EZRA M. SMITH Ezra Has Been the Subject of So Much and So Verbose

EZRA BY M. SMITH New York, N.Y. Ezra has been the subject of so much and so verbose dispute that to set forth, in the briefest possible form, the facts essential for the controversy may seem an appropriate tribute to Professor Widengren, who has so often performed similar tasks in problems almost Augean. The story of Ezra is found in the Hebrew Bible in Ezra 7-10 and Nehemiah 8. (Neh. 12.1,13, and 33 refer to different Ezras, unless they are blunders; Ezra in Neh. 12.26 and 36, and Nehemiah in Neh. 8.9 are misleading editorial additions.) A different tradition is preserved in Greek in I Esdras (= Vulgate III Ezra) 8-9 followed with important variants by Josephus, Jewish Antiquities XI.120-158. The many Ezra apocalypses etc. are worthless for knowledge of the original legend. In the Ezra-Nehemiah tradition Ezra has been subordinated to Nehemiah: Ezra's mission to Jerusalem leaves the city still in misery, only Nehemiah gets the walls built; Ezra's attempt to prevent Jewish marriages with gentiles comes to nothing, Nehemiah's finally succeeds; Ezra's reading of the Law and reform of the Feast of Booths merely prepares for the new covenant made by Nehemiah; in the great celebration Ezra plays second fiddle to Nehemiah, and in the last chapter he disappears, while Nehemiah carries through the reforms. l In the I Esdras-Josephus tradition, on the other hand, Nehemiah has been eliminated, even from the one verse (Neh. 8.9 = I Esdras 9.49) in which his name had been inserted in the Ezra story. Now Ezra stands alone, his attempt to prevent intermarriage succeeds, his reading of the Law is the triumphal conclusion. 1 These facts refute the theory of U. Kellermann, Nehemia, Berlin, 1967 (ZA W Beihefte lO2) that the Ezra story was invented to detract from Nehemiah's importance. It is incredible that a writer of the school of the Chroniclers- addicted to miracles, remorseless in edification- should have invented such a naturalistic and unedifying story as that of the great assembly rained out. 142 M. SMITH The I Esdras-Josephus tradition is secondary to Ezra-Nehemiah; this is shown by the survival of Nehemiah's title, after the elimination of his name, in I Esdras 9.49, and by the feeble emendation of Ezra 10.44 (followed by the translation of the Revised Standard Version I), where the Hebrew has a sentence broken off in the middle - which shows there was some other conclusion. Had the Hebrew been produced by emendation it would have been grammatical and edifying. But Ezra-Nehemiah itself is a reworking of an original story about Ezra alone, which it combined with a story about Nehemiah alone. In preserving the Ezra story separately- but in very little else- I Esdras and Josephus are more faithful. In the original Ezra story Neh. 8 stood between Ezra 8 and 9. The following tale then emerges. Ezra was a Babylonian Jew, both a priest and a high official ("first-class scribe") of the Persian admi nistration, sent to Jerusalem by the Persians and authorized to take other Jews with him, take gifts, from the government and others, to the temple, investigate affairs in the province of Judea, and reform the religious laws there in accordance with his "Book of the Law of Moses." 1 This governmental benevolence is politically understand able. Ezra 7.8 dates Ezra's arrival in Jerusalem in August of 458. At that time Egypt was in revolt from the Persians; it had Athenian support and the Athenians were seizing places on the Palestine Syrian coast2; if an inland city like Jerusalem should revolt and call in the Greeks, Persian communications with Egypt would be cut. Hence the Persians' well-timed kindness to Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the central Persian government did not know that the Jews were divided. One party was lax about purity laws and favored friendly relations with neighboring peoples; the other was meticulous about purity and abominated the neighboring peoples. The laxist group controlled the temple; by Nehemiah's time the high-priestly family would have intermarried with Samaritans. Therefore Ezra was not permitted to read his new law in the temple a; when he read it in the city (on new year's day, Oct. 2, 458) many people wept. Nevertheless in December he denounced mixed marriages and secured appointment of a commission to report on them. By late March the commission brought in a list of 111 offenders- here 1 Still fundamental is H. Schaeder, E8ra der Schreiber, Tiibingen, 1930. 2 F. Heichelheim, "Ezra's Palestine and Periklean Athens," ZRGG 3 (1951) 251 ff. a Neh. 8.1,3; the forced exegesis of S. Mowinckel, Studien zu dem Buche Ezra·Ne· hemia, Oslo, 1(1964) 37 ff., may be read for amusement. .

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