Date.—The book must be placed between 300 B.C. and A.D. 100, when it was used by Josephus. It is idle to attempt any nearer limits until definite conclusions have been reached on the chief problems of the book.
MSS. and Versions.—The book is found in B and A. The latter seems to have preserved the more ancient form of the text, as it is generally that followed by Josephus. The Old Latin in two recensions is published by Sabatier, Bibliorum sacrorum Latinae versiones antiquae, iii. Another Latin translation is given in Lagarde (Septuag. Studien, ii., 1892). In Syriac the text is found only in the Syro-Hexaplar of Paul of Tella (A.D. 616). See Walton’s Polyglott. There is also an Ethiopic version edited by Dillmann (Bibl. Vet. Test. Aeth. v., 1894) and an Armenian.
Literature.—Exegesis: Fritzsche, Exeget. Handb. zu den Apokr. (1851); Zöckler, Die Apokryphen, 155-161 (1891); Bissell in Lange-Schaff’s Comm. (1880); Lupton in Speaker’s Comm. (1888); Ball, notes to 1 Esdr. in the Variorum Apocrypha. Introduction and critical Inquiries: Trendelenburg, “Apocr. Esra,” in Eichhorn’s Allgem. Bibl. der bibl. Litt. i. 178-232 (1787); Pohlmann, “Über das Ansehen der apokr. dritten Buchs Esras,” in Tübingen Theol. Quartalschrift, 257-275 (1859); Sir H. Howorth, “Character and Importance of 1 Esdras,” in the Academy (1893), pp. 13, 60, 106, 174, 326, 524; and further studies entitled “Some Unconventional Views on the Text of the Bible,” in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1901, pp. 147-159; 306-330, 1902, June and November.
(R. H. C.)
[1] “At the Council of Trent (when the Septuagint Canon was virtually accepted as authoritative), by a most curious aberration, Esdras iii. and iv. and the Epistle of Manasseh were alone excluded from the canon and remitted to our appendix.”—Howorth, “Unconventional Views on the Text of the Bible,” in the P.S.B.A., 1901, p. 149.
EZRA, FOURTH BOOK (or Apocalypse) OF. This is the most profound and touching of the Jewish Apocalypses. It stands in the relation of a sister work to the Apocalypse of Baruch, but though the relation is so close, they have many points of divergence. Thus, whereas the former represents the ordinary Judaism of the 1st century of the Christian era, the teaching of 4 Ezra on the Law, Works, Justification, Original Sin and Free Will approximates to the school of Shammai and serves to explain the Pauline doctrines on those subjects; but to this subject we shall return.
Original Language and Versions.—In the Latin version our book consists of sixteen chapters, of which, however, only iii.-xiv. are found in the other versions. To iii.-xiv., accordingly, the present notice is confined. After the example of most of the Latin MSS. we designate the book 4 Ezra (see Bensly-James, Fourth Book of Ezra, pp. xxiv-xxvii). In the First Arabic and Ethiopic versions it is called 1 Ezra; in some Latin MSS. and in the English Authorized Version it is 2 Ezra, and in the Armenian 3 Ezra. Chapters i.-ii. are sometimes called 3 Ezra, and xv.-xvi. 5 Ezra. All the versions go back to a Greek text. This is shown by the late Greek apocalypse of Ezra (Tischendorf, Apocalypses Apocryphae, 1866, pp. 24-33), the author of which was acquainted with the Greek of 4 Ezra; also by quotations from it in Barn, iv. 4; xii. 1 = 4 Ezra xii. 10 sqq., v. 5; Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. 16 (here first expressly cited) = 4 Ezra v. 35, &c. (see Bensly-James, op. cit. pp. xxvii-xxxviii). The derivation of the Latin version from the Greek is obvious when we consider its very numerous Graecisms. Thus the genitive is found after the comparative (v. 13) horum majora; xi. 29 duorum capitum majus, even the genitive absolute as in x. 9, the double negative, de and ex with the genitive. Peculiar genders can only be accounted for by the influence of the original forms in Greek, as x. 23 signaculum (σφραγίς) . . . tradita est; xi. 4 caput (κεφαλή) ... sed et ipsa. In vi. 25 we have the Greek attraction of the relative—omnibus istis quibus praedixi tibi. In his Messias Judaeorum (1869), pp. 36-110, Hilgenfeld has given a reconstruction of the Greek text. Till 1896 only Ewald believed that 4 Ezra was written originally in Hebrew. In that year Wellhausen (Gött. Gel. Anz. pp. 12-13) and Charles (Apoc. Bar. p. lxxii) pointed out that a Hebrew original must be assumed on various grounds; and this view the former established in his Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten, vi. 234-240 (1899). Of the numerous grounds for this assumption it will be necessary only to adduce such constructions as “de quo me interrogas de eo,” iv. 28, and xiii. 26, “qui per semet ipsum liberabit” (= אשר-בו) = “through whom he will deliver,” or to point to such a mistranslation as vii. 33, “longanimitas congregabitur,” where for “congregabitur” (= יאסף) we require “evanescet,” which is another and the actual meaning of the Hebrew verb in this passage. The same mistranslation is found in the Vulgate in Hosea iv. 3. Gunkel has adopted this view in his German translation of the book in Kautzsch’s Apok. und Pseud, des A. Testaments, ii. 332-333, and brought forward in confirmation the following remarkable instance in viii. 23, where though the Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic and Armenian Versions read testificatur, the Second Arabic version and the Apostolic Constitutions have μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, which are to be explained as translations of עמדת לעד (לע. Another interesting case is found in xiv. 3, where the Latin and all other versions but Arabic[2] read super rubum and the Arabic[2] in monte Sinai. Here there is a corruption of סנה “bush” into סיני “Sinai.”
Latin Version.—All the older editions of this version, as those of Fabricius, Sabatier, Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, Fritzsche, as well as in the older editions of the Bible, are based ultimately on only one MS., the Codex Sangermanensis (written A.D. 822), as Gildemeister proved in 1865 from the fact that the large fragment between verses 36 and 37 in chapter vii., which is omitted in all the above editions, originated through the excision of a leaf in this MS. A splendid edition of this version based on MSS. containing the missing fragment, which have been subsequently discovered, has been published by Bensly-James, op. cit. This edition has taken account of all the important MSS. known, save one at Leon in Spain.