Ezra: Encyclopedia II - Ezra - Place in editing the Torah and Bible

Ezra - Place in editing the Torah and Bible

According to Rabbinic Jewish tradition, Ezra collected and arranged the canon of the Hebrew Bible. Information on his activities in this regard are found in the Talmud and in the midrash literature.

In the view of many modern scholars, these sources provide one set of evidence in favor of the documentary hypothesis. In this view, some midrash compilations retain evidence of the redactional period during which Ezra redacted and canonized the text of the Torah as we know it today. This idea is discussed by Rabbi David Weiss Halivni in his works Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses (Westview Press, 1997), and Peshat and Derash: Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis (Oxford University Press, 1998). Richard Elliot Friedman suggests that Ezra was the second editor who combined the priestly source into the Torah and that the J and E sources had been combined by an earlier editor. If so Ezra seems to have been careful to preserve almost all of the original sources in the final composite.[1] Jewish sources do not mention about editing or redacting the Torah. Rather, the aggada suggests that Ezra and the Men of the Great Assembly edited such works as Daniel, Esther and Ezekiel. (Bava Batra 14b).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Place in editing the Torah and Bible", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki