An Atheist Explores the Apocrypha Part Five: Some Fine Apocalyptic Literature. Plus Breast Fruit (2 Esdras 6-10)
2 Esdras
6-10
Some Fine Apocalyptic Literature. Plus Breast Fruit.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Apocrypha version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Old Testament Apocrypha, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/3aEJ6Q5
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP
And now:
2 Esdras 6
“As for the other people, which also come of Adam, thou hast said that they are nothing, but be like unto spittle: and hast likened the abundance of them unto a drop that falleth from a vessel.”
We left off with the archangel Uriel coming to visit Esdras once again after Esdras has fasted for seven days. I’m not surprised he was having visions.
Uriel once again gives a Job-esque spiel about how much God knows compared to mere mortals and, I have to say, I’m really liking the writing in Esdras. I don’t know if it was translated at the same time as the rest of the KJV or if the translation is a bit later, because the language, whilst suitably “Biblical” is not as dense and obscure as much of the stuff I had the suffer through. It’s more like reading something like the Silmarillion or the more “high voice” chapters of Lord of the Rings (eg The Steward and the King), where Tolkien is evidently evoking a Biblical idiom. For example:
“And he said unto me, In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the borders of the world stood, or ever the winds blew,
Before it thundered and lightened, or ever the foundations of paradise were laid,
Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever the moveable powers were established, before the innumerable multitude of angels were gathered together,
Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys in Sion were hot,
And ere the present years were sought out, and or ever the inventions of them that now sin were turned, before they were sealed that have gathered faith for a treasure:
Then did I consider these things, and they all were made through me alone, and through none other: by me also they shall be ended, and by none other.”
Compare that with the verse Gandalf recites in The Road to Isengard;
“Ere iron was found or tree was hewn,
When young was mountain under moon,
Ere ring was made, or wrought with woe,
It walked the forests long ago”
You can see the semblance is the language used. It makes Esdras a lot more poetic and easy to read than pretty much any of the Biblical books that were universally agreed upon.
Uriel continues to tell Esdras about some coming day when friends will fight friends, the earth will quake, springs will dry up (for a whole three hours) and “children of a year old shall speak with their voices, the women with child shall bring forth untimely children of three or four months old”. But also that “salvation” is possible for those with faith and the “As for faith, it shall flourish, corruption shall be overcome, and the truth, which hath been so long without fruit, shall be declared”.
Uriel then commands that Esdras fast another seven days to get another vision, and on the eighth day Esdras tells God what He presumably already knows about Creation Week, finishing with the quote above, that if the chosen descendants of Adam end up becoming captive of all the other, less worthy descendants of Adam (the “spittle”), then what was the point of it all? Again, a fair question by Esdras.
Once more, as well, the language used is great. Esdras basically recites Genesis 1, but does it so much better (and I quite like Genesis 1) – “For immediately there was great and innumerable fruit, and many and divers pleasures for the taste, and flowers of unchangeable colour, and odours of wonderful smell: and this was done the third day.”
Also of note in this list are mention of two monsters – Enoch and Leviathan. Leviathan is given “the seventh part [of the waters], namely, the moist; and hast kept him to be devoured of whom thou wilt, and when” whereas Enoch is given “one part, which was dried up the third day, that he should dwell in the same part, wherein are a thousand hills”.
Leviathan, the sea monster or possibly whale, we already know about, but Enoch I’ve only heard mention as … where have I heard it? A prophet? I’ve got a vague feeling it has something to do with enemies of Noah. Hang on, I’ll look it up….
No. There are two Enochs, it would seem. One is a son of Cain and he founds an eponymous city, the other slots in some seven generations after Adam, and is the son of Jared and the father of Methusaleh, living 365 years. Much later, in Hebrews, it’s referenced that Enoch is apparently bodily translated into heaven – this is a reference to Enoch son of Cain, but the nearest thing like that is Genesis 5:24 which refers to Enoch son of Jared, which reads “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him”.
Which could, let’s be honest, just be a reference to dying.
Finally Jude 1:14 says “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints“. Which, if he does say that, is not reported in the KJV. (There is, I discover, a Book of Enoch that is found in the Jewish Tanakh and some (mainly Ethiopian) Christian traditions. Whee! More reading).
Neither of which make any sense in term of Enoch being some kind of mountain-dwelling monster, to which I can find little reference. Bah. I’m going to assume it meant Enoch Powell.
2 Esdras 7
“Who then could go into the sea to look upon it, and to rule it? if he went not through the narrow, how could he come into the broad?”
The angel Uriel gives Esdras a series of metaphors, all around the theme of the “strait and narrow” path of Matthew 7:14. To get to the sea you have to pass through the mouth of a river, to get into a big city you have to go through a small gate.
These the angel compares to a kind of return to Eden by passing through the trials of life, because of some kind of reason to do with having to earn it otherwise it’s not worth it –“If this city now were given unto a man for an inheritance, if he never shall pass the danger set before it, how shall he receive this inheritance?” This state of affairs came about through Adam, and Uriel then patronisingly tells Esdras that he could never really understand because “why disquietest thou thyself, seeing thou art but a corruptible man?”, also that “There is no judge above God, and none that hath understanding above the Highest.”
There next follows a bit that makes me suspect that Esdras is written a lot later than Ezra, starting with “Behold, the time shall come, that these tokens which I have told thee shall come to pass, and the bride shall appear”. “The Bride”, of course, is referenced in Revelation, and there was an earlier reference to the “Third Trumpet” which made me suspect. So probably the author of Esdras is drawing on works from Revelation. And then we get “For my son Jesus shall be revealed with those that be with him, and they that remain shall rejoice within four hundred years. After these years shall my son Christ die, and all men that have life” .
Nobody, but nobody in the OT prophets uses such specific terms as Jesus and Christ. The best you will get are references to the Messiah (which, as with Christ, stem from the “anointed one” but the more Hebraic Messiah references tend to be pretty obviously about the anointed king kind of ruler like David or Solomon). And the “Immanuel” reference of Isaiah. No-one uses the name Jesus, Joshua or any other permutation.
But also, what’s this about four hundred years? And after that, “And the world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, like as in the former judgments: so that no man shall remain.”
Well… that didn’t happen, wherever you want to count 400 years from.
There’s a bit more where Uriel and Esdras discuss these end –times in terms of bad things being destroyed and only the good things flourishing. And then Esdras asks a pertinent question – “This is my first and last saying, that it had been better not to have given the earth unto Adam: or else, when it was given him, to have restrained him from sinning.”
Uriel kind of dodges the question – “This is the condition of the battle, which man that is born upon the earth shall fight; That, if he be overcome, he shall suffer as thou hast said: but if he get the victory, he shall receive the thing that I say.” In other words, that’s the way it is. It doesn’t fully explain the whole Fall story though – if it was meant to be that way so that victory (Salvation) is worth fighting for, then why not make it that way to begin with rather than this convoluted reverse psychology with the fruit. And in that case, why then get angry with humans for disobedience, if what they were doing was what was needed in the first place?
The problem here, I think, is that the Garden of Eden tale is from one kind of mythology, and the Saviour narrative is from another. The two are not logically compatible with one another without some serious sophistry. It might have been more honest to do what the Qur’an does, and change the Eden story to fit in with the rest of the theology. Particularly once Christianity became its own thing and not a Jewish sect – it would be easy enough then if anyone pointed out differences between the Eden story in the Bible and the Torah to claim that the Jews have a corrupt version. I mean, it’s not like that kind of claim isn’t made both ways anyway, so why not? (I suppose it’s got something to canonicity and how once text is treated as sacred it can’t be altered (but I bet it is)).
2 Esdras 8
“I will tell thee a similitude, Esdras; As when thou askest the earth, it shall say unto thee, that it giveth much mould whereof earthen vessels are made, but little dust that gold cometh of: even so is the course of this present world.”
Uriel tells Esdras that only a select few will be “saved” for the “world to come”, likening them to gold dust compared to common clay. Esdras literally eats these words - “Swallow then down, O my soul, understanding, and devour wisdom”, possibly an allusion to John eating the book in Revelation, or at the very least using a very similar analogy.
There’s then a bit of an Obs. and Gyn. lecture, where Esdras describes pregnancy in the lead up to his point (which we will come to). “For when the body is fashioned now in the mother's womb, and thou givest it members, thy creature is preserved in fire and water, and nine months doth thy workmanship endure thy creature which is created in her.” Evidently the idea here is that the developing foetus and child are being shaped by God whilst they grow in the womb. And once born they are nourished by milk “which is the fruit of the breasts”.
Having put in all this effort, says Esdras, why then destroy the result with such evident relish and enthusiasm? Which seems a fair question. Esdras also points out that nobody’s perfect, nor is anyone entirely bad - “what is a corruptible generation, that thou shouldest be so bitter toward it? For in truth them is no man among them that be born, but he hath dealt wickedly; and among the faithful there is none which hath not done amiss.”
Again, a fair question. I do take some issue with his reference to breastfeeding where he says “That the thing which is fashioned may be nourished for a time”. “Thing”? It’s a baby, Esdras. It’s not a “thing”. Possibly infant mortality was such that you may as well assume an infant to be a thing until it survives to a certain age. Or it’s just a dodgy choice of words. Doesn’t really matter.
Esdras continues at some length after this, giving a bit of flattery to God. Since I started the whole Atheist Explore Sacred Texts endeavour I’ve become more familiar with online clashes between atheist and believer. Usually, it must be said, targeting Creationists and New Fundamentalist Baptists, two rather outré forms of Christianity peculiar to the USA. One common bit of mudslinging is to refer to God disparagingly as a “Sky Daddy”, to which the usual answer is that nobody thinks God lives in the sky. Maybe not now, but Esdras did - “thou that dwellest in everlastingness which beholdest from above things in the heaven and in the air”.
Anyway, I digress. Because Esdras rambles so much in his question he gives Uriel a chance not to address his very good point above, and instead gets an answer about the rewards that await the faithful (the unfaithful, by dint of being unfaithful, deserve all the crap that happens to them).
I noted with interest that Uriel says “unto you is paradise opened, the tree of life is planted”. Wait… I thought the Tree of Life was a really big no-no that God (and his offscreen audience) were relieved that Adam and Eve didn’t get to eat. And now He’s planted one specially? I can’t fathom this logic.
2 Esdras 9
“Then shalt thou understand, that it is the very same time, wherein the Highest will begin to visit the world which he made.”
At the end of the last chapter, Esdras asks when will all this come to pass? And here we get a sort of answer from Uriel, which is that all things have a time – “Even so the times also of the Highest have plain beginnings in wonder and powerful works, and endings in effects and signs.” This verse also implies that God is somehow bound to time, or His own version of time. The rest of the answer is more about what will happen to people, and it’s very like much of the Qur’an, dwelling on punishment for the wicked, e.g. “Then shall they be in pitiful case, which now have abused my ways: and they that have cast them away despitefully shall dwell in torments”. There’s a lot less burning though, and Uriel even says let’s not talk about them – “be thou not curious how the ungodly shall be punished, and when: but enquire how the righteous shall be saved”.
Esdras, ever full of questions, then asks about the reason for only some being saved, a “drop” compared to a “wave”. Once again Uriel’s answer (in this case definitely channelling God since it’s written in first person) is evasive. There’s some confusing stuff about work being like the workman and colours being like the flower, and then we get “And now when I prepared the world, which was not yet made, even for them to dwell in that now live, no man spake against me”. Well, no… they wouldn’t, would they? Who is God thinking of here that might object? His neighbours who want Him to get planning permission for His new planet?
The nearest we get to any kind of answer is that God decided to save some, like picking the best grapes from a cluster and “Let the multitude perish then, which was born in vain”. Charming. After this Esdras is commanded to go and live in a field for seven days and eat nothing but flowers. Yes, flowers. After this he starts talking to God again (as you probably would), giving a little summary of the early days of the Covenant, and proclaiming that even if individual people die, the Law lives on, unlike, say, wine in a cup being lost if the cup is broken.
Esdras then opens his eyes and finds a woman standing nearby. It’s not clear, as yet, if she’s real or a vision, but she starts to tell Esdras about how she was barren for thirty years until God granted her a child. The story is obviously to be continued next chapter as it ends abruptly partway through. You do have to wonder why God had to wait thirty years before bothering to answer prayers though.
2 Esdras 10
“Who then should make more mourning than she, that hath lost so great a multitude; and not thou, which art sorry but for one?”
The mystery woman from the end of last chapter tells of how her only son, born after thirty years of infertility, had a fall and died on the night of his wedding, and for this she has gone out into the fields to die of grief.
Esdras is compassionate in his response. “Thou foolish woman above all other, seest thou not our mourning, and what happeneth unto us? How that Sion our mother is full of all heaviness, and much humbled, mourning very sore? And now, seeing we all mourn and are sad, for we are all in heaviness, art thou grieved for one son?”
He goes on to forestall any objections that a mother bearing a child is somehow different to people creating a city (or rather, the earth producing people), claiming that, nuh-uh, it totally is the same thing – “Like as thou hast brought forth with labour; even so the earth also hath given her fruit, namely, man, ever since the beginning unto him that made her” and finally tells her to “keep thy sorrow to thyself, and bear with a good courage that which hath befallen thee”.
She choses not to take this heart-felt and kindly advice, so Esdras continues by listing all the woes of Israel – “Our psaltery is laid on the ground, our song is put to silence, our rejoicing is at an end, the light of our candlestick is put out, the ark of our covenant is spoiled, our holy things are defiled, and the name that is called upon us is almost profaned: our children are put to shame, our priests are burnt, our Levites are gone into captivity, our virgins are defiled, and our wives ravished; our righteous men carried away, our little ones destroyed, our young men are brought in bondage, and our strong men are become weak”. That’s one single verse, by the way. Don’t forget to breathe, Esdras.
In response to this, and his urging that God will sort it all out in the end, the woman suddenly turns into a shining city, as you do. Esdras cries out for Uriel, who appears and explains that it was a test all along, to see how upset Esdras was about the destruction of Jerusalem (Sion), and he passed, getting a vision as payment. There’s also an explanation that the vision could only appear in a place where there were no existing building foundations, hence having to sit in a field and eat flowers.
Oh yes, the metaphor gets explained – the thirty barren years are when no offerings were made in Jerusalem (when?) until Solomon builds a Temple and offerings are made. This is the birth of the child, and his growth is when the city is prosperous. The death on the wedding night is obviously the Babylonian conquest.
It has to be said, that’s a rubbish metaphor. I mean, really? And surely before Solomon was David who must also have made offerings? Must try harder, Esdras, that was weak.
Anyway, Uriel tells Esdras to go and explore the city, but to spend the night where he is in order to get more visions. “And so shall the Highest shew thee visions of the high things, which the most High will do unto them that dwell upon the earth in the last days.”
Some Fine Apocalyptic Literature. Plus Breast Fruit.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Apocrypha version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Old Testament Apocrypha, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/3aEJ6Q5
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP
And now:
2 Esdras 6
“As for the other people, which also come of Adam, thou hast said that they are nothing, but be like unto spittle: and hast likened the abundance of them unto a drop that falleth from a vessel.”
We left off with the archangel Uriel coming to visit Esdras once again after Esdras has fasted for seven days. I’m not surprised he was having visions.
Uriel once again gives a Job-esque spiel about how much God knows compared to mere mortals and, I have to say, I’m really liking the writing in Esdras. I don’t know if it was translated at the same time as the rest of the KJV or if the translation is a bit later, because the language, whilst suitably “Biblical” is not as dense and obscure as much of the stuff I had the suffer through. It’s more like reading something like the Silmarillion or the more “high voice” chapters of Lord of the Rings (eg The Steward and the King), where Tolkien is evidently evoking a Biblical idiom. For example:
“And he said unto me, In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the borders of the world stood, or ever the winds blew,
Before it thundered and lightened, or ever the foundations of paradise were laid,
Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever the moveable powers were established, before the innumerable multitude of angels were gathered together,
Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys in Sion were hot,
And ere the present years were sought out, and or ever the inventions of them that now sin were turned, before they were sealed that have gathered faith for a treasure:
Then did I consider these things, and they all were made through me alone, and through none other: by me also they shall be ended, and by none other.”
Compare that with the verse Gandalf recites in The Road to Isengard;
“Ere iron was found or tree was hewn,
When young was mountain under moon,
Ere ring was made, or wrought with woe,
It walked the forests long ago”
You can see the semblance is the language used. It makes Esdras a lot more poetic and easy to read than pretty much any of the Biblical books that were universally agreed upon.
Uriel continues to tell Esdras about some coming day when friends will fight friends, the earth will quake, springs will dry up (for a whole three hours) and “children of a year old shall speak with their voices, the women with child shall bring forth untimely children of three or four months old”. But also that “salvation” is possible for those with faith and the “As for faith, it shall flourish, corruption shall be overcome, and the truth, which hath been so long without fruit, shall be declared”.
Uriel then commands that Esdras fast another seven days to get another vision, and on the eighth day Esdras tells God what He presumably already knows about Creation Week, finishing with the quote above, that if the chosen descendants of Adam end up becoming captive of all the other, less worthy descendants of Adam (the “spittle”), then what was the point of it all? Again, a fair question by Esdras.
Once more, as well, the language used is great. Esdras basically recites Genesis 1, but does it so much better (and I quite like Genesis 1) – “For immediately there was great and innumerable fruit, and many and divers pleasures for the taste, and flowers of unchangeable colour, and odours of wonderful smell: and this was done the third day.”
Also of note in this list are mention of two monsters – Enoch and Leviathan. Leviathan is given “the seventh part [of the waters], namely, the moist; and hast kept him to be devoured of whom thou wilt, and when” whereas Enoch is given “one part, which was dried up the third day, that he should dwell in the same part, wherein are a thousand hills”.
Leviathan, the sea monster or possibly whale, we already know about, but Enoch I’ve only heard mention as … where have I heard it? A prophet? I’ve got a vague feeling it has something to do with enemies of Noah. Hang on, I’ll look it up….
No. There are two Enochs, it would seem. One is a son of Cain and he founds an eponymous city, the other slots in some seven generations after Adam, and is the son of Jared and the father of Methusaleh, living 365 years. Much later, in Hebrews, it’s referenced that Enoch is apparently bodily translated into heaven – this is a reference to Enoch son of Cain, but the nearest thing like that is Genesis 5:24 which refers to Enoch son of Jared, which reads “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him”.
Which could, let’s be honest, just be a reference to dying.
Finally Jude 1:14 says “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints“. Which, if he does say that, is not reported in the KJV. (There is, I discover, a Book of Enoch that is found in the Jewish Tanakh and some (mainly Ethiopian) Christian traditions. Whee! More reading).
Neither of which make any sense in term of Enoch being some kind of mountain-dwelling monster, to which I can find little reference. Bah. I’m going to assume it meant Enoch Powell.
2 Esdras 7
“Who then could go into the sea to look upon it, and to rule it? if he went not through the narrow, how could he come into the broad?”
The angel Uriel gives Esdras a series of metaphors, all around the theme of the “strait and narrow” path of Matthew 7:14. To get to the sea you have to pass through the mouth of a river, to get into a big city you have to go through a small gate.
These the angel compares to a kind of return to Eden by passing through the trials of life, because of some kind of reason to do with having to earn it otherwise it’s not worth it –“If this city now were given unto a man for an inheritance, if he never shall pass the danger set before it, how shall he receive this inheritance?” This state of affairs came about through Adam, and Uriel then patronisingly tells Esdras that he could never really understand because “why disquietest thou thyself, seeing thou art but a corruptible man?”, also that “There is no judge above God, and none that hath understanding above the Highest.”
There next follows a bit that makes me suspect that Esdras is written a lot later than Ezra, starting with “Behold, the time shall come, that these tokens which I have told thee shall come to pass, and the bride shall appear”. “The Bride”, of course, is referenced in Revelation, and there was an earlier reference to the “Third Trumpet” which made me suspect. So probably the author of Esdras is drawing on works from Revelation. And then we get “For my son Jesus shall be revealed with those that be with him, and they that remain shall rejoice within four hundred years. After these years shall my son Christ die, and all men that have life” .
Nobody, but nobody in the OT prophets uses such specific terms as Jesus and Christ. The best you will get are references to the Messiah (which, as with Christ, stem from the “anointed one” but the more Hebraic Messiah references tend to be pretty obviously about the anointed king kind of ruler like David or Solomon). And the “Immanuel” reference of Isaiah. No-one uses the name Jesus, Joshua or any other permutation.
But also, what’s this about four hundred years? And after that, “And the world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, like as in the former judgments: so that no man shall remain.”
Well… that didn’t happen, wherever you want to count 400 years from.
There’s a bit more where Uriel and Esdras discuss these end –times in terms of bad things being destroyed and only the good things flourishing. And then Esdras asks a pertinent question – “This is my first and last saying, that it had been better not to have given the earth unto Adam: or else, when it was given him, to have restrained him from sinning.”
Uriel kind of dodges the question – “This is the condition of the battle, which man that is born upon the earth shall fight; That, if he be overcome, he shall suffer as thou hast said: but if he get the victory, he shall receive the thing that I say.” In other words, that’s the way it is. It doesn’t fully explain the whole Fall story though – if it was meant to be that way so that victory (Salvation) is worth fighting for, then why not make it that way to begin with rather than this convoluted reverse psychology with the fruit. And in that case, why then get angry with humans for disobedience, if what they were doing was what was needed in the first place?
The problem here, I think, is that the Garden of Eden tale is from one kind of mythology, and the Saviour narrative is from another. The two are not logically compatible with one another without some serious sophistry. It might have been more honest to do what the Qur’an does, and change the Eden story to fit in with the rest of the theology. Particularly once Christianity became its own thing and not a Jewish sect – it would be easy enough then if anyone pointed out differences between the Eden story in the Bible and the Torah to claim that the Jews have a corrupt version. I mean, it’s not like that kind of claim isn’t made both ways anyway, so why not? (I suppose it’s got something to canonicity and how once text is treated as sacred it can’t be altered (but I bet it is)).
2 Esdras 8
“I will tell thee a similitude, Esdras; As when thou askest the earth, it shall say unto thee, that it giveth much mould whereof earthen vessels are made, but little dust that gold cometh of: even so is the course of this present world.”
Uriel tells Esdras that only a select few will be “saved” for the “world to come”, likening them to gold dust compared to common clay. Esdras literally eats these words - “Swallow then down, O my soul, understanding, and devour wisdom”, possibly an allusion to John eating the book in Revelation, or at the very least using a very similar analogy.
There’s then a bit of an Obs. and Gyn. lecture, where Esdras describes pregnancy in the lead up to his point (which we will come to). “For when the body is fashioned now in the mother's womb, and thou givest it members, thy creature is preserved in fire and water, and nine months doth thy workmanship endure thy creature which is created in her.” Evidently the idea here is that the developing foetus and child are being shaped by God whilst they grow in the womb. And once born they are nourished by milk “which is the fruit of the breasts”.
Having put in all this effort, says Esdras, why then destroy the result with such evident relish and enthusiasm? Which seems a fair question. Esdras also points out that nobody’s perfect, nor is anyone entirely bad - “what is a corruptible generation, that thou shouldest be so bitter toward it? For in truth them is no man among them that be born, but he hath dealt wickedly; and among the faithful there is none which hath not done amiss.”
Again, a fair question. I do take some issue with his reference to breastfeeding where he says “That the thing which is fashioned may be nourished for a time”. “Thing”? It’s a baby, Esdras. It’s not a “thing”. Possibly infant mortality was such that you may as well assume an infant to be a thing until it survives to a certain age. Or it’s just a dodgy choice of words. Doesn’t really matter.
Esdras continues at some length after this, giving a bit of flattery to God. Since I started the whole Atheist Explore Sacred Texts endeavour I’ve become more familiar with online clashes between atheist and believer. Usually, it must be said, targeting Creationists and New Fundamentalist Baptists, two rather outré forms of Christianity peculiar to the USA. One common bit of mudslinging is to refer to God disparagingly as a “Sky Daddy”, to which the usual answer is that nobody thinks God lives in the sky. Maybe not now, but Esdras did - “thou that dwellest in everlastingness which beholdest from above things in the heaven and in the air”.
Anyway, I digress. Because Esdras rambles so much in his question he gives Uriel a chance not to address his very good point above, and instead gets an answer about the rewards that await the faithful (the unfaithful, by dint of being unfaithful, deserve all the crap that happens to them).
I noted with interest that Uriel says “unto you is paradise opened, the tree of life is planted”. Wait… I thought the Tree of Life was a really big no-no that God (and his offscreen audience) were relieved that Adam and Eve didn’t get to eat. And now He’s planted one specially? I can’t fathom this logic.
2 Esdras 9
“Then shalt thou understand, that it is the very same time, wherein the Highest will begin to visit the world which he made.”
At the end of the last chapter, Esdras asks when will all this come to pass? And here we get a sort of answer from Uriel, which is that all things have a time – “Even so the times also of the Highest have plain beginnings in wonder and powerful works, and endings in effects and signs.” This verse also implies that God is somehow bound to time, or His own version of time. The rest of the answer is more about what will happen to people, and it’s very like much of the Qur’an, dwelling on punishment for the wicked, e.g. “Then shall they be in pitiful case, which now have abused my ways: and they that have cast them away despitefully shall dwell in torments”. There’s a lot less burning though, and Uriel even says let’s not talk about them – “be thou not curious how the ungodly shall be punished, and when: but enquire how the righteous shall be saved”.
Esdras, ever full of questions, then asks about the reason for only some being saved, a “drop” compared to a “wave”. Once again Uriel’s answer (in this case definitely channelling God since it’s written in first person) is evasive. There’s some confusing stuff about work being like the workman and colours being like the flower, and then we get “And now when I prepared the world, which was not yet made, even for them to dwell in that now live, no man spake against me”. Well, no… they wouldn’t, would they? Who is God thinking of here that might object? His neighbours who want Him to get planning permission for His new planet?
The nearest we get to any kind of answer is that God decided to save some, like picking the best grapes from a cluster and “Let the multitude perish then, which was born in vain”. Charming. After this Esdras is commanded to go and live in a field for seven days and eat nothing but flowers. Yes, flowers. After this he starts talking to God again (as you probably would), giving a little summary of the early days of the Covenant, and proclaiming that even if individual people die, the Law lives on, unlike, say, wine in a cup being lost if the cup is broken.
Esdras then opens his eyes and finds a woman standing nearby. It’s not clear, as yet, if she’s real or a vision, but she starts to tell Esdras about how she was barren for thirty years until God granted her a child. The story is obviously to be continued next chapter as it ends abruptly partway through. You do have to wonder why God had to wait thirty years before bothering to answer prayers though.
2 Esdras 10
“Who then should make more mourning than she, that hath lost so great a multitude; and not thou, which art sorry but for one?”
The mystery woman from the end of last chapter tells of how her only son, born after thirty years of infertility, had a fall and died on the night of his wedding, and for this she has gone out into the fields to die of grief.
Esdras is compassionate in his response. “Thou foolish woman above all other, seest thou not our mourning, and what happeneth unto us? How that Sion our mother is full of all heaviness, and much humbled, mourning very sore? And now, seeing we all mourn and are sad, for we are all in heaviness, art thou grieved for one son?”
He goes on to forestall any objections that a mother bearing a child is somehow different to people creating a city (or rather, the earth producing people), claiming that, nuh-uh, it totally is the same thing – “Like as thou hast brought forth with labour; even so the earth also hath given her fruit, namely, man, ever since the beginning unto him that made her” and finally tells her to “keep thy sorrow to thyself, and bear with a good courage that which hath befallen thee”.
She choses not to take this heart-felt and kindly advice, so Esdras continues by listing all the woes of Israel – “Our psaltery is laid on the ground, our song is put to silence, our rejoicing is at an end, the light of our candlestick is put out, the ark of our covenant is spoiled, our holy things are defiled, and the name that is called upon us is almost profaned: our children are put to shame, our priests are burnt, our Levites are gone into captivity, our virgins are defiled, and our wives ravished; our righteous men carried away, our little ones destroyed, our young men are brought in bondage, and our strong men are become weak”. That’s one single verse, by the way. Don’t forget to breathe, Esdras.
In response to this, and his urging that God will sort it all out in the end, the woman suddenly turns into a shining city, as you do. Esdras cries out for Uriel, who appears and explains that it was a test all along, to see how upset Esdras was about the destruction of Jerusalem (Sion), and he passed, getting a vision as payment. There’s also an explanation that the vision could only appear in a place where there were no existing building foundations, hence having to sit in a field and eat flowers.
Oh yes, the metaphor gets explained – the thirty barren years are when no offerings were made in Jerusalem (when?) until Solomon builds a Temple and offerings are made. This is the birth of the child, and his growth is when the city is prosperous. The death on the wedding night is obviously the Babylonian conquest.
It has to be said, that’s a rubbish metaphor. I mean, really? And surely before Solomon was David who must also have made offerings? Must try harder, Esdras, that was weak.
Anyway, Uriel tells Esdras to go and explore the city, but to spend the night where he is in order to get more visions. “And so shall the Highest shew thee visions of the high things, which the most High will do unto them that dwell upon the earth in the last days.”
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