Scriptures & Texts
1 Esdras
Deuterocanonical Books
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A Greek retelling of the return from exile, running parallel to the canonical Ezra-Nehemiah and the close of Chronicles, and best known for a scene absent from the Hebrew: the contest of the three young bodyguards of Darius over what is strongest, won by the youth who argues that women are strong but truth is strongest of all. Its naming is the most tangled in the whole canon. The Greek Septuagint calls it Esdras A; the Vulgate, following Jerome, called it 3 Esdras and judged it apocryphal; English Apocrypha call it 1 Esdras; the Slavonic Bible calls it 2 Esdras. The Greek and Russian Orthodox churches receive it, canonically in the Slavonic tradition, while the Catholic Church placed it in an appendix to the Vulgate and Protestant Bibles set it in the Apocrypha. Judaism does not receive it.
Facts
Origins
Era of Composition Attributed Author / CompilerAnonymous; a Greek recension of Ezra material, c. 2nd-1st c. BCE (critical) 1 Status
Canonical StatusSourced to the subject's own accountDeuterocanonical 2Tradition: Eastern Orthodoxy Canonical StatusNon-canonical 1Tradition: Judaism Canonical StatusNon-canonical 1Tradition: Roman Catholicism Text
Literary Form Structure
Structure9 chapters; a Greek retelling of 2 Chronicles 35-36, Ezra, and Nehemiah 8 1 Learn More
A Greek Retelling of Ezra's Reform
First Esdras (called 3 Esdras in the Latin tradition and Esdras A in the Greek) is a book preserved in Greek in the Septuagint that largely parallels material found in the Hebrew Bible (the last chapters of 2 Chronicles, the whole of the book of Ezra, and part of Nehemiah), recounting the end of the Kingdom of Judah, the Babylonian exile, the return under Cyrus, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the reforms of the scribe Ezra. It is not, however, a simple translation: it rearranges the order of events and, most strikingly, contains a passage with no parallel in the canonical books, the celebrated "Debate of the Three Guardsmen" (chapters 3-4).
In this episode three young bodyguards of the Persian king Darius compete to name the strongest thing in the world: one says wine, one the king, and the third, identified with Zerubbabel, says that women are strong but truth is strongest of all and conquers everything. His answer wins him the king's favour and the commission to rebuild Jerusalem. The book was probably compiled in the second century BCE, and its relationship to the canonical Ezra-Nehemiah, whether it draws on them or on a common older source, remains debated.
Canon and Value
The canonical standing of 1 Esdras is unusually tangled, reflecting the confusing history of the various "books of Esdras." In the Eastern Orthodox churches it is received as canonical Scripture. In the Latin West, Jerome regarded it as apocryphal, and the Roman Catholic Church did not include it among the deuterocanonical books defined at the Council of Trent; in the Vulgate and in Catholic reckoning it is set apart, and it appears (as 3 Esdras) in an appendix.
Protestant Bibles that print the Apocrypha include it under the name 1 Esdras. Because so much of its content duplicates the canonical Ezra and Chronicles, its chief independent value lies in the Debate of the Three Guardsmen and in the light its variations shed on the textual history of Ezra-Nehemiah and on how the story of the Return was retold in the Hellenistic period. Its memorable maxim that "great is truth, and mighty above all things" (magna est veritas) passed into wide proverbial use. Scholars study 1 Esdras chiefly for the witness it bears to the fluid state of these historical traditions in Second Temple Judaism and for its distinctive literary shaping of them.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Held Differently
Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.
Anglicanism, Denominations One of the two Esdras books named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, numbered differently across manuscript traditions, among the books the Church of England reads for example of life and instruction of manners, but does not apply to establish doctrine.
Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.
Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.
Named in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, 1571, among the books the Church reads for example of life and instruction of manners but does not apply to establish any doctrine. Printed and appointed to be read, at a status deliberately short of the canon affirmed at Trent in 1546.
Belongs to Tradition
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Excluded from Canon
Anabaptism, Denominations This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
Baptist, Denominations This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
The Church of Sweden does not include 1 Esdras in its Bible. Its canon follows the Lutheran Reformation's return to the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible for the Old Testament, and 1 Esdras, read as scripture within Eastern Orthodoxy, falls outside that narrower list along with the rest of the deuterocanonical and apocryphal writings the Reformers set aside.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America does not include 1 Esdras in its Bible. Like other Lutheran bodies it holds to the Reformation's narrower Old Testament canon, the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible, and 1 Esdras, read as scripture within Eastern Orthodoxy, falls outside that list along with the rest of the deuterocanonical and apocryphal writings.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
Lutheranism, Denominations Lutheranism does not canonize 1 Esdras. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
Protestantism, Denominations The Protestant confessional consensus holds a thirty-nine-book Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, against the wider canon affirmed at Trent in 1546 and at Jerusalem in 1672. Lutheran and Anglican practice retains several of these books as edifying reading while denying them authority to establish doctrine.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
Sources
1. An Introduction to the Apocrypha
Bruce M. Metzger, Oxford University Press, 1957The chapter on 1 Esdras and the tangled numbering of the Esdras booksView the Source 2. The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)
Synod of Jerusalem, Eastern Orthodox Church, 1672On the reception of the books of the Greek Bible beyond the Hebrew canonthe holders' own accountView the Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
The Belgic Confession
The Westminster Confession of Faith
The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority
Lee Martin McDonald, Hendrickson, 2007On the divided reception of 1 Esdras between the Eastern and Western churchesView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source Essays About This Entity (1 essay)
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