Ezra
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- For other uses of this name, see Ezra (disambiguation).
Ezra in Hebrew is written as עֶזְרָא ( Standard Hebrew ), ʿEzra, ( Tiberian Hebrew ), ʿEzrâ: short for עַזְרִיאֵל "My help/court is God", Standard Hebrew ʿAzriʾel, Tiberian Hebrew ʿAzrîʾēl.
Ezra was the "scribe" who led the second body of exiled Israelites on their return from Babylon to Jerusalem in 459 BCE. Many scholars credit him as the author of the Book of Ezra and the Book of 1 Chronicles in the Bible.
Ezra was either the son or grandson of Seraiah (2 Kings 25:18-21) and a lineal descendant of Phinehas, the son of Aaron (Ezra 7:1-5). The last four chapters of his book and the Book of Nehemiah 8 and 12:26 contain all of his known personal history.
In the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus (see lso Darius I of Persia), Ezra obtained leave to go to Jerusalem and to take with him a company of Israelites (Ezra 8). Artaxerxes showed great interest in Ezra's undertaking, granting him "all his request", and givin him gifts for the house of God. Ezra assembled a band of approximately 5,000 exiles to go to Jerusalem. They rested on the banks of the Ahava for three days and organized for their four-month march across the desert. The book of Ezra records his activities in Jerusalem following his arrival.
No record exists for the fourteen years (until 445 BCE) after Ezra organized ecclesiastical and civil affairs of the nation. In 445 BCE, Nehemiah appeared. After Nehemiah rebuilt the ruined wall of the city, a great group of people gathered in Jerusalem to dedicate the wall. On the appointed day, Ezra and his assistants read the Torah aloud to the whole population (Neh. 8:3). According to the text, a great religious awakening occurred. For successive days, beginning on Rosh Hashanah, the people rejoiced in the holy days of the month of Tishri. Ezra read the entire scroll of the Torah to the people and he, with various scholars and Levites explained and interpreted the deeper meanings and applications of the Torah to the assembled crowd. These festivities culminated in an enthusiastic and joyous seven-day celebration of the Festival of Sukkot, concluding on the eighth day with the holiday of Shemini Atzeret. On the twenty-fourth day, immediately following the holidays, they held a solemn assembly, fasting and confessing their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. Then, they renewed their national covenant to follow the Torah and to observe and fulfill all of the Lord's commandments, laws and decrees (Neh. 10:30). Abuses were rectified, and arrangements for the temple service were completed, after which nothing remained but the dedication of the walls of the city (Neh. 12).
Relation to the Book of Ruth
According to many scholars, the Book of Ruth was originally a part of the Book of Judges, but it was later separated from that book and made into a separate book. Its opening verse explicitly places it during the time period of the Judges, and its language and description seem to make the authorship contemporary with that period. On the other hand, the message of the book, which shows acceptance of marrying converts to Judaism, has been used to suggest that the book was written during the early days of the Persian period. At that time, Ezra condemned intermarriages and, according to his eponymous book, forced the Israelites to abandon their non-Jewish wives who did not convert. According to this theory, the Book of Ruth was written in response to Ezra's reform and in defense of these marriages. More likely, the book was a response to critics of King David, who contested his qualifications as a Jew due to his Moabite ancestry. In that context, the book uses the precedent set by a Jewish court, lead by Boaz, to demonstrate that a Moabitess could convert and be a member of the Children of Israel.
Place in editing the Torah and Bible
According to Rabbinic Jewish tradition, Ezra collected and arranged the canon of the Hebrew Bible. Information on his activities in this regard are found in the Talmud and in the midrash literature.
In the view of many modern scholars, these sources provide one set of evidence in favor of the documentary hypothesis. In this view, some midrash compilations retain evidence of the redactional period during which Ezra redacted and canonized the text of the Torah as we know it today. This idea is discussed by Rabbi David Weiss Halivni in his works Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses (Westview Press, 1997), and Peshat and Derash: Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis (Oxford University Press, 1998). Richard Elliot Friedman suggests that Ezra was the second editor who combined the priestly source into the Torah and that the J and E sources had been combined by an earlier editor. If so, Ezra seems to have been careful to preserve almost all of the original sources in the final composite.[1] Jewish sources do not mention editing or redacting the Torah. Rather, the aggada suggests that Ezra and the Men of the Great Assembly edited such works as Daniel, Esther and Ezekiel (Bava Batra 14b).
Ezra in the Qur'an
Ezra is also mentioned in the Muslim Qur'an as Uzair "9:30: The Jews call 'UZAIR a son of Allah, and the Christians call Jesus the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!" There is historical evidence that Jews did refer to Ezra as the son of Allah, the Encyclopaedia Judaica states: "H. Z. Hirschberg proposed another assumption, based on the words of Ibn Hazm, namely, that the 'righteous who live in Yemen believed that 'Uzayr was indeed the son of Allah.' According to other Muslim sources, there were some Yemenite Jews who had converted to Islam who believed that Ezra was the messiah. For Muhammad, Ezra, the apostle of messiah, can be seen in the same light as the Christian saw Jesus, the messiah, the son of Allah." Encyclopaedia Judaica, Ibid., p. 1108.
Ezra is also mentioned in the Hadith of seeing God as the clear as the sun.fr:Esdras id:Ezra he:עזרא הסופר ja:エズラ fi:Esra