Library/Deuterocanon
1 Esdras (Greek Ezra)
A rearranged Ezra–Nehemiah with a famous symposium: which is strongest, wine, the king, women, or truth? Truth wins. Orthodox Bibles keep it; the Latin West mostly did not.
- Status
- Orthodox canon (not Catholic)
- Date
- 2nd century BCE?
- Languages
- Greek
- Setting
- Return from exile; the contest of the three bodyguards
What it contains
- Josiah to the return
- The bodyguards’ contest
- Ezra’s reading
Why it sits outside most canons
Overlaps canonical Ezra; Western lists treated it as duplicate.
Themes
- Return
- Temple
- Truth
- Wisdom contest
Passages
1 Esdras 4:41
Great is truth, and strongest of all.