is a fragment of the Ezra Saga recounting the rewriting of the Scriptures, which had been destroyed. This has no organic connexion with what precedes.
First Vision. iii.-v. 19.—“In the thirtieth year after the ruin of the city I Salathiel (the same is Ezra) was in Babylon and lay troubled upon my bed.” In a long prayer Ezra asks how the desolation of Sion and the prosperity of Babylon can be in keeping with the justice of God. The angel Uriel answers that God’s ways are unsearchable and past man’s understanding. When Ezra asks when the end will be and what are the signs of it, the angel answers that the end is at hand and enumerates the signs of it.
Second Vision. v. 14-vi. 34.—Phaltiel, chief of the people, reproaches Ezra for forsaking his flock. Ezra fasts, and in his prayer asks why God had given up his people into the hands of the heathen. Uriel replies: “Lovest thou that people better than He that made them?” Man cannot find out God’s judgment. The end is at hand; its signs are recounted.
Third Vision. vi. 35-ix. 25.—Ezra recounts the works of creation, and asks why Israel does not possess the world since the world was made for Israel. The answer is that the present state is a necessary stage to the coming one. Then follows an account of the Messianic age and the resurrection: the punishment of the wicked and the blessings of the righteous. There can be no intercession for the departed. Few will be saved—only as it were a grape out of a cluster or a plant out of a forest.
Fourth Vision. ix. 26–x. 60.—Ezra eats of herbs in the field of Ardat, and sees in a vision a woman mourning for her only son. Ezra reminds her of the greater desolation of Sion. Suddenly she is transfigured and vanishes, and in her place appears a city. The woman, Uriel explains, represents Sion.
Fifth Vision. xi. i–xii. 39.—Vision of an eagle with three heads, twelve wings and eight winglets, which is rebuked by a lion and destroyed. The eagle is the fourth kingdom seen by Daniel, and the lion is the Messiah.
Sixth Vision. xiii.—Vision of a man (i.e. the Messiah) arising from the sea, who destroys his enemies who assemble against him, and gathers to him another multitude, i.e. the lost Ten Tribes.
Seventh Vision. xiv.—Ezra is told of his approaching translation. He asks for the restoration of the Law, and is enabled by God to dictate in forty days ninety-four books (the twenty-four canonical books of the Old Testament that were lost, and seventy secret books for the wise among the people).
Ezra’s translation is found in the Canon only in the Oriental Versions. In the Latin it was omitted when xv.–xvi. were added.
Integrity.—According to Gunkel (Apok. u. Pseud. ii. 335-352) the whole book is the work of one writer. Thus down to vii. 16 he deals with the problem of the origin of suffering in the world, and from vii. 17 to ix. 25 with the question who is worthy to share in the blessedness of the next world. As regards the first problem the writer shows, in the first vision, that suffering and death come from sin—no less truly on the part of Israel than of all men, for God created man to be immortal; that the end is nigh, when wrongs will be righted; God’s rule will then be recognized. In the second he emphasizes the consolation to be found in the coming time, and in the third he speaks solely of the next world, and then addresses himself to the second problem. The fourth, fifth and sixth visions are eschatological. In these the writer turns aside from the religious problems of the first three visions and concerns himself only with the future national supremacy of Israel. Zion’s glory will certainly be revealed (vision four), Israel will destroy Rome (five) and the hostile Gentiles (six). Then the book is brought to a close with the legend of Ezra’s restoration of the lost Old Testament Scriptures.
In the course of the above work there are many inconsistencies and contradictions. These Gunkel explains by admitting that the writer has drawn largely on tradition, both oral and written, for his materials. Thus he concedes that eschatological materials in v. 1-13, vi; 18-28, vii. 26 sqq., also ix. 1 sqq., are from this source, and apparently from an originally independent work, as Kabisch urges, but that it is no longer possible to separate the borrowed elements from the text. Again, in the four last visions he is obliged to make the same concession on a very large scale. Vision four is based on a current novel, which the author has taken up and put into an allegorical form. Visions five and six are drawn from oral or written tradition, and relate only to the political expectations of Israel, and seven is a reproduction of a legend, for the independent existence of which evidence is furnished by the quotations in Bensly-James pp. xxxvii-xxxviii. Thus the chief champion of the unity of the book makes so many concessions as to its dependence on previously existing sources that, to the student of eschatology, there is little to choose between his view and that of Kabisch. In fact, if the true meaning of the borrowed materials is to be discovered, the sources must be disentangled. Hence the need of some such analysis as that of Kabisch (Das vierte Buck Ezra, 1889): S = an Apocalypse of Salathiel, c. A.D. 100, preserved in a fragmentary condition, iii. 1-31, iv. 1-51, v. 13b–vi. 10, 30–vii. 25, vii. 45–viii. 62, ix. 13-x. 57, xii. 40-48, xiv. 28-35. E = an Ezra Apocalypse, c. 31 B.C., iv. 52-v. 13a, vi. 13-28, vii. 26-44, viii. 63–ix. 12. A = an Eagle Vision, c. A.D. 90, x. 60–xii. 35. M = a Son-of-Man Vision, xiii. E2 = an Ezra fragment, c. A.D. 100, xiv. 1-17a, 18-27, 36-47. All these, according to Kabisch, were edited by a Zealot, c. 120, who supplied the connecting links and made many small additions. In the main this analysis is excellent. If we assume that the editor was also the author of S, and that such a vigorous stylist, as he shows himself to be, recast to some extent the materials he borrowed, there remains but slight difference between the views of Kabisch and Gunkel. Neither view, however, is quite satisfactory, and the problem still awaits solution. Other attempts, such as Ewald’s (Gesch. d. Volkes Israel 3, vii. 69-83) and De Faye’s (Apocalypses juives, 155-165), make no contribution.
School of the Author.—The author or final redactor of the book was a pessimist, and herein his book stands in strong contrast with the Apocalypse of Baruch. Thus to the question propounded in the New Testament—“Are there few that be saved?” he has no hesitation in answering, “There be many created, but few that be saved” (viii. 3): “An evil heart hath grown up in us which hath led us astray . . . and that not a few only but wellnigh all that have been created” (vii. 48). In the Apocalypse of Baruch on the other hand it is definitely maintained that not a few shall be saved (xxi. 11). Moreover, the sufferings of the wicked are so great in the next world it were better, according to 4 Ezra (as also to the school of Shammai), that man had not been born. “It is much better (for the beasts of the field) than for us; for they expect not a judgment and know not of torments” (vii. 66): yet “it would have been best not to have given a body to Adam, or that being done, to have restrained him from sin; for what profit is there that man should in the present life live in heaviness and after death look for punishment” (vii. 116, 117). In iv. 12 the nexus of life, sin and suffering just referred to, is put still more strongly: “It were better we had not been at all than that we should be born and sin and suffer.”[1] The different attitude of these two writers towards this question springs from their respective views on the question of free will. The author of Baruch declares (iv. 15, 19): “For though Adam sinned and brought untimely death upon all, yet of those who were born from him each one of them prepared for his own soul torment to come, and again each one of them has chosen for himself glories to come . . . each one of us has been the Adam of his own soul,” Though the writer of Ezra would admit the possibility of a few Israelites attaining to salvation through the most strenuous endeavour, yet he holds that man is all but predoomed through his original evil disposition or through the fall of Adam (vii. 118). “O Adam, what hast thou done: for though it was thou that sinned, the evil is not fallen on thee alone, but upon all of us that come of thee.”
Another contrast between the two books is that while Baruch shows some mercy to the Gentiles (lxxii. 4-6) in the Messianic period, none according to 4 Ezra and the Shammaites (Toseph. Sanh. xiii. 2) will be extended to them, (iii. 30, ix. 22 sq., xii. 34, xiii. 37 sq.).
On the above grounds it is not unreasonable to conclude that whereas the Apocalypse of Baruch owes its leading characteristics to a pupil of Hillel’s school, 4 Ezra shows just as clearly its derivation from that of Shammai. Kohler (Jewish Encyc.
- ↑ In the Apocalypse of Baruch, x. 6, we find a similar expression: “Blessed is he who was not born, or being born has died.” But here death is said to be preferable to witnessing the present woes of Jerusalem.
