APOT: 1 Esdras

The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913), Part 2

1 Esdras (editor: S.A. Cook)

My intention with this series is to briefly review the introductions and overviews of each Biblical book contained in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, hereafter abbreviated to "APOT." For the most part, the focus will be on the scholarly commentary on each book's essence -- authorship, date, etc. Critical examination of the books themselves will follow later. For an idea of my approach to this material, please see my post on R.H. Charles's Introduction. 

"1 Esdras" is the name given to the Greek translations and variations of the Book of Ezra, and thus the primary if not only version known to Christians until Origen's day. It continued to dominate until Jerome decisively rejected it and 2 Esdras in the fourth century. 

Cook says, in his introduction:

"The  first book of the Apocrypha stands in a class by itself in that it is, with the exception of one portion, a somewhat free Greek version of the biblical history from Josiah's Passover to the Reading of the Law by Ezra. It differs, however, in several important particulars both from the corresponding canonical passages and from the more literal Greek translation of them (also preserved in the Septuagint), and an adequate treatment of its text and contents belongs properly to the commentaries and handbooks on Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

"1 Esdras ceases abruptly ... hence it is often supposed that (it) is a self-contained work, written and compiled for some specific purpose, e.g. to influence Gentiles in favor of the Jews, or to prepare the way for the building of the temple of Onias at Alexandria, or simply, perhaps, to bring together narratives relating to the temple ...

"The date of the original is bound up with that of Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah and must be some time after 333 BC ... all the data suggest that 1 Esdras and Ezra-Nehemiah represent concurrent forms which have influenced each other in the earlier stages of their growth. They are rivals, and neither can be said to be wholly older or more historical than the other ...

"Although our O.T. has lost the story of Zerubbabel and the Praise of Truth, there is no doubt that there is something 'unbiblical' in the orations. In the course of the growth of the O.T., compilers and revisers have not unfrequently obscured or omitted that to which they took exception, and some light is thus often thrown upon other phases of contemporary Palestinian or Jewish thought. While the orations themselves remind us of the old 'Wisdom' literature (Proverbs, Ben Sira, Wisdom), their combination with narrative will recall the interesting story of Ahikar.  1 Esdras remains 'apocryphal' in so far as it was deliberately rejected by Jewish and Christian schools. It had indeed found a place in the Bible of the Greek-speaking Jews, and was familiar to Jews and Christians, either indirectly through Josephus, or directly as a separate work. To the Christians the prominence of Zerubbabel must have been of no little interest. But the value of 1 Esdras does not lie merely in this story. The book (or fragment) furnishes useful evidence for the criticism of the text and contents of the canonical passages, and illustrates methods of compilation and revision, swing of traditions, and play of motives. It clearly indicates the importance of the comparison of related traditions as apart from the ultimate question of the underlying facts, and shows, in conjunction with Josephus, how a relatively straightforward account of history as in Ezra-Nehemiah may be the last stage in the effort to cut the knots formed by imperfect compilation. In its final form, the MT, the result of 'Rabbinical redaction,' is ascribed by Howorth to the School of Jamnia in the time of Rabbi Akiba, and although it is difficult to find decisive arguments in favour of this conjecture—or against it—it is not impossible that the chronicler's history, as it now reads, may be dated about the beginning of the Christian era. It is significant that it is wanting in the Syriac Peshitta. Such a view, it should be observed, no more expresses an opinion on the dates of the component sources or sections than it would were the work in question a composite and much edited portion of Mishnah or Midrash."

Date: Apparently about the first century BCE, though "not impossible" to date from the beginning of the Christian era.

Part of Septuagint? Yes.

Christian Interpolations? No, but "it is surely significant that although the two genealogies of Jesus are hopelessly inconsistent, the two lines of ancestry of 'David's greater Son' converge in the person of Zerubbabel." 

Relation to Josephus: Josephus derivative; uses 1 Esdras instead of canonical Ezra, but is "extremely paraphrastic, and is therefore no safe guide for restoring the original of 1 Esdras." Josephus is the earliest witness to book.

Andrew Brown