Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/562

Rh 542 E S D R A S relating how the young Zerubbabel gained the ear of Darius, and successfully reminded him of a forgotten vow to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, and to restore the holy vessels and permit the return of the citizens to their places, is, as has already been indicated, either an original contribu tion or one derived from some source which is no longer accessible to us. Chap. v. 7-70, containing the list of those who returned with Zerubbabel under &quot; Darius/ with an account of the progress of the temple under &quot; Cyrus,&quot; and of the subsequent interruption &quot; for the space of two years,&quot; until the reign of &quot; Darius,&quot; is derived from Ezra ii. 1-iv. 5. Chaps, vi. and vii., corresponding to Ezra v. and vi., relate how the work was resumed under Darius, and completed in the sixth year of his reign. Chap. viii. 1-ix. 30 repeats the narrative of Ezra vii. -x., and chap. ix. 37-55 that of Neh. vii. 73-viiL 13. The abruptness which characterizes the book as we now have it, both in its beginning and at its close, suggests the idea that possibly it may be merely a fragment of some larger compilation to which reference is perhaps made in 2 Mace. ii. 13. In its present form it has little to distinguish it as a composition from the work of the Chronicler, of which it is virtually an incomplete abridgment. The special object which the compiler may have had in view is indeed not easily conjectured. Some writers think they can discover a twofold purpose, to give prominence to the new story about Zerubbabel, and to remove chronological difficulties which are raised by the canonical book of Ezra. If the latter was indeed part of his aim, he has been singularly unsuccessful. Far from obviating any of the diffi culty caused by the Chronicler s having apparently intro duced Artaxerxes Longimanus and Xerxes between Cyrus and Darius Hystaspis, he has landed himself in new and glaring inconsistencies (comp., e.g., ii. 10, 14, with iv. 44). A more likely hypothesis is that his design was to give to the public something more readable than the bald and literal Alexandrian translation. Critics are not unanimous upon the question whether he took his work directly from the Hebrew or from the present LXX. version. The majority are in favour of the former view; but Keil has the influential support of Schiirer (in Herzog a Encydopadie, i. 497, 1877) in the latter opinion. It is uncertain where ho wrote. Egypt and Palestine have both been suggested, but without adequate data for a definite conclusion. Who ever he was he had a good command of Greek, nor was he ignorant of Hebrew. As for the date of the work, all we know is that it was already in existence and in repute in the time of Josephus That historian has unfortunately followed its order of events in preference to that of the canonical Chronicler, and so has brought his narrative into in extricable confusion in all that relates to the Persian period. Unmistakable references to the work as authoritative are to be met with in Clement of Alexandria, in Cyprian, in Athanasius, and in Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xviii. 36). Jerome, on the other hand, in his preface to Ezra and Nehemiah (which is to be found in all modern edi tions of the Vulgate), has condemned both books of Esdras as &quot;somnia&quot; and &quot; procul abjicienda.&quot; It does not occur in any list either of canonical or of &quot; ecclesi astical &quot; writings. 1 Nor does its place in the Alexandrian canon seem to have been altogether undisputed. For it does not occur in all Latin Bibles presumably derived from the LXX.; and towards the beginning of the IGth century it was believed not to exist at all in Greek, so rare had it become. 1 Unless by 6 iro in-fit* or Pastor of Athauasius (Epistola festalis), Hugo a S. Caro, and others tins book &amp;gt;e iieant. But it is more pro bable that the &quot; Shepherd&quot; of Hernias .s intended. See De Wette- Schrader, Einl. sec. 31, note b. By Augustine s &quot; Esdrse libriduo (De Doctr. Chr. ii. 8) we are probably to understand our Ezra and Nehemiah ; but compare De Civ. Dei, I.e. 2 ESDRAS, the liber quartus Esdrce of the Vulgate 2 (Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 Esdras being the other three), was originally written in Greek, 3 and probably entitled aTroKaAui/as &quot;EcrSpa (so Fritzsche ; but Hilgenfeld argues for &quot;Epas 6 TT/DCX^T^S). With the exception of incon siderable fragments, the original (Greek) text has been lost ; but numerous ancient translations still testify to the wide-spread popularity which the work enjoyed during the earlier centuries of the Christian era. Five distinct ver sions are now known to scholars, the Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Armenian. Of these the Latin is the oldest and the best. In most of its MSS., and in all the eastern versions, the first two and the last two chapters of the received Vulgate text are omitted ; and eighty-three verses are inserted between vii. 35 and vii. 36. The genuineness of these verses cannot be doubted : they were known to Ambrose, Vigilantius, and Jerome, and in 1875 were rediscovered by Bensly in a MS. of the 9th cen tury. The four chapters just mentioned Fritzsche proposes to call the fifth book of Ezra. They are certainly dis tinct from the original 2 Esdras, and are by general consent assigned to a Christian authorship of or near the 3d century. The apocalyptic character of 2 Esdras has already been indicated (vol. ii. p. 175-6). Its seven visions all have refer ence to the future of Jerusalem, the central question being whether and when the city is to be restored and its enemies punished. The fifth vision (xi. 1-xii. 51) is of chief im portance to the critic ; his conclusions upon the date and origin of the book must depend almost entirely upon his in terpretation of the symbolical eagle, the wings, the feathers, and the heads there described. According to Laurence, C. J. van der Vlis, and Liicke (2d edition), the vision is to be explained as having reference to the whole course of Roman history from Romulus to Julius Caesar. The three heads are Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar ; and the work was composed about the time of the assassination of the last-named. Hilgenfeld, in his earlier interpretation of the vision (1857), referred it to the Ptolemies; but in. 1867 he substituted the Seleucidse, while adhering to his original opinion that the three heads are Caesar, Antony, and Octavian, and that the work was written immediately after the death of Antony. The majority of modern critics be lieve that Rome under the empire is intended ; but there are numerous differences as to the details of this interpre tation. Gutschmid and some others identify the three heads with Septimius Severus, Caracalla, and Geta, thus placing the date of the composition of this part of the work as late as the year 218 A.D. 4 But the more general opinion since Corrodi (1781) has been that the three Flavian em perors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, are intended by that symbol. Corrodi himself and Ewald assign the book to the reign of Titus ; Volkmar, Langen, and Renan to that of Nerva ; and Gfrorer, Dillmann, Wieseler, and Schiirer to that of Domitian. On the whole, it may be said that there is a growing consensus of opinion in favour o&quot;f a date some where between 81 and 97 A.D. As upon the question of date, so upon the question of authorship, critics are now more nearly agreed than formerly in the belief that the book belongs to the Jewish cycle of apocalyptic literature, and that its author was pro bably a Pharisee, and possibly one who may have fought on the walls of Jerusalem in the final struggle. It is, indeed, 2 Though it begins there with the words &quot;Liber Esdroe prophetae secundus.&quot; In the Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions it is styled the first -of Ezra. In the Armenian it is the third. 3 Ewald is almost alone in claiming for it a Hebrew original (Gesch. vii. 69). See also Derenbourg, Revue critique for 1876, p. 132. 4 Gutschmid agrees with Hilgenfeld as to the date of the rest of tha work.