Scriptures & Texts
2 Esdras
Pseudepigrapha
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
A Jewish apocalypse, also called 4 Ezra, whose core is a sequence of seven visions in which Ezra questions an angel, named as Uriel, about the justice of God after the destruction of Jerusalem, and is answered concerning the age to come and the signs of the end. That Jewish core, written after 70 CE, was later given a Christian opening and a Christian close, so the book as it stands is the work of three hands; it survives principally in Latin and in Eastern versions rather than in Greek. No church receives it as fully canonical: the Vulgate calls it 4 Esdras and prints it in an appendix, the Slavonic Bible calls it 3 Esdras, the Ethiopian tradition values it highly, and Protestant Bibles place it in the Apocrypha as 2 Esdras. Its verse on the souls that await their reward supplied the words of the Requiem, requiem aeternam dona eis.
Facts
Origins
Era of Composition Attributed Author / CompilerAn anonymous Jewish apocalypse c. 100 CE with later Christian framing (critical) 1 Attributed Author / CompilerAscribed to Ezra the scribe (traditional) 1 Structure
StructureA Jewish apocalypse (chs. 3-14, "4 Ezra") 1 StructureFramed by Christian additions (chs. 1-2, 15-16) 1 Status
Canonical StatusApocryphal 1Tradition: Roman Catholicism Canonical StatusNon-canonical 1Tradition: Judaism Text
Literary Form Learn More
An Apocalypse of the Exile's Aftermath
Second Esdras (also known, confusingly, as 4 Esdras or 4 Ezra, and in parts as 5 Ezra and 6 Ezra) is a composite apocalyptic work quite different in character from the other books of Esdras. Its core, chapters 3-14, is a Jewish apocalypse usually called 4 Ezra, written in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple by Rome in 70 CE, though set fictively in the era after the earlier Babylonian destruction.
In it the seer, identified with Ezra, presses God with the hardest questions raised by that catastrophe: why God has allowed his people to suffer at the hands of a wicked empire, why so few will be saved, and how divine justice can be reconciled with the misery of history. Through a series of dialogues with the angel Uriel and a sequence of visions, among them a mourning woman transformed into a rebuilt city, and an eagle representing the Roman Empire, Ezra is led from protest toward a vision of a coming age, a final judgement, and a Messiah. To this Jewish core, Christian hands later added an opening (chapters 1-2) and a closing (chapters 15-16).
Text, Canon and Afterlife
Second Esdras survives not in Greek but chiefly in Latin and in several other ancient versions (Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian and others), the original Hebrew or Greek having been lost. Its canonical status is marginal everywhere. It was not received as canonical by the rabbis, nor by the Eastern Orthodox in the strict sense, nor defined as deuterocanonical by the Roman Catholic Council of Trent; in the Latin tradition it was relegated, with the other non-canonical Esdras books, to an appendix to the Vulgate, printed after the New Testament so as not to be lost.
Protestant Bibles that include the Apocrypha print it as 2 Esdras. Despite this marginal status the book was widely read and loved in medieval Christianity: it is the source of the liturgical antiphon "Requiem aeternam," the "rest eternal" prayed for the dead, and its brooding meditation on suffering and theodicy gave it lasting spiritual weight. Modern scholars prize 4 Ezra as one of the most profound Jewish responses to the trauma of 70 CE and as a key witness to Jewish apocalyptic and messianic thought at the end of the Second Temple period.
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
Excluded from Canon
Anabaptism, Denominations This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 Esdras, the Ezra apocalypse, and its composite Christian framingView 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 2 Esdras, its exclusion from the councils, and its standing in the Ethiopian traditionView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source Essays About This Entity (1 essay)
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.