MrMacSon wrote:2 Esdras 7
I understand Esdras is a Greco-Latin variation of the name of the scribe Ezra found in the titles of several books in or related to the Bible.
There are several references to Jeshua in Ezra and Nehemiah, but the books are not numbered the same way. Are they similar stories?
That version of the Bible you used is an updated edition of the 1611 KJV, which originally included the Deutero-Canonical books (aka "the Apocrypha") that fundies stopped including in their reprints and editions of the KJV.
Kevin Edgecomb, an up and coming graduate student of the Eastern Orthodox variety of Christian Fundamentalism, has created the following table of relationships between a bewildering variety of Ezra books:
Version/Document |
Book of Ezra (10 chap) |
Book of Nehemiah (13 chap) |
Paraphrase of 2 Chronicles (35-36); the whole book of Ezra; Nehemiah 7:38-8:12; plus a tale about Darius' bodyguards |
Ezra Apocalypse (Latin only, 16 chap) |
|---|
| LXX/Old Greek |
2 Esdras (1-10) |
2 Esdras (11-23) |
1 Esdras |
N/A |
| Latin Vulgate Bible |
1 Esdras |
2 Esdras |
3 Esdras |
4 Esdras (16 chapters) |
| Many later Latin MSS |
1 Esdras |
1 Esdras |
3 Esdras |
2 Esdras = chs 1-2. 4 Esdras = chs 3-14. 5 Esdras = chs 15-16. |
| Douay Rheims (1609-1610) |
1 Esdras |
2 Esdras |
3 Esdras |
4 Esdras (16 chapters) |
| Russian Bible Moscow Patriarchate (1956) |
1 Esdras |
Nehemiah |
2 Esdras |
3 Esdras (16 chapters) |
| KJV & NRSV |
Ezra |
Nehemiah |
1 Esdras |
2 Esdras (16 chapters) |
| Scholarly Literature |
Ezra |
Nehemiah |
3 Ezra |
5 Ezra = chs 1-2. 4 Ezra = chs 3-14. 6 Ezra = chs 15-16. |
|
|
|
|
|
The version of the bible you were citing is the "Third Millennium Bible w/ Apocrypha" (TMBA) which is an update of the 1611 KJV. The KJV was originally published with the Deutero-Canonical books of the Bible (those books that were in Roman Catholic bibles, which included some books that were in the Greek or Latin bible translations used by the church, but were not in the Hebrew bible).
As you can see from the table, what was called 2 Esdras in the KJV (and the TMBA) is what everyone else calls the Latin Apocalypse of Ezra, which does not overlap in content any of the Hebrew books of Ezra or Nehemiah. All that "Scholarly Literature" stuff about breaking down chs 1-2 as 5th Ezra, chs 3-14 as 4 Ezra, and chs 15-16 as 6 Ezra just confuses things, as I am not aware of any scholars using those terms, unless it is peculiar to Eastern Orthodox scholarship. FWIW, chs 3-14 are believed to constitute a Jewish work that no longer survives in whatever language it was written in, and which has been Christianized, while chs 1-2 & 15-16 were written entirely by Christians.
DCH
PS: In 4 Ezra, Ezra gets high on mushrooms and becomes a mad dictator:
From 4 Ezra, chapter 14:
37: So I took the five men, as he commanded me, and we proceeded to the field, and remained there.
38: And on the next day, behold, a voice called me, saying, "Ezra, open your mouth and drink what I give you to drink."
39: Then I opened my mouth, and behold, a full cup was offered to me; it was full of something like water, but its color was like fire.
40: And I took it and drank; and when I had drunk it, my heart poured forth understanding, and wisdom increased in my breast, for my spirit retained its memory;
41: and my mouth was opened, and was no longer closed.
42: And the Most High gave understanding to the five men, and by turns they wrote what was dictated, in characters which they did not know. They sat forty days, and wrote during the daytime, and ate their bread at night.
43: As for me, I spoke in the daytime and was not silent at night.
44: So during the forty days ninety-four books were written.
45: And when the forty days were ended, the Most High spoke to me, saying, "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first and let the worthy and the unworthy read them;
46: but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people.
47: For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge."
48: And I did so.
I speculate thusly (in my best imitation of Sheldon from the TV series Big Bang Theory, about crazy nerds with girlfriends, which demonstrates that it could not possibly be a reality show) on the supposition that the liquid he was given to drink was the juice of the Amanita Muscaria mushroom (the red capped mushrooms with white spots often depicted in children's books and Smurf cartoons), which J Gordon Wasson has documented was used by many Asiatics and Germans as an intoxicant, and which he believed was also used among the Indians as Soma, and among Iranians/Zoroastrians as Haoma.
