Ezra and the Dead Sea Scrolls

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Ezra, the early jewish priest and scribe, has been described as the father of Judaism as it emerged from the ashes of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the loss of statehood. The Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple in 586 B.C.E. and took many from Judah into exile. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah describe how Ezra, whose impeccable priestly pedigree is said to go all the way back to Moses’s brother, Aaron (Ezra 7:1-6), returned to the land during the reign of the Persian king Artaxerxes, brought with him the Law of Moses, and presided over its correct interpretation.

Surprisingly, the story of Ezra’s return and role in preserving the law is never mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls, our earliest collection of biblical writings, dating from the third century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. Originally preserved as a single book, Ezra and Nehemiah only came to be considered separate works by Origen of Alexandria in the third century C.E. when they were divided. In any case, only three small fragments of the Book of Ezra were found at Qumran, while nothing from Nehemiah has been identified among the scrolls.^a What is more, the surviving Ezra fragments contain material only from Ezra 4-6, chapters largely concerned with the rebuilding of the Temple, with nothing of Ezra’s story, which begins in chapter 7.

In fact, the period of the return and the rebuilding of the Temple barely features in the scrolls. In the well-known Damascus Document, for example, the return from exile and the rebuilding of the Temple are 056completely passed over in a summary of God’s benevolence in the wake of Israel’s rebellious acts against God:

As presented in the Damascus Document, the next noteworthy event following the Babylonian destruction was not the reversal of Judean fortunes under Persian rule, but the emergence of a Jewish reform movement, led by a “teacher of righteousness,” four centuries later.

One important exception to this “radio silence” about the immediate post-exilic period is found in the Apocryphon of Jeremiah (4Q390), which does refer to the return from Babylon and the rebuilding of the Temple (written as if God were the speaker):

And they too will do what is evil in my eyes, like all that which the Israelites had done in the former days of their kingdom, except those who came up first from the land of their captivity to build the Temple. And I shall speak to them and send them commandments, and they will understand everything which they and their fathers had neglected.

Interestingly, however, the text’s reference to the return does not name any of the key biblical figures associated with these events, such as the lay leaders Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah, or the priestly 057leaders Jeshua and Ezra.

This state of affairs is exceedingly curious. Why would the Qumran scribes or their community not have referenced Ezra or the period of the return in their writings, especially when speaking of the post-destruction renewal?¹ Although the silence could be a deliberate snub based on ideological or theological disagreements, it is worth looking at the wider literary landscape of the Second Temple period before jumping to conclusions.

On the one hand, we have several well-known works where Ezra is prominent. The clearest witness, of course, is the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah itself, where Ezra takes center stage alongside Nehemiah. The book’s presumed original Hebrew and Aramaic text was translated into Greek in the second century B.C.E., which demonstrates that a text very close to what we read in our Bibles today was already known to some Jewish scribes and Greek translators in the closing centuries before the Common Era.²

Another intriguing witness is the third- or second-century B.C.E. work known as 1 Esdras, identified by the Greek form of Ezra’s name, found in the Apocrypha of many Christian Bibles and considered canonical in the Orthodox tradition. In 1 Esdras, Ezra is elevated to the rank of high priest and completely overshadows Nehemiah, who is never mentioned. Scholars believe that the scribes behind the Greek translation of Ezra-Nehemiah and of 1 Esdras were active around the same time as the scribes who left us the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Ezra is also prominent in the apocalyptic work known as 4 Ezra, composed after the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. and later included with several other writings as a book of scripture (2 Esdras) in a number of Orthodox churches. This composition presents Ezra as a seer who experiences visions and is guided by the archangel Uriel. In the book’s climactic chapter, we find a story about Ezra who, being infused by a fiery magic potion from God, dictates nearly 100 books—the majority reserved only for the wisest among the people—to five attending scribes (2 Esdras 14). Then Ezra is taken up to heaven like Enoch and Elijah before him.

Ezra’s profile continued to grow in later Jewish tradition. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Ezra knew the pronunciation of the divine name and was identified with the prophet Malachi. Before departing from Babylon to Jerusalem, he was also said to have been educated as a student of the prophet Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch. In sum, Ezra’s importance and legacy in Jewish tradition can barely be overstated despite the cool reception he receives in the scrolls and, as we shall see, in a number of other contemporary witnesses.

Scholars have long debated whether Ezra was a real historical figure, with some claiming he was a fictive creation and others arguing that Ezra was not only real but, in fact, the original source for the authors who wrote the biblical book that carried his name.³ What is clear, in any case, is that there was a circle of early Jews—however small or influential—who were sympathetic to Ezra and worked to preserve his legacy and the values, traditions, and activities they associated with him.

On the other hand, there exists a range of other ancient Jewish sources where, much as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ezra is largely absent. One example is the famous “Praise of the Ancestors,” a hymn offered by the second-century B.C.E. priestly sage Ben Sira that is included within the apocryphal work that takes his name (Sirach 44–50). Ben Sira singles out a host of honorable figures in Jewish history, from Enoch, Noah, and the patriarchs of Genesis to the righteous kings of Israel and Judah and revered biblical prophets. However, when we reach the time of the return from exile and the beginning of the restoration period, where we might reasonably expect Ezra to be mentioned, we read:

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Ben Sira credits the leadership of Zerubbabel and Jeshua and praises the achievements of Nehemiah, but he has not a word about Ezra. It is particularly curious that Ben Sira—a writer widely credited with explicitly integrating the law into the realm of wisdom—does not refer to Ezra’s contribution in this regard.

Second Maccabees, another second-century B.C.E. Jewish work, similarly presents Nehemiah alone as the one who built the Temple and the altar. Moreover, Nehemiah is credited with instructing the descendants of exiled priestly families to retrieve the fire of the altar from a dry cistern where it had been hidden after the Temple’s destruction (2 Maccabees 1:19–23). In short, rather than being primarily responsible for the repair of the city walls, as in the account found in the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah, the Nehemiah of 2 Maccabees is closely engaged with the rebuilding of the Temple and thereby exceeds the achievements of Jeshua, Zerubbabel, and Ezra.

So in light of this diverse and often conflicting array of Jewish literary traditions associated with Ezra, what do we make of his absence in the Dead Sea Scrolls? It could be that additional fragments of the Book of Ezra, including chapters that refer to Ezra, did once exist at Qumran and subsequently perished. Alternatively, as some scholars have suggested, the omission of Ezra in the scrolls could have been deliberate, perhaps reflecting the ideological or theological views of their authors.

However, having reviewed the diverse literary landscape of Second Temple Judaism, which is patchy when it comes to acknowledging Ezra, I suggest another possible, more likely, explanation: Ezra was simply unknown to some Jewish scribes of the Second Temple period, including those of Qumran and the near contemporary writers behind the books of Ben Sira and 2 Maccabees.

While this might at first seem a radical idea, given the prominence of Ezra in the Bibles we read today, we must remember that the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira, and 2 Maccabees represents a significant portion of ancient Jewish literature, whose authors seem not to have had access to the Ezra tradition. This is in contrast, of course, to the writings and collections of other Jewish groups, where Ezra was not only present but prominent.

In a world before bookstores or Kindles, early Jewish communities only had access to those scrolls that their teachers or families had acquired or collected. Ancient Jewish scribes wrote their works on lengthy parchment scrolls, which were difficult to transport, store, access, and preserve as uniform collections. Although the Qumran scribes clearly had access to a comprehensive collection of biblical manuscripts from antiquity, it may well be that works preserving the Ezra tradition simply did not make it into their collection.⁴

Three fragments of the Book of Ezra have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest collection of biblical texts. Yet the figure of Ezra—and his importance as priest, scribe, and interpreter of the law—does not appear in the scrolls. Did the authors of the scrolls not know his story?