Read this if you…
- curious about the Apocrypha and the books that didn't make the Protestant canon
- like the "Debate of the Three Guards" (three soldiers argue what's strongest in the world)
- want an alternative account of Judah's return from Babylonian exile
Skip this if you…
- don't want to read explicitly religious/Christian texts
Depicted in Art
Bacchus hands King Darius a goblet while his concubine Apame slaps the king's cheek, lifts his crown off his head, and places it on her own; personified Fame looks on.
Hendrik Goltzius, 1614
The young Zerubbabel stands gesturing before the enthroned Darius in a torchlit Persian court, arguing the Three Bodyguards contest that wins him the king's favor.
Nicolaes Knüpfer, 1644
Zerubbabel sits with his family in one of the ancestral lunettes above the Sistine windows, set among the genealogy of Christ.
Michelangelo, 1512
A standing portrait of Zerubbabel in 19th-century Italian Nazarene-style fresco, robed and holding the attributes of his rebuilding mission.
Alessandro Franchi, 1874
Recommended Editions
King James Version
Oxford University Press · 1611
The most influential and commonly quoted translation in English. The prose rhythm everyone else is responding to, even modern translations.
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Notable Quotes
Great is Truth, and mighty above all things.
- Augustine of Hippo, Church Father, Bishop of Hippo, 354–430: "Esdras is to be understood as prophesying of Christ … the truth is victorious over all."
- Flavius Josephus, 1st-century Jewish historian, c. 37–100: Josephus told the return from exile entirely from 1 Esdras — treating it as Scripture and disregarding the canonical Ezra–Nehemiah.
- Alexander Campbell, religious reformer, founder of the Restoration Movement (Disciples of Christ / Churches of Christ), 1788–1866: Campbell ran the 1 Esdras motto — 'Great is the truth, and mighty above all things, and will prevail' — on the masthead of his Millennial Harbinger for years.
- Charles Cutler Torrey, Yale Semitic-languages scholar, 1863–1956: Torrey championed 1 Esdras as an independent Greek translation from a lost Semitic original, in many respects superior to the canonical Ezra–Nehemiah.
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