The Story of My Books # 8 - Commentary on 1 Esdras

Okay, book # 8 was a commentary on 1 Esdras for Brill’s Septuagint commentary series and based exclusively on the textual witness of codex Vaticanus. Here’s the blurb:

In 1 Edras Michael Bird presents a commentary on this much-neglected text based on its witness in Codex Vaticanus as part of the next installment of the Septuagint Commentary Series. Containing material that parallels 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, 1 Esdras is featured in the Septuagint and Christian Apocrypha. The commentary presents a survey of critical issues related to the study of 1 Esdras and provides an impressive literary analysis of the contours of 1 Esdras.

For those who don’t know 1 Esdras is a Greek translation of the end of 2 Chronicles, parts of Ezra, and Nehemiah, with a cute apocryphal story about three bodyguards having a philosophy contest at the Persian court. See a video I made about it at the end of this post.

Now this book is by far the least known, least read, and least interesting of all my books. It is very niche and technical. I signed up for it while I was in the UK where scholars have to write erudite and highly specialist tomes for the university’s review of research. That’s why I signed up for it.

That said, I learned a lot writing this book, I learned a lot about Ezra-Nehemiah, about the Septuagint, about Second Temple literature, the reception of the Apocrypha in Christian circles, and about Codex Vaticanus.

It had some interesting payoffs. I did the translation of 1 Esdras for the Common English Bible Apocrypha and I also revised the text of 1 Esdras for the NRSVue Apocrypha.

This book is expensive, very technical, so don’t read it unless you are a grad student with an interest in the LXX.

Here’s a video, one of my earlier ones, about 1 Esdras: