Orthodox Canon

[TWells]

I’ve had some trouble determining the exact canon of Orthodox OT. Looking at www.lxx.org they have a list of the books they are translating so im assuming this is the official canon. I have a couple of questions:



Many Orthodox that I have spoken to have mentioned that I Enoch is inspired as well, if its not has it been considered so during Church history besides the very early Church?



Is I Esdras, simply Ezra in the protestant Bible?



Is II Esdras an apocalyptic book with prophecies? How does this effect Orthodox eschatology?


I was under the impression that IV Maccabees wasn’t accepted as canon but only put in the appendix in the Greek Bibles?

 

[Reader Nilus]

I’ve had some trouble determining the exact canon of Orthodox OT. Looking at www.lxx.org they have a list of the books they are translating so im assuming this is the official canon. I have a couple of questions:



Many Orthodox that I have spoken to have mentioned that I Enoch is inspired as well, if its not has it been considered so during Church history besides the very early Church?



Is I Esdras, simply Ezra in the protestant Bible?



Is II Esdras an apocalyptic book with prophecies? How does this effect Orthodox eschatology?


I was under the impression that IV Maccabees wasn’t accepted as canon but only put in the appendix in the Greek Bibles?

One of the reasons why you may be having problems "determining the exact canon of the Orthodox OT" is the fact that it has not been really defined. The Old Testament in the Orthodox Churchby Fr. R. Stergiou is a good article about the subject. I Enoch is considered Scripture only by the Ethiopian Orthodox that I know of, on the witness of St Jude quoting it in his letter.
Jeff the Finn

 

[Dorotheos]

Esdras in particular is tricky. What most people know as the two books of Ezra and Nehemiah are in the Septuagint the one book Esdras II (sometimes referred to as "Greek Esdras")

In many older versions of the Vulgate Esdras II becomes Esdras I.

In later versions of the Vulgate Esdras I gets separtated into Esdras I (Ezra) and Esdras II (Nehemiah) and this is what gets passed down in the West.

Now for the tricky part. The Septuagint Esdras I is the same as the old Vulgate Esdras II and then becomes the new Vulgate Esdras III. This book is deuterocanonical and not often included in western bibles, but as it is in the Septuagint it is canonical.

It gets worse. There is another Esdras but it's not in the Septuagint. It calls itself the Second Book of Esdras. But it is called Esdras III in the old Vulgate and Esdras IV in the new Vulgate. Alternative names for this Esdras are "Esdras, the Prophet", "The Apocalypse of Esdras" and "Latin Esdras", the latter name being given since no complete Greek version is known to exist even though it was originally written in Greek. I have no clue as to the canonical status of this book.

A table might help:

In order (1) Ezra, (2) Nehemiah, (3) Greek Esdras, (4) Latin Esdras become:

Septuagint (1-2) Esdras II (3) Esdras I
Old Vulgate (1-2) Esdras I (3) Esdras II (4) Esdras III
New Vulgate (1) Esdras I (2) Esdras II (3) Esdras III (4) Esdras IV

I had a lot of fun trying to work this out a while back. My sources are the Jerusalem Bible, Brenton's edition of the Septuagint and some web searching.

Yours in Christ

Dorotheos