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2 Esdras

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2 Esdras

2 Esdras, also called 4 Esdras, Latin Esdras, or Latin Ezra, is an apocalyptic book in some English versions of the Bible. Tradition ascribes it to Ezra, a scribe and priest of the fifth century BC, whom the book identifies with the sixth-century figure Shealtiel.

2 Esdras forms a part of the canon of Scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (an Oriental Orthodoxy body), though it is reckoned among the apocrypha by Roman Catholics and Protestants. Within Eastern Orthodoxy it forms a part of the canon although its usage varies by different traditions. 2 Esdras was translated by Jerome as part of the Vulgate, though he placed it in an appendix.

As with 1 Esdras, some confusion exists about the numbering of this book. The Vulgate of Jerome includes only a single book of Ezra, but in the Clementine Vulgate, 1, 2, 3 and 4 Esdras are separate books. Protestant writers, after the Geneva Bible, called 1 and 2 Esdras of the Vulgate Ezra and Nehemiah, respectively, and called 3 and 4 Esdras of the Vulgate 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, respectively. These then became the common names for these books in English Bibles.

Medieval Latin manuscripts denoted it 4 Esdras, which to this day is the name used for chapters 3–14 in modern critical editions, which are typically in Latin, the language of its most complete exemplars.

It appears in the Appendix to the Old Testament in the Slavonic Bible, where it is called 3 Esdras, and the Georgian Orthodox Bible numbers it 3 Ezra. This text is sometimes also known as Apocalypse of Ezra — chapters 3–14 known as the Jewish Apocalypse of Ezra or 4 Ezra; in modern critical editions, chapters 1–2 are named as 5 Ezra, and chapters 15–16 as 6 Ezra.

Bogaert speculates that the "fourth book of Ezra" referred to by Jerome most likely corresponds to modern 5 Ezra and 6 Ezra combined, and notes a number of Latin manuscripts where these chapters are together in an appendix.

The first two chapters of 2 Esdras are found only in the Latin version of the book, and are called 5 Ezra by scholars. They are considered by most scholars to be Christian in origin; they assert God's rejection of the Jews and describe a vision of the Son of God. These are generally considered to be late additions (possibly third century) to the work.

Chapters 3–14, or the great bulk of 2 Esdras, is a Jewish apocalypse, also sometimes known as 4 Ezra or the Jewish Apocalypse of Ezra. The latter name should not be confused with a later work called the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra.

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