| Relatively unknown to most readers of scripture, most of 2 Esdras (also called 4 Ezra) is a Jewish apocalyptic text written around 100 CE, roughly the same time as the composition of the book of Revelation. 4 Ezra confronts the destruction of the temple by the Romans. Two major teachings of the book in response to this cataclysmic event are that the messiah will appear soon to overthrow the Roman Empire and that Ezra restored the Torah of Moses for Israel, re-establishing the covenant. The first response resonates with Christianity and the second with rabbinic Judaism. But neither existed when 4 Ezra was written in the forms they do now. 4 Ezra offers a crucial window into how Jews in the late first century CE reinvented their traditions in the crucible of national trauma. The book teaches that the diversity and creativity of their responses to losing the temple become harder for us to appreciate if we think about them only through the lens of what later became Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. |
