§ 2. TITLE AND STANDING

The book is known as (1) Esdras A or 1 Esdras, so BBA, L, S, and English Bibles since the Geneva edition of 1560 (where the name ‘Ezra’ is reserved for the canonical book); or (2) as Esdras B or 2 Esdras, so BL (where 1 Es. = Ezra and Nehemiah); or (3) as 3 Esdras, so Latin Bibles since Jerome, the ‘Great Bible’ of 1539, and also the Anglican Article VI in the Prayer-book. The name 3 Paraleipomen̄on (i.e. Chronicles) is found in a Florentine Greek MS., cf. the title Sermones Dierum (the Heb. title of Chron.) Esdrae in Hilary’s list (H. B. Swete, Introd. to O. T. in Greek, 210). It is also styled Tertius Neemiae by Franciscus Robles, 1532 (Lupton, 4). A convenient name for the book is the ‘Greek Ezra’, to distinguish it from the other and literal translation of the canonical books.2

It is a significant fact that, as emphasized by Whiston in 1722, the Jewish historian Josephus uses E for his account of King Josiah, follows its order of events, and is influenced by its language, although for the other books he employs the LXX. Equally significant is the appearance of E with the canonical E-N in the best Greek MSS., either before (BBA, and presumably א) or after (BL) these. It is quoted by several early Greek and Latin Fathers,1 and Augustine and Origen cite 4:41 and 59 respectively from ‘Esdras’ without indicating that another than the canonical book is meant. Moreover, a Greek synopsis (Lag. 84) and a Syriac Catena (see on E 9:55) treat E as Esdras, and give the title 2 Esdras to N2. But Jerome meanwhile had condemned the two apocryphal books of Esdras with their ‘dreams’ (Praef. Esd. et Neh.), and his ruling was confirmed in due course by the Church. E is wanting in the early MSS. of the Vulgate, and it was rejected by the Council of Florence (1442). It is found in the Latin bibles of 1474, 1480, &c., but is regarded as apocryphal by De Lyra (1498), Karlstadt (1520), and Stephanus (1528). It is wanting in the Complutensian Polyglot (1514–17), and Luther ignored it—though not perhaps primarily (Bayer, 6 seq.)—for its triviality. There was even a belief that it did not exist in Greek (Torrey, 13 n. 1). The Council of Trent rejected it in 1546, but it is printed in an appendix in small type in the Tridentine edition of the Vulgate. Although it appears as 1 Esdras in the 1587 edition of the Septuagint (Rome), it was omitted three years later from the Sixtine Vulgate (Rome, 1590). In spite of the occasional attention paid to it by a few scholars, E has since too often been overlooked and neglected, and has only recently come into deserved prominence through the persistence of Sir Henry H. Howorth from 1893 onwards (see further Torrey, 13 seqq.).

E, on closer inspection, proves to be no free or less careful treatment of the Greek translation of the canonical books, as had been held by Keil, Zöckler, Bissell, König (Einleitung, § 97), and formerly Schürer (contrast his Gesch. Volk. Isr., 3rd ed., 3. 328). There is an overwhelming body of opinion that it is translated from a Semitic (Hebrew and Aramaic) original. There are, it is true, various readings, identical or apparently connected with the literal Greek translation, but they do not outweigh the many considerable and characteristic differences of rendering, the variations in the transliteration or translation of proper names, and the numerous readings in E which can be explained only from the MT (see especially Bayer, 156 seqq.). That E is an independent version older than the B of the canonical books was suggested by Grotius (1644, see PSBA, 25:139), Whiston (1722), Pohlmann (1859), Ewald (1864), Lagarde (1874), and others, and has since been more cogently shown by Howorth and Torrey. It is pointed out that the B of E-N presents features characteristic of Theodotion’s translation (viz. transliteration of gentilies, and of difficult or uncertain words) and parallel to his translation of Daniel. The B of E, on the other hand, as Gwynn also noticed, finds parallels in the ‘Septuagint’ text of Daniel, especially the first six chapters. Moreover, the S of E claims to be made from the Septuagint, and it is very probable that E took the place of the B of E-N in Origen’s Hexapla. Volz, however, has properly drawn attention to the varying quality of the different sections of E, a feature which ‘excludes the supposition that the Greek version can have been produced aus einem Guss’. In general, all the evidence tends to show that E held a more authoritative position than has been usually conceded to it (in consequence of Jerome), but that its unevenness as a translation and the complexity of its contents make its true origin and structure a more intricate problem.3