Reading the apocryphal book 2 Esdras

I recently set out to read the apocryphal book 2 Esdras, also known as 4 Esdras. I had never read it before, but there it was in the King James Apocryphal section, so I thought I would read it through and that would be that, but I got really fascinated by it. Both the text itself and the circumstances of the writing of the book are interesting. Very little is actually known about how and when the book came about. It is recognized that there are three sections written at different times by different people that were eventually put together to be one book. The original main section is made up of chapters 3–14 and is called “4 Ezra” by people who study it. We do not know from history when 4 Ezra was written, but scholars are comfortable with concluding from the book’s contents that it was written sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70.

Every other book commonly known as Biblical apocrypha written in the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament. If scholars are correct, 4 Ezra is a Jewish writing from after the time of Jesus that nevertheless became quite popular among Christians. This is unusual. How did it make the jump from being something thought up and written down by a Jewish person to being widely circulated among Christians in eight languages? I do not know! My mind tries to think up scenarios where this would happen, but it will probably always be a mystery.

In my next post I will write about the themes of 4 Ezra and how it should be looked at by a Christian.