Book of Ezra 1-5
People move back to Jerusalem and try to get God to like them again.
After all the violence in the previous books, it's nice to read a few chapters where the LORD has no input.
I like the names Artaxerxes and Asnapper
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So.
ReplyDeleteEzra/Nehemiah is actually one book. Ezra doesn't show up until Ezra 7 or something and his story is finished in Nehemiah.
The text seems pretty disordered. Chapter 4 contains material decades out of place- involving rebuilding Jerusalem's defences in Nehemiah's time. Ezra's timeline is a bit uncertain, he could have done his stuff before or after Nehy. Or, he was made up.
Personally, I find Nehemiah's 1st-person account a lot more convincing than Ezra's.
The Apocryphal book 1st Esdras is an expanded/edited version of Ezra, in Greek based on a lost Hebrew/Aramaic original.
Oh yeah, certain passages in E/N are in Aramaic. For starters, all of 4.8->6.18. Even the text between the edicts.
Is Ezra 5 the first time we see the word "Jew"?
ReplyDelete@Skepticali,
ReplyDeleteIf first appears in 2 Kings 16:6 in the KJV and several other versions but not until Ezra 4:23 in The New International version for some reason.