Will Vaus

Today in our journey along Route 66 we are paying a visit to the book of Ezra... Author   Although the caption to Nehemiah 1:1 indicates that Ezra and Nehemiah were originally two separate compositions, they were combined as one in the earliest Hebrew manuscripts and in the Septuagint. Josephus (AD 37-100) and the Jewish Talmud do not refer to a separate book of Nehemiah. Origen (AD 185-253) is the first writer known to distinguish between the two books. Jerome (AD 390), Wycliffe (AD 1382) and Coverdale (AD 1535) all followed this precedent set by Origen.   Certain materials in the book of Ezra appear to be first-person extracts from his memoirs. Other sections are written in the third person. Linguistic analysis shows that these different extracts resemble each other, making it likely that the same author wrote both.   In the past, some scholars believed that the author/compiler of Ezra and Nehemiah was also the author of Chronicles, based on characteristics common to al...

Today in our journey along Route 66 we are visiting the book of 2 Chronicles... Author   1 and 2 Chronicles was originally one book. As we talked about last week, Rabbinic tradition ascribes authorship of part, but not all, of Chronicles to Ezra the scribe; medieval Jewish commentators differed over the scope of the Ezra material. Modern scholarship is divided over the book’s relationship to Ezra. There are similarities in terms of language, outlook, and theology between the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Thus, some scholars refer to the author of all three as “The Chronicler”. But most scholars now reject this position. Most scholars now use the term “The Chronicler” just to refer to the author of Chronicles. Furthermore, some scholars, like Richard Elliott Friedman, believe that the author of Chronicles was an Aaronid priest, [1]  but that’s about all we know.   Date   Though there is agreement that Chronicles was written during the postexilic period, the...