Latin Apocalypse of Ezra

In the early centuries of the Christian era, a number of texts called the Apocalypse of Ezra were in circulation among Jews and Christians. The popularity of the original Judahite Apocalypse of Ezra seems to have inspired a number of 'Christian' Apocalypses of Ezra, presumably beginning with the 'Latin' Apocalypse of Ezra which claimed to be the 'second book of the prophet Ezra.'The prophet Shealtiel was not Ezra the scribe, whom the books of Ezra are named after in the Septuagint and Masoretic text, but the son of former King Jehoiachin of Judah, who had been taken captive by the Babylonians in 597 BC. However, the author of the Latin Apocalypse of Ezra, explicitly states that the author was Ezra the scribe, and includes his genealogy. Ezra the scribe was a Levite and is recorded as operating in Jerusalem in the later Persian era, circa 351 BC. This suggests that the author of the “Second Apocalypse of Ezra” did not understand much about the original Apocalypse of Ezra. In the Judahite apocalypse, he is called Ezra by the messenger Uriel, which translates as “helper” or “assistant,” and the term is treated as a title, not his name. Conversely, Ezra the scribe, who lived 250 years later, was named Ezra. During the intervening centuries, the title had become a name, demonstrating how widespread the text was in the Babylonian and Persian eras.The shorter Latin Apocalypse of Ezra has become fused with the Judahite Apocalypse of Ezra in most Catholic and Protestant translations, however, scholars divide the Catholic version of 4th Esdras (Protestant 2nd Esdras) into three sections, with only the core twelve chapters that correspond to the Orthodox and Ethiopian versions of the book labeled as 4th Ezra. The opening two chapters, which are only found in the Catholic version, are labeled as 5th Ezra, while the last 2 chapters found in the Catholic version, as well as fragments surviving in an ancient Greek translation, are labeled 6ᵗʰ Ezra. One of the Greek fragments, Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1010, is the oldest surviving fragment of the various Apocalypses of Ezra, dated to the 4th century AD, unfortunately, only two paragraphs survive. 5th Ezra and 6th Ezra appear to have originally been one document, which is commonly called the Latin Apocalypse of Ezra, although it was almost certainly not written in Latin.There is no consensus of when the Latin Apocalypse of Ezra was written, however, it appears to be an early Christian era reworking of an Aramaic Apocalypse. The Apocalypse’s claim to being the second book of the prophet Ezra implies that the author was positioning it as the sequel to the Judahite Apocalypse of Ezra, and as such it does not repeat the same material as the Judahite Apocalypse, unlike some of the other apocalypses. 5th and 6th Ezra appear to have been in circulation together before being united with the Judahite apocalypse but do not appear to have originated as one text. 5th Ezra appears to be a Greco-Roman era introduction to the older 6ᵗʰ Ezra prophecy, which reattributes it to Ezra the scribe as the author does not appear to have understood that they were two different people who lived centuries apart.

© 2025 Digital Ink Productions (Lydbog): 9781739069186

Release date

Lydbog: 4. maj 2025