Ezra Read Rom the Old Testament Book

Book of the Bible

The Volume of Ezra is a book of the Hebrew Bible; which formerly included the Book of Nehemiah in a single book, commonly distinguished in scholarship equally Ezra–Nehemiah. The two became separated with the first printed rabbinic bibles of the early 16th century, following late medieval Latin Christian tradition.^[ane] Composed in Hebrew and Aramaic, its subject is the Return to Zion following the shut of the Babylonian captivity, and it is divided into two parts, the first telling the story of the first return of exiles in the first twelvemonth of Cyrus the Bang-up (538 BC) and the completion and dedication of the new Temple in Jerusalem in the 6th year of Darius I (515 BC), the second telling of the subsequent mission of Ezra to Jerusalem and his struggle to purify the Jews from spousal relationship with non-Jews. Together with the Book of Nehemiah, it represents the concluding chapter in the historical narrative of the Hebrew Bible.^[two]

Ezra is written to fit a schematic pattern in which the God of Israel inspires a king of Persia to committee a leader from the Jewish customs to conduct out a mission; three successive leaders carry out three such missions, the first rebuilding the Temple, the 2d purifying the Jewish community, and the third sealing the holy city itself backside a wall. (This last mission, that of Nehemiah, is non part of the Book of Ezra.) The theological program of the volume explains the many problems its chronological structure presents.^[iii] It probably appeared in its primeval version effectually 399 BC, and continued to be revised and edited for several centuries before beingness accepted equally scriptural in the early Christian era.^[4]

Summary [edit]

The Book of Ezra consists of ten chapters: chapters 1–6, covering the catamenia from the Cyrus the Great to the dedication of the Second Temple, are told in the tertiary person; chapters 7–10, dealing with the mission of Ezra, are told largely in the start person. The book contains several documents presented equally historical inclusions, written in Aramaic while the surrounding text is in Hebrew (1:2–4, 4:eight–16, iv:17–22, 5:vii–17, six:3–five, half-dozen:half-dozen–12, vii:12–26) ^[five]

Chapters one–vi (documents included in the text in italics)

1. Decree of Cyrus, commencement version: Cyrus, inspired past God, returns the Temple vessels to Sheshbazzar, "prince of Judah", and directs the Israelites to return to Jerusalem with him and rebuild the Temple.
2. 42,360 exiles, with men servants, women servants and "singing men and women", return from Babylon to Jerusalem and Judah under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Jeshua the High Priest.
three. Jeshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel build the chantry and celebrate the Banquet of Tabernacles. In the second year the foundations of the Temple are laid and the dedication takes identify with not bad rejoicing.

four. Letter of the Samaritans to Artaxerxes, and reply of Artaxerxes: The "enemies of Judah and Benjamin" offer to assist with the rebuilding, but are rebuffed; they and so piece of work to frustrate the builders "down to the reign of Darius." The officials of Samaria write to king Artaxerxes warning him that Jerusalem is existence rebuilt, and the king orders the piece of work to end. "Thus the work on the house of God in Jerusalem came to a standstill until the 2nd year of the reign of Darius king of Persia."
five. Tattenai's alphabetic character to Darius: Through the exhortations of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, Zerubbabel and Joshua recommence the building of the Temple. Tattenai, satrap over both Judah and Samaria, writes to Darius alarm him that Jerusalem is beingness rebuilt and advising that the archives be searched to discover the prescript of Cyrus.
6. Decree of Cyrus, second version, and decree of Darius: Darius finds the decree, directs Tattenai not to disturb the Jews in their piece of work, and exempts them from tribute and supplies everything necessary for the offerings. The Temple is finished in the month of Adar in the sixth year of Darius, and the Israelites assemble to celebrate its completion.

Chapters 7–10

7. Letter of Artaxerxes to Ezra (Artaxerxes' rescript): King Artaxerxes is moved by God to commission Ezra "to inquire about Judah and Jerusalem with regard to the Law of your God" and to "appoint magistrates and judges to administer justice to all the people of Trans-Euphrates—all who know the laws of your God." Artaxerxes gives Ezra much gold and directs all Persian officials to aid him.

Ezra reads the Police force in this 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld

viii. Ezra gathers a large body of returnees and much gilt and silver and precious vessels for the Temple and camps past a culvert outside Babylon. There he discovers he has no Levites, and so sends messengers to gather some. The exiles then return to Jerusalem, where they distribute the gold and silver and offer sacrifices to God.
ix. Ezra is informed that some of the Jews already in Jerusalem have married non-Jewish women. Ezra is appalled at this proof of sin, and prays to God: "O God of Israel, you lot are righteous! We are left this day as a remnant. Here we are before you lot in our guilt, though because of it not 1 of us can stand up in your presence."
x. Despite the opposition of some of their number, the Israelites assemble and send away their foreign wives and children.

Historical background [edit]

In the early on 6th century BC, the Kingdom of Judah rebelled against the Neo-Babylonian Empire and was destroyed. Every bit a result, the regal court, the priests, the prophets and scribes were taken into captivity in the urban center of Babylon. At that place a profound intellectual revolution took place, the exiles blaming their fate on disobedience to their God and looking forward to a future when he would allow a purified people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The same period saw the rapid ascent of Persia, previously an unimportant kingdom in present-mean solar day southern Iran, to a position of great power, and in 539 BC Cyrus Ii, the Persian ruler, conquered Babylon.^[6]

It is difficult to describe the parties and politics of Judea in this menstruum because of the lack of historical sources, just there seem to take been three important groups involved: the returnees from the exile who claimed the reconstruction with the back up of Cyrus II; "the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin"; and a 3rd group, "people of the land", who seem to be local opposition against the returnees building the Temple in Jerusalem.

The post-obit table is a guide to major events in the region during the period covered by the Book of Ezra:

King of Persia ^[vii]	Reign(BC)	Main events^[8]	Correlation with Ezra–Nehemiah^[ix]
Cyrus II	550[?]–530	539 BC Fall of Babylon	Directive to the Jews to rebuild the Temple and first return of the exiles to Jerusalem (taken as occurring in 538, since Babylon brutal in Oct 539)
Cambyses	530–522	525 Conquest of Arab republic of egypt
Darius I	522–486	Secures the throne in 520/519 subsequently fighting off diverse rivals; failed punitive invasion of Greece	515 Temple rebuilt. In the book of Daniel, Darius has the old championship of Darius I (king of the Chaldeans = Babylonians), while Koresh has the new one of Xerxes (king of the Persians).^[10]
Xerxes	486–465	Failed attempt to conquer Greece; outset of struggle with Greeks for control of the eastern Mediterranean	(Culling) directive past Koresh to the Jews to rebuild the Temple and showtime return of the exiles to Jerusalem.
Artaxerxes I	465–424	460–456 Successful suppression of Greek-supported defection in Egypt 449 Revolt by Megabyzus, governor of the territory which included Judah	Currently most widely accepted menstruation for arrival of Ezra "in the seventh year of Artaxerxes" Second return of the exiles to Jerusalem (in 458 if the king is Artaxerxes I, or 428 if the year is read as his thirty-seventh instead of his seventh) 445–433 Nehemiah'south mission (returns before the death of Artaxerxes)
Darius II	423–404		(Alternative) Temple rebuilt.
Artaxerxes Ii	404–358	401 Arab republic of egypt regains independence	(Alternative) catamenia for inflow of Ezra and second return of exiles to Jerusalem (in 398 if the king is Artaxerxes II)
Artaxerxes 3	358–338	Egypt reconquered
Darius III	336–330	The Achaemenid Empire conquered by Alexander the Not bad

Texts [edit]

Ezra–Nehemiah [edit]

The unmarried Hebrew volume Ezra–Nehemiah, with title "Ezra", was translated into Greek around the middle of the second century BC.^[11] The Septuagint calls Esdras B to Ezra–Nehemiah and Esdras A to one Esdras respectively; and this usage is noted by the early on Christian scholar Origen, who remarked that the Hebrew 'book of Ezra' might and so be considered a 'double' book. Jerome, writing in the early 5th century, noted that this duplication had since been adopted past Greek and Latin Christians. Jerome himself rejected the duplication in his Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin from the Hebrew; and consequently all early Vulgate manuscripts present Ezra-Nehemiah as a single book,.^[12] However, from the 9th century onwards, Latin bibles are found that for the outset fourth dimension carve up the Ezra and Nehemiah sections of Ezra-Nehemiah as 2 distinct books, then called the first and second books of Ezra; and this becomes standard in the Paris Bibles of the 13th century. It was not until 1516/17, in the get-go printed Rabbinic Bible of Daniel Bomberg that the separation was introduced generally in Hebrew Bibles.^[xiii]

First Esdras [edit]

1 Esdras, also known as "Esdras α", is an alternate Greek-language version of Ezra. This text has one additional section, the 'Tale of the Three Guardsmen' in the center of Ezra four.^[14] one Esdras (3 Esdras in the Vulgate) was considered counterfeit by Jerome.^[15]

Engagement, structure and composition [edit]

Appointment [edit]

Koresh of Ezra i:1 is called "king of Persia", which title was introduced not by Cyrus the Great but past his grandson and probable namesake Xerxes (486–465 BC).^[16]

Scholars are divided over the chronological sequence of the activities of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra 7:8 says that Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the seventh yr of king Artaxerxes, while Nehemiah 2:ane–ix has Nehemiah arriving in Artaxerxes' twentieth year. If this was Artaxerxes I (465–424 BC), and so Ezra arrived in 458 and Nehemiah in 445 BC. Nehemiah 8–9, in which the ii (possibly by editorial mistake) appear together, supports this scenario.^[17]

Structure [edit]

The contents of Ezra–Nehemiah are structured in a theological rather than chronological club: "The Temple must come up starting time, then the purifying of the community, and then the building of the outer walls of the city, and then finally all could reach a yard climax in the reading of the police force."^[18]

The narrative follows a repeating blueprint in which the God of Israel "stirs up" the male monarch of Persia to committee a Jewish leader (Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah) to undertake a mission; the leader completes his mission in the face of opposition; and success is marked past a great assembly.^[19] The tasks of the three leaders are progressive: starting time the Temple is restored (Zerubabbel), and so the community of Israel (Ezra), and finally the walls which will split the purified customs and Temple from the outside world (Nehemiah).^[20] The design is completed with a final coda in which Nehemiah restores the belief of Yahweh.^[21] This concern with a schematic blueprint-making, rather than with history in the modern sense of a factual account of events in the gild in which they occurred, explains the origin of the many problems which surround both Ezra and Nehemiah as historical sources.^[22]

Composition [edit]

Twentieth-century views on the limerick of Ezra revolved around whether the author was Ezra himself (and who may have likewise authored the Books of Chronicles) or was another author or authors (who also wrote the Chronicles).^[23] More recently information technology has been increasingly recognised that Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles all take extremely circuitous histories stretching over many stages of editing,^[24] and most scholars now are cautious of assuming a unified limerick with a single theology and signal of view.^[25] As an indication of the many layers of editing which Ezra has undergone, i recent study finds that Ezra 1–half-dozen and Ezra 9–x were originally separate documents, that they were spliced together at a later stage past the authors of Ezra seven–8, and that all take undergone extensive later on editing.^[26]

Persian documents [edit]

Seven purported Farsi decrees of kings or letters to and from loftier officials are quoted in Ezra. Their authenticity has been contentious; while some scholars accept them in their electric current form, most accept but part of them as genuine, while still others refuse them entirely. 50.L. Grabbe surveys six tests against which the documents can exist measured (comparative known Persian material, linguistic details, contents, presence of Jewish theology, the Persian attitude to local religions, and Persian letter-writing formulas) and concludes that all the documents are late post-Farsi works and likely forgeries, simply that some features advise a 18-carat Farsi correspondence behind some of them.^[27]

Run across also [edit]

Esdras
Ezra-Nehemiah

References [edit]

^ Bogaert, Pierre-Maurice (2000). "Les livres d'Esdras et leur numérotation dans l'histoire du canon de la Bible latin". Revue Bénédictine. 110 (1–2): 5–26. doi:10.1484/J.RB.5.100750.
^ Albright, William (1963). The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra: An Historical Survey . Harpercollins College Div. ISBN0-06-130102-seven.
^ Throntveit, Mark A., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (John Knox Printing, 1992) pp.one–three
^ Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Judaism, the first phase" (Eerdmans, 2009) p.87
^ Torrey, C. C. (April 1908). "The Aramaic Portions of Ezra". The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures. 24 (3): 209–281. doi:10.1086/369608. JSTOR 527607.
^ Fensham, F. Charles, "The books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Eerdmans, 1982) p. 10
^ Coggins, R.J., "The books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Cambridge University Press, 1976) p. xi
^ Fensham, F. Charles, "The books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Eerdmans, 1982) pp. 10–xvi
^ Min, Kyung-Jin, "The Levitical authorship of Ezra-Nehemiah" (T&T Clark, 2004) pp. 31–32
^ Roman Ghirshman, Iran (1954), Penguin Books, p 191.
^ Graham, M.P, and McKenzie, Steven L., "The Hebrew Bible today: an introduction to critical issues" (Westminster John Knox Printing, 1998) p. 202
^ Bogaert, Pierre-Maurice (2000). "Les livres d'Esdras et leur numérotation dans l'histoire du canon de la Bible latin". Revue Bénédictine. 110 (1–ii): 5–26. doi:10.1484/J.RB.5.100750.
^ Gallagher, Edmon Fifty.; Meade, John D. (2017), The Biblical Canon Lists from Early on Christianity, OUP, p. 269
^ Bogaert, Pierre-Maurice (2000). "Les livres d'Esdras et leur numérotation dans l'histoire du canon de la Bible latin". Revue Bénédictine. 110 (1–2): 5–26. doi:10.1484/J.RB.5.100750.
^ "St. Jerome, The Prologue on the Book of Ezra: English translation".
^ Roman Ghirshman, Islamic republic of iran (1954), Penguin Books, p 191.
^ One thousand. Patrick Graham, The "Chronicler's History": Ezra-Nehemiah, i–2 Chronicles in Graham, M.P, and McKenzie, Steven L., "The Hebrew Bible today: an introduction to disquisitional issues" (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), pp. 204–05
^ R.J. Coggins, "The books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Cambridge University Press, 1976)p.107, quoted in Throntveit, Mark A., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (John Knox Press, 1992) p.3
^ Throntveit, Mark A., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (John Knox Printing, 1992) pp.ii–4
^ Throntveit, Marker A., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (John Knox Press, 1992) p.three
^ Throntveit, Marking A., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (John Knox Press, 1992) p.two
^ Throntveit, Marking A., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (John Knox Press, 1992) pp1-3
^ Fensham, F. Charles, "The books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Eerdmans, 1982) pp.i–2 ff.
^ Pakkala, Juha, "Ezra the scribe: the development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8" (Walter de Gryter, 2004) p.16
^ Grabbe, 50.L., "A history of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Catamenia, Volume 1" (T&T Clark, 2004) p.71
^ Pakkala, Juha (2004). Ezra the Scribe. ISBN9783110182804.
^ Grabbe, L.L., "A history of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume one" (T&T Clark, 2004) p.78

External links [edit]

Commentaries

Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary" (Eerdmans, 1988)
Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Judaism, the first stage" (Eerdmans, 2009)
Coggins, R.J., "The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Cambridge Academy Printing, 1976)
Ecker, Ronald L., "Ezra and Nehemiah", Ecker's Biblical Web Pages, 2007.
Fensham, F. Charles, "The books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Eerdmans, 1982)
Grabbe, L.L., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (Routledge, 1998)
Grabbe, L.L., "A history of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume 1" (T&T Clark, 2004)
Pakkala, Juha, "Ezra the scribe: the development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8" (Walter de Gryter, 2004)
Throntveit, Mark A., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (John Knox Press, 1992)

Translations

Ezra (Judaica Press) – translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org
Bible Gateway (opens at NIV version)
Ezra – King James Version
Bible: Ezra public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Volume of Ezra History books
Preceded by Daniel	Hebrew Bible	Succeeded by Nehemiah
Preceded past ane–two Chronicles	Western Old Testament
Preceded past 1 Esdras	Eastern Quondam Testament

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Ezra