Friday, February 2, 2018

Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade on "Esdras"

I have discussed the issue of the book of Esdras and its relationship to the canon lists in Carthage, Hippo, and that dogmatised by Trent in 1546:



In a recent work on the canon lists in early Christianity, Edmon Gallagher and John Meade note the following about these books that some should find useful:

Esdras

There are four books of Ezra, or Esdras, featured in some biblical manuscripts. In later Vulgate manuscripts, the books appeared under these titles: 1 Esdras (= Hebrew Ezra), 2 Esdras (= Nehemiah), 3 Esdras (= LXX Esdras A), 4 Esdras (= Latin Apocalypse of Ezra). Septuagint manuscripts from the fourth century, such as Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, referred to two books of Esdras. Esdras A and Esdras B, this latter being a literal translation of Hebrew Ezra-Nehemiah in one book. Esdras A on the other hand, is related closely to Ezra-Nehemiah, but contains many differences, so that it constitutes a divergent edition of the book, though scholars debate whether it is earlier or later than Hebrew Ezra-Nehemiah. Its relationship to Hebrew Ezra- Nehemiah may be charted as follows:

2 Chronicles chs 35-6
//
Esdras A ch 1
Ezra ch. 1
//
Esdras A 2:1-14
Ezra 4:7-24
//
Esdras A 2:15-25

Story of the Three Pages only in Esdras A 3:1-5:6

Ezra 2:1-4:5
//
Esdras A 5:7-70
Ezra chs. 5-10
//
Esdras A chs 6:-9:36
Nehemiah 7:73-8:13a
//
Esdras A 9:37-55

The first Hebrew Bible to divide Ezra from Nehemiah so that there are two books rather than one of the first Rabbinic Bible (Venice 1516-17), printed by Daniel Bomberg and edited by Felix Pratenis. The LXX manuscript tradition occasionally attests Ezra and Nehemiah as two separate books. In the Latin tradition, the VL (Vercelli manuscript) and the Vulgate have Ezra-Nehemiah as one book. Latin manuscripts divide Ezra-Nehemiah into two books only from the tenth century, first in Spain, and then this practice was adopted in the Paris Bible of the thirteenth century. The Story of the Three Pages, found only in 1 Esdras (= Esdras A of the LXX), is well known to Latin fathers. Bogaert has emphasized that when the ancient canon lists, whether Greek or Latin, mentions two books of Esdras, they must have in mind the books known in the LXX and VL as Esdras A and Esdras B, i.e., our 1 Esdras and Ezra-Nehemiah. Possibly the Bryennios List could be an exception, depending on the extent to which it was influenced by the LXX tradition. (Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis [New York: Oxford University Press, 2017], 269)