2.3 Leaving Babylon I: The Ezra Muddle

History in the Bible

Garry Stevens

History, Christianity, Judaism, Bible, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 693 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2017

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our most important sources for the Return are the books known as Ezra and Nehemiah in Catholic and Protestant bibles. The Jews have a single book, called Ezra. There a whole bunch of other books of Ezra, many to be found in Russian and Greek bibles. 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Latin Esdras, Esdras Alpha, the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra, the Latin Vision of Ezra, the Questions of Ezra, the Revelation of Ezra. What a muddle! Colombus used 4 Esdras to discover America.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Gide. I'm Gary Stevens.
0:07.4	And welcome to the second series of the History in the Bible podcast.
0:13.1	More of the history in more of the books in all the Bibles.
0:20.0	Episode 2.3, Leaving Babylon Part 1, The Ezra Muddle.
0:27.9	In the last episode, I took a break from the history to explore the books of Ezekiel and Job,
0:35.3	the writers of the Babylonian exile.
0:38.4	In the next five episodes, I will cover the long and surprisingly complex history of the
0:45.2	Judean return from Babylon.
0:48.1	The Babylonians were simply not up to the task of empire.
0:52.8	A friendly takeover by Cyrus the Great saw their dominion absorbed into the shiny new Persian
0:59.1	empire.
1:00.4	In 538 BC, Cyrus gave his blessing to the Judeans to return home.
1:06.9	Yet even though they were prodded at every turn by all and sundry,
1:12.0	the Judeans were in no rush to return to Judah.
1:15.6	The history of the return is a history of failure.
1:19.7	Let me give you an overview of the story that will occupy us for a while.
1:25.0	The Judeans returned to Judah, renamed by the Persians as the province of
1:29.6	Yehoud, in three waves. The first under Sheshbazar, the second under Zerebabel and
1:37.2	Joshua, and the third under Ezra and Nehemiah. The first returnees were led by an obscure figure by the name of
1:46.6	Shesh Bazaar. They came back to a province much, much smaller than the old two kingdoms,
1:54.5	perhaps 2,000 square kilometres, about 50% larger than Greater London, or two-thirds the size of the American state of Rhode Island.
2:05.1	They found in Jerusalem a shell of its former glory, walls crumbling, its inhabitants indifferent to the National God Yave.
	...

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