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Before the Church · c. 150–100 BC

First Esdras

Anonymous

Full text

What it is

A Greek retelling of the return from exile, differing from Ezra–Nehemiah in order and content, and containing one episode found nowhere else: three bodyguards of Darius debate whether wine, the king, or women is strongest, and the winner answers that women are strong but truth conquers all.

Why it lasted

Evidence that the text of Ezra–Nehemiah was still unsettled in the Second Temple period, and the source of a Latin proverb — great is truth, and it prevails — that outlived the book it came from.

Scripture it works from

Read it here

The full text is held here and can be read in the reader.

9 sections · complete, from Bible (King James)/1 Esdras.

Elsewhere

The complete text is held here and can be read in the reader.

These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.

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