EKLI - Life, together

…and beyond

1 Esdras

Ezra's story retold, with the courtiers' contest: what is strongest? Truth is.

9
Chapters
The Persian return
Era

A Greek retelling of material from Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, with one substantial passage found nowhere else: the contest of the three bodyguards, in which young men of Darius' court debate whether wine, the king, or women is strongest, and the winner adds that truth is stronger still and is rewarded by being allowed to rebuild Jerusalem. That story is the book's chief interest. Canon status is genuinely complicated here: it is Scripture in most Orthodox churches, printed in an appendix in Catholic editions rather than received as canonical, and grouped with the Apocrypha by Protestants, which makes it one of the clearest illustrations that the canon is not a single line.

If you remember one thing

It contains the contest of the three bodyguards debating what is strongest, where the winning answer is truth, a passage found nowhere else.

Who, when, and why

Written
A Greek retelling of material from Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
First readers
Greek-speaking Jews.
Why it was written
To retell the return with one famous addition.

How it is shaped

  1. 1Josiah's Passover and the fall of Jerusalem
  2. 2 to 5The return under Cyrus
  3. 3 to 4The contest of the three bodyguards
  4. 6 to 9Rebuilding, and Ezra's reading of the law

What it keeps coming back to

ReturnTruth as strongestRestoration

A verse to carry

“Great is truth, and strongest of all.”

1 Esdras 4:41

Passages that trouble readers

Canon

One of the clearest illustrations that the canon is not a single line: Scripture in most Orthodox churches, in an appendix in Catholic editions, and among the Apocrypha for Protestants.

Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.

Who receives this book

Catholic —Orthodox ✓Protestant · Apocrypha

In Orthodox Bibles; an appendix in the Latin tradition; among the Apocrypha elsewhere.