’s son, instead of Artaxerxes. These substitutions alter the royal sequence, while his expanded description of Ezra gives the priest greater attention as a respected leader acquainted with the king.^[7]

After describing Ezra’s death, Josephus continues with Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the walls, carrying his history into material absent from the surviving 1 Esdras. That continuation makes him a difficult witness to the Greek book’s lost ending, since an episode in Josephus may come from another source or from his own arrangement of the history. His work predates the complete surviving Greek manuscripts by centuries and can preserve evidence for an earlier text, but the places where he fills gaps or changes the sequence have to be distinguished from what he may have inherited in his copy.^[8]^[9]

The account later entered medieval Hebrew literature through Josippon, a history written in tenth-century Italy and wrongly attributed to Josephus. Its Persian history uses both Josephus and 1 Esdras, probably in Latin, although surviving quotations from Josippon by medieval Jewish writers do not reflect the sections derived from 1 Esdras. The Greek book had disappeared from the main Jewish literary tradition, and its return to Jewish collections came through modern translations of the Apocrypha.^[10]

Citations

[1] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 26) Brill, 2012
[2] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 191) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[3] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 26) Brill, 2012
[4] Wills, Lawrence M. Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles (pp. 113) Yale University Press, 2021
[5] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 145) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[6] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 148–149) Brill, 2012
[7] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 135, 231, 235) Brill, 2012
[8] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 145) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[9] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 191) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[10] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 145–146) Jewish Publication Society, 2013

Later Readers and Canonical Status

Early Christian Writers Quote Zerubbabel’s Speech on Truth

The praise of truth in Zerubbabel’s speech gave Christian writers a passage they could connect with Jesus’s declaration in John 14:6 that he is the truth. No direct quotation from 1 Esdras appears in the New Testament, but later authors used the contest in arguments about error, authority, and Christian conduct, giving a Jewish story about success at a Persian court new applications. The speech’s description of truth as enduring and free from injustice could be quoted within those arguments without retelling the full history of the return from exile.^[1]^[2]

In a third-century letter urging his correspondent to abandon error, Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, connects the speech’s enduring truth with the identification of Jesus as truth in John. Zerubbabel’s claim that truth remains strong becomes a reason to abandon error and accept the teaching Cyprian presents as true, applying the courtier’s conclusion to a dispute among Christians.^[3]

1 Esdras 4:38-40

38 But truth endures and is strong for ever, and lives and prevails for ever and ever. 39 With her there is no partiality or preference, but she does what is righteous instead of anything that is unrighteous or wicked. All men approve her deeds, 40 and there is nothing unrighteous in her judgment. To her belongs the strength and the kingship and the power and the majesty of all the ages. Blessed be the God of truth!”

Athanasius finds another use for the contest in a fourth-century defense addressed to the emperor, where Zerubbabel’s success before Darius becomes an example of the protection truth can offer a king. The court setting remains part of the appeal, even though the Christian author is defending his own position rather than explaining the rebuilding of Jerusalem.^[4]

Augustine discusses Esdras during his history of prophecy in book 18 of the City of God, classifying the work as historical before asking whether its declaration about truth might also concern Jesus. His qualification is visible in the passage itself, where the possibility of prophecy emerges from the contest’s winning answer rather than from a claim that every part of the book describes Christian events.^[5]

Augustine, City of God 18 36:1

… unless, perhaps, Esdras is to be understood as prophesying of Christ in that passage where, on a question having arisen among certain young men as to what is the strongest thing, when one had said kings, another wine, the third women, who for the most part rule kings, yet that same third youth demonstrated that the truth is victorious over all. For by consulting the Gospel we learn that Christ is the Truth. …

John 14:6 supplies the connection: if Jesus identifies himself as the truth, the victory assigned to truth in the earlier narrative can be understood as referring to him. Augustine retains the book’s place as history while allowing that Christian interpretation of its praise of truth, bringing an episode from the Persian period into his discussion of prophecy.^[6]

The crowd’s response also traveled beyond those explanations in the Latin proverb magna est veritas et praevalet, meaning that truth is great and prevails. Its independent circulation preserved the conclusion of the speech among people who did not need to recount its setting, while the manuscripts show particular attention to the passage as well. A marginal sign in Codex Vaticanus stands beside the third guard’s written answer about truth’s victory, although the purpose of the mark remains uncertain.^[7]

1 Esdras 4:41

41 He ceased speaking; then all the people shouted, and said, “Great is truth, and strongest of all!”

Christian uses extended beyond this saying. Clement of Alexandria used the book as a source for the Persian period, and Origen, Tertullian, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria, Ephrem the Syrian, and Theodoret also quote or allude to it. Most references are brief, which leaves the cited passage more readily identifiable than the collection of books each writer regarded as scripture; the use of Zerubbabel’s speech alone cannot establish how an author classified the whole account beside Ezra and Nehemiah.^[8]^[9]^[10]

Citations

[1] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 191) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[2] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 26) Brill, 2012
[3] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 179) Brill, 2012
[4] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 179) Brill, 2012
[5] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 29) Brill, 2012
[6] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 29) Brill, 2012
[7] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 26, 179) Brill, 2012
[8] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 191) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[9] Wills, Lawrence M. Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles (pp. 116) Yale University Press, 2021
[10] Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (pp. 269) Oxford University Press, 2017

Later Readers and Canonical Status

1 Esdras in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Bibles

A book can survive inside a Bible even when its authority is disputed, and the later history of 1 Esdras includes Greek copies, Latin manuscripts, and printed appendices that gave it different places beside Ezra and Nehemiah. Early Greek and Latin lists often name two books of Esdras, very likely Esdras A and Esdras B, the narrative with the contest and the combined translation of Ezra and Nehemiah. Later Latin lists can use the same number for Ezra and Nehemiah separately, so a familiar title does not always identify the same contents.^[1]

Lists associated with Melito, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Augustine, and the Synod of Carthage around 397 include Esdras, although the intended book is clearer in some cases than in others. Augustine’s discussion of the contest supplies evidence beyond the title because his reference to truth’s victory identifies the narrative of Esdras A.^[2]

Augustine, City of God 18 36:1

… After these three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, during the same period of the liberation of the people from the Babylonian servitude Esdras also wrote, who is historical rather than prophetical, as is also the book called Esther, which is found to relate, for the praise of God, events not far from those times; …

Jerome followed the Hebrew collection when translating Ezra and Nehemiah into Latin at the end of the fourth century, treating the two as one Hebrew book and rejecting the third and fourth books of Esdras. He did not translate 1 Esdras, whose absence from the Jewish Hebrew collection stood behind his objection, but the older Latin translation continued circulating in Vulgate manuscripts under the title 3 Esdras. His decision therefore affected its standing without preventing scribes from preserving it alongside books he accepted.^[3]^[4]^[5]

The distinction between preservation and canonical authority continued into printed Bibles. Luther omitted both the narrative 1 Esdras and the apocalypse called 2 Esdras from his German Bible of 1534, and the Council of Trent in 1546 excluded 1 Esdras from the books it declared canonical. Catholic Vulgate editions nevertheless continued printing the work in an appendix, in small type, providing a place for a text whose presence in older copies had outlasted agreement about its authority.^[6]^[7]

English Protestant editions that include an Apocrypha use the name 1 Esdras, following the renumbering of the Vulgate’s additional books. The Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles, in their final form of 1571, allowed it to be read for examples of conduct and moral instruction while excluding it from the establishment of doctrine.^[8]^[9]

Orthodox biblical tradition continued preserving the work within the Greek collection, with Greek Bibles naming it Esdras A and Slavonic numbering calling it 2 Esdras. Its place there follows a different history from Jerome’s restriction to the Hebrew books, while the changed title reflects the other Ezra writings placed around it.^[10]

In the modern West the book became less familiar, probably partly through the preference for Hebrew sources associated with the Reformation. The court story still circulated in works such as Josippon and the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, carrying the debate about power and truth into later retellings even where 1 Esdras itself had little influence.^[11]^[12]

Citations

[1] Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (pp. 269) Oxford University Press, 2017
[2] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 27, 29) Brill, 2012
[3] Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (pp. 201) Oxford University Press, 2017
[4] Hogan, Karina Martin The Preservation of 4 Ezra in the Vulgate: Thanks to Ambrose, not Jerome, in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction after the Fall (pp. 385) Brill, 2013
[5] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 191) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[6] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 191) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[7] Japhet, Sara Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (pp. 145) Jewish Publication Society, 2013
[8] Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (pp. 8) Fortress Press, 2013
[9] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 192) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[10] Patmore, Hector M. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (pp. 179, 192) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
[11] Bird, Michael F. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus (pp. 27) Brill, 2012
[12] Wills, Lawrence M. Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles (pp. 116) Yale University Press, 2021

Bird, Michael F.. 1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Vaticanus. Brill, 2012.
Boyd-Taylor, Cameron. The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint. T&T Clark, 2015.
Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Grabbe, Lester L.. 1 Esdras (Greek Ezra), in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha. Oxford University Press, 2021.
Hogan, Karina Martin. The Preservation of 4 Ezra in the Vulgate: Thanks to Ambrose, not Jerome, in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction after the Fall. Brill, 2013.
Japhet, Sara. Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture. Jewish Publication Society, 2013.
McLay, R. Timothy. Daniel (Old Greek and Theodotion), in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint. Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015.
Metzger, Bruce M.. The Fourth Book of Ezra, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1. Doubleday, 1983.
Patmore, Hector M.. 1 Esdras, in The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint. Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015.
Stone, Michael E., and Matthias Henze. 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes. Fortress Press, 2013.
Wills, Lawrence M.. Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles. Yale University Press, 2021.
Wooden, R. Glenn. 1 Esdras, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Wooden, R. Glenn. 2 Esdras, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint. Oxford University Press, 2007.

The Books Called Esdras

The Story From Josiah to Ezra

The Two Greek Books of Ezra

Explanations for the Book’s Origin

Later Readers and Canonical Status

All Guides

The Books Called Esdras

The Story From Josiah to Ezra

The Two Greek Books of Ezra

Explanations for the Book’s Origin

Later Readers and Canonical Status

1 Esdras and the Books of Ezra

What 1 Esdras Is

Citations

The Four Names of 1 Esdras

Citations

The Unrelated Apocalypse of 2 Esdras

Citations

Beginning With Josiah’s Passover

Citations

The Letter to Artaxerxes Appears Earlier

Citations

The Contest of the Three Bodyguards

Citations

Zerubbabel’s Speech on Women and Truth

Citations

Ezra Reads the Law Without Nehemiah

Citations

The Book Ends in the Middle of a Sentence

Citations

The Differences Between Esdras A and Esdras B

Citations

Daniel and Esther in Two Greek Versions

Citations

A Surviving Part of a Longer History

Citations

A Book Assembled Around the Bodyguard Story

Citations

Which Version of the Ezra Story Came First

Citations

Josephus Follows 1 Esdras

Citations

Early Christian Writers Quote Zerubbabel’s Speech on Truth

Citations

1 Esdras in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Bibles

Citations

Read More

Contents

Contents

Go to Intertext