3 and 4 Esdras

We are reading through the Apocrypha in order to understand recovery work there. This blog covers big surprises in 3 and 4 Esdras. The VR app was also upgraded this week. Finally, a headline review.

Recovery

We are slowly working our way towards getting setup for recovery work against the Aramaic/Syriac manuscripts of the Bible. These come from the Church of the East. That church has a longer canon than we are used to as Protestants. Depending on how they are counted, there are something like 80+ books in this canon, not the 66 books of the Protestant canon.

There is a set of technical work for this, like fixing file names and making sure we can quote and move around in those texts. We also have challenges related to the BRB and what we should be doing there. We ultimately need to integrate the bigger canon.

Before all that, the first problem is that neither Ryan nor I are familiar with content in these books. We need better familiarity with them so we can more easily reason about what we are going to run into when we include those extra books in our existing setup.

So we have started to read through the books in the Apocrypha in order to get better familiarity with their content. Ryan is running ahead of me. I have been finishing up lingering code work and am also busy in the shop. But, this week I was able to finally read 3 and 4 Esdras. What follows is something of a surprising book report on what we found.

Book Names

We are using the ETC text for our reference Paleo OT. You can see it in the VR. This will be the base text for our audit work. The ETC set of files include 4 different books of Esdras, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras. They are, of course, in Aramaic/Syriac, so we cannot just read them. We need to start somewhere else.

In a survey of these on Wikipedia, I learned that the English language names for these books shifted at the time of the King James Bible of 1611. Here is what happened...

1 Esdras became Ezra.

2 Esdras became Nehemiah.

3 Esdras became 1 Esdras.

4 Esdras became 2 Esdras.

The computer programmer in me cringes in this history. The reason is names are usually unique identifiers. But if you look at this, the KJV era translation work changed the content in the previously named 1 and 2 Esdras such that those already known names were now used for content originally known as 3 and 4 Esdras. Cringe.

Throughout our library of Bible books we do have books with more than 1 name. James, for example, is a synonym for Jacob. 1 Moses is Genesis, 2 Moses is Exodus, 3 Moses is Leviticus, 4 Moses is Numbers and finally 5 Moses is Deuteronomy.

We also have examples of split books. 1 and 2 Samuel is just Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings is Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles is just Chronicles. So these sorts of changes are not troubling, we can handle them.

So it is reasonable for 1 Esdras to be a synonym for Ezra and 2 Esdras to be a synonym for Nehemiah. That is not a problem.

But our software does not normally track what canon we are in. I can be writing anywhere in our system and quote any verse from any book. The quoting system does not know about, nor care about, the current canon.

So the book name needs to be unique across all canons. So Ezra and Nehemiah now, also, have synonyms. Ezra and Nehemiah are also known as 1 and 2 Esdras, respectively. Not a problem.

But 1 and 2 Esdras cannot also be synonyms for 3 and 4 Esdras. At least if we do not want to make our world far more complex by adding canon into our normal html tag syntax for bible quotes.

Though it is unconventional to the Protestant world, we are going to leave the books of 3 and 4 Esdras by their Church of the East names. So in this blog I am going to try this out and use those names. Give me feedback if you think this is horrible for some reason.

Ezra is Esdras

I am sure we have some readers who have never looked at these books. For the uninitiated, I should note that the Z in Ezra is also coming into English as SD in Esdras. These are considered the same name, more or less. This is a sound system change similar to how F and Ph are seen in names where language is changing. For example, Felipe and Philip are the same name, just like Esdras and Ezra are the same name.

Finding English Copies

So, Ryan reviewed his library of printed Bibles. He found an NRSV translation that includes these books. After reading 3 and 4 Esdras he loaned it to me so I could see what he saw. He also found another printed copy with commentary on the accepted history of these books, especially interesting was the accepted dating 4 Esdras. I will return to that below.

Acts 15

What we bring to this study, though, is an understanding of the Acts 15 set of editors/villains. We have some sense of the OT editors and their work. The most prolific is Ezra, who we believe canonized the OT that we have now. We figured this out from the Acts 15 riddle and studying of the Protestant Bible.

With Acts 15 as our weapon, we set out to understand the general flow of these books. We wanted to know, at a high level, what is in them and what troubles lurk in these manuscripts. We started here because Esdras is the same name as our villain #5, Ezra. Might these works tell us more about him? We were not prepared for what was about to happen.

3 Esdras

3 Esdras covers much of the same material as we already know in the normal Book of Ezra.

3 Esdras begins earlier in time. It starts with king Josiah and a huge Passover held in Jerusalem under his direction. 3 Esdras then surveys the fall of Jerusalem and then the Babylonian captivity. All of this is retelling material found mostly in Chronicles and Kings, though there may be some matched material in Jeremiah.

Eventually 3 Esdras ends with Ezra's return to set up a replacement temple system in Jerusalem again, after the 70 years of captivity are over. This is mostly material from Ezra that we already know.

The only fundamentally unfamiliar material involves the first wave of refugees who returned to Jerusalem. 3 Esdras is more detailed than the book of Ezra that we know.

That return was triggered by letters placed under the king's pillow which eventually grants one of the king's servants his request to return Jews to the regions around Jerusalem. There are more details here than in a Protestant bible.

Because 3 Esdras has a more distant point of view to the Babylonian deportation, that material is likely an uninspired copy. There may be inspired material around the first wave of people who returned. That material, though, has strange tone. Because the NRSV translator voice is unfamiliar, problems of tone may be problems of translation, so tone is not a good way to judge unfamiliar writing.

Our primary tool for study of this book will be the Bible Harmony, where all of this material will be placed in parallel against other copies of the same stories from other books, mostly Kings, Chronicles and Ezra. That study may eventually favor 1 source over another. We cannot judge particular details in 3 Esdras until the harmony pages for this are setup.

Finally, the audit will also help get to the bottom of this material. We understand prophetically that we must audit the entire canon of the Church of the East in order to find all of the inspired bits of text. There might still be something in 3 Esdras of interest, but nothing clearly stood out.

The technical challenge for 3 Esdras is getting control over a reference English text and making sure it can be quoted in all of our apps, including the Bible Harmony.

This was interesting, but nothing earth shattering. So I moved on.

4 Esdras Dating and Purpose

A 1 sentence summary of this book is that this is a biography/testimony of Ezra the scribe who eventually returned to Jerusalem. So by our Acts 15 understanding, this is the testimony and/or history and/or biography of the 5th primary villain. As soon as we could spot that idea, the book became very, very interesting to read because we already know a lot about that man.

The Wikipedia article suggested this book was not as interesting as 3 Esdras. One of Ryan's other printed sources claimed 4 Esdras was written around the year 100 AD. This makes it OT material written in NT times. Very strange that anyone would claim this OT work was written in NT times.

This claim is made in part because there is a cite early in 4 Esdras that references a date 30 years after the fall of Jerusalem. Someone in history took this as the 70 AD fall of Jerusalem, not the 587 BC fall of Jerusalem. So 70 + 30 is 100, thus this common date.

4 Esdras is detailing the establishment of our OT canon of 24 books. It is also establishing a 70 book canon of secret societies. More on this below. They would not want this book timed during the Babylonian captivity, because it calls out their origin as the same as that of the Jews as we now them now. 4 Esdras tells us they were both birthed together. Those in the secret side of these twins would want to change the date and label the book as fiction created by later Jews. 4 Esdras is strongly suggesting that Ezra setup the secret side to run the public side. The secret side simply has a bigger canon.

Neither Ryan nor I believe the 100 AD dating is correct. We both felt this is better placed back in the time of Ezra himself. But, 30 years after the fall of Jerusalem is a little early for what we know about the timeline of Ezra from the book of Ezra.

For the 4 Esdras timeline to work well, this date may be the year Ezra was born. This may also be the date for Ezra's father. There is a hint in 4 Esdras that Ezra is a stage or pen name.

This 30 year date may also be 30 years after the last deportation, which is still within the 70 years of Babylonian captivity, but much later. Finally, of course, that 30 year date might just be made up, everything else in 4 Esdras is likely made up, so why not the date too?

Composited

The preface in the NRSV, and in Ryan's other work, suggested that 4 Esdras is thought to be a composite of other, smaller, works. This may be so, there are voice and content changes for material at the front and back of 4 Esdras.

This belies the hand of multiple writers at those known breaks. Something was added to the front and to the back of the core biographical content. The interesting part is the middle, which seems to be in the same voice of Ezra himself, where he is giving his supposed personal testimony.

Rules of Additions

From the perspective of the Acts 15 rules of additions, neither of us felt there was any material in 4 Esdras that was originally inspired. Spotting inspired content requires an understanding of a likely inspire writer. There is no reason to think we are reading anything in 4 Esdras from an inspired author.

But what caught our attention was an obvious question, Is this a reasonable description of the same man we know as editor number 5? Does it illuminate our understanding of Ezra as a villain? Does 4 Esdras help us to understand his additions?

Yes, to all of those questions.

Tooling

The biographical parts of 4 Esdras have no parallels, so harmony style tooling will not help. But, there are quite a few passages, especially the back matter, that are end-times. Those could be studied in harmony style tooling. Also, there are a large number of cross references, especially out into material we do not now expect to be inspired.

Pretty much everything in the rest of the Bible which is end-times in the traditional sense is likely sourcing in this book. Our cross reference system must be changed to track cross references into this book.

Uninspired content seems to cross reference itself. Ananias in the NT was likely a fan of some of the content found in 4 Esdras. Ananias likely copied it liberally.

4 Esdras Structure

The primary structure of this book is around a series of angel encounters. These angel encounters were probably copied by men building future religions, at least Mormonism, maybe others at earlier times.

By this I mean 4 Esdras was structurally copied by others building false religions. The divine voice is rare in truly inspired writings. It is common here. There are a bunch of face-to-face conversations with an angel. It will be interesting to see this work colored up with our normal voice markup.

The Catholic Church has a longer list of angelic names than is known in the Protestant canon. One of those otherwise unknown angel names, Uriel, is coming from 4 Esdras. In 4 Esdras the angelic visitations are not with human walk offs, and not likely inspired. It felt like I was reading an introduction to Mormonism.

Creating Canon

Each angel encounter involves various topics. The order and topic of each are not that important here. By about chapter 14, the topic changes. Ezra is told to bring 5 scribes, called out by name, who can write fast and take dictation.

Ezra then takes some sort of intoxicating drink and then starts to dictate. This is presumably telling us an exact origin story of Ezra's other known writing. From that state of drug induced conciousness he proceeds to write 24 public books and 70 secret books.

We know part of that work to be the 24 books of our OT. We don't know the others, but as the narrative explains, those 70 books are the seed that starts the secret religions we know of today as the Talmud based Jewish religion and the religion of Free Masonry. More on that below.

This may be the same hallucinogens we know were used in Greek times for pagan rituals. As those drugs play the same stories in the heads of everyone who is taking them, it would create a match in the heads of anyone in future history doing the same drug induced trip.

The fact that hallucinogens were said to be used as the source for creating Ezra's writings might be why this book lost favor. The fact that this sources both the public and secret writings may also be why this book lost favor.

Interesting Points

1) Ezra seems to liken himself as someone greater than Moses. Some parts of this story suggest it was intended to supplant Moses in terms of authority. This would explain why Moses is not widely considered the founder of Jewish faith.

Of course we think Moses met with Joshua. Ezra claims to have met a lesser angel. This presumes, of course, that Ezra met with anyone at all and was not just making this up. We do not believe Ezra is a truthful man, as he made up everything else, he also likely made up 4 Esdras.

2) Counts of Ezra's writings. This book says that Ezra wrote 24 public works and another 70 private or secret documents. We normally think of the OT with 39 books, but this number comes by breaking down the 24 public works of Ezra. So this is the first time we have clear written text that indicates Ezra was the canonizer of the OT passed to us by history. We had previously deduced Ezra as canonizer just using the Protestant canon with Acts 15 rules. This was a significant affirmation that we are on the right track.

Those 70 additional writings are the start for the canon of the secret societies. Those writings today have grown considerably since Ezra's day. Jews, Masons, and their various occult friends continue to carry forward Ezra's secret writings, of course with many more additions.

This obvious claim of Ezra being the writer of these other books is going to be partly why secret groups would not want anyone reading 4 Esdras. The way 4 Esdras reveals secret influence may be why it was dropped from printed Bibles in the early 1800s.

This also explains why these groups work so hard to keep their members trapped in their system. We have heard testimony from people who left freemasonry. They often endure pressure from friends and family.

In the minds of other family members, walking away would be walking away from a complete understanding of the first principles laid down by Ezra. (Moving from Ezra's total of 94 original books to only be using the 24 public books of Ezra.) No wonder they would heap scorn on anyone leaving.

Remember, of course, we expect more volumes live in the inspired text. So Ezra was replacing a primary document and its inspired children with his own main 24 book canon and then a hidden 70 book addition. He was probably getting this idea from personal knowledge of how the inspired system worked.

3) Ezra's helpers. 4 Esdras lists off 5 scribes who could write fast who helped Ezra by taking dictation. 4 Esdras also says they were writing with letters that they did not know.

This might be a truthful account about how Ezra created the OT we have now. But given that we know Ezra as primary villain #5, this is likely more false writing. But, it may be an invented cover story for Ezra. Some parts of it might be coming from the real process Ezra and 5 others used when creating their OT additions.

Imagine if Ezra really did have 5 helpers. They sat around and dreamed up a plan for their rewrite. Each may have had specialized areas they wanted to write about. It might be possible to subdivide the Ezra filter tag we are using in the BRB into 5 or 6 more finely tuned buckets. Of course some of them may have been writing the secret books, so their work may not show up in the modern OT at all.

The other point that is interesting involving those other 5 scribes is that they wrote in letters that they did not know. We generally ascribe the invention of the Hebrew alphabet to Daniel working for Nebuchadnezzar, himself villain #3.

We believe this origin for Hebrew letter forms in part because Daniel says he was trained in the language and literature of Babylon. Our understanding is also based, in part, by work of the folks at meru.org who claim the Hebrew letters are formed by casting a shadow across a certain fixed form of a human hand.

They sell a ring that can be held such that it forces that particular shape of the hand. By shifting the light source, all the Hebrew letters are seen in shadow form. Shadow casting is part of the narrative of the Book of Daniel, another match, suggesting that era for the creation of Hebrew letter forms.

Daniel is part of the captivity to Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem. If Ezra does begin around 30 years later, he and his 5 friends may indeed have been using newly minted Hebrew characters for this writing.

Ryan and I once cleaned out a house where a former owner had left behind masonic paraphernalia. To our curiosity at the time, Hebrew letters showed up in some of it.

That Ezra and 5 other scribes were using a new alphabet is another witness to the simultaneous origin of both the Jewish religion and the Masonic religion. They were both birthed on the then new modern Hebrew alphabet.

4) Zionism. Zion is a very rare word in the rest of the OT. It is a name that first shows up near Jerusalem late in Judges, it is part of the history of the tribe of Benjamin.

4 Esdras is likely the source document for the Zionism we see now in the world. Zionism may originally spring from Ezra's work. Zion is a relatively common term in this book. Zion is taken as a given, as it would be from someone out of the Benjamin formed in the last 3 chapters of Judges.

So Zionism should be taken as a synonym for the work of secret societies, not just the return of Jews to rule the world from Jerusalem. With 24 public books and 70 private, about 3/4 of Ezra's writings was given only to those operating in secret. Ezra creates both frauds, not just 1.

The USA is mostly run by secret societies, so their their theology can now be shown to be tied to the goal of ruling the world from Jerusalem. These religions are all focused on the same end, they had the same origin.

5) Eschatology. This seems to be the source document for the general Zionist goal of ruling the world from Jerusalem at the end of the age. And never mind how many people get killed to that end. It is easy to see the revenge motive that seems to follow Benjamin around after the last 3 chapters of Judges. Ezra seems to relish seeing everyone eventually die.

Related to this are details we see as an editor's hand, like 'future pushing' everything to an end of the age resurrection. Also, in this version, most souls die.

This is very much in contrast to Joshua not wanting any soul to perish, but all to come to repentance. Joshua does this by using reincarnation as the way to get souls saved across many thousands of years.

There are so many cross references from 4 Esdras to elsewhere in the Protestant bible, that we need to get this added to the BRB. Once added to the BRB, the use of cross references to this material will make it much easier to spot trouble with content in the NT. We are debating how best to do this, more in a future blog.

6) Timeline. 4 Esdras places Solomon's Temple at the year 3000. This is in an angelic voice. This was on a millennium break, so that part is being supported here.

But, this is of course 7000 years short. So the angel is false. The Matthew Grand Run puts it at 10,000, so too does Genesis. The writer here did not know how the Genesis genealogies work. And, at the writing of 4 Esdras, the book's time in history is described as 9.5 out of 12 parts through history. So we are now well beyond the end of the 4 Esdras calendar.

Secret Religion

The biggest surprise in this reading material was to see Ezra establishing both the false religion of the OT as we have it now, but also establishing Secret Societies as we know them now too.

The canons of these 2 systems were birthed together and are going to be intertwined throughout history. So the design, say, of Washington DC is simply a marker of this same false group.

Secret control is ultimately the root of most problems. Governments have been carefully designed to appear to have public voice and input. At the same time, they are being run by people operating secretly. 4 Esdras gives an origin story for this idea. These systems are woven together since very ancient times.

The secret system, especially, wants to rule the world and it wants to see everyone else dead. It is motivated by revenge. That the secret manuscripts are seen as a strict superset of the public bible, means its followers have a conceit that can be held against everyone else. The same attitude shows up in Jews towards Gentiles. It also shows up in Masons towards outsiders. Such a mess. This is what Samuel was warning against when the people asked for a king.

Audit

We will be running the letter level audit against 4 Esdras, just like everywhere else. Our expectation is that nothing in this book is inspired. This because there is no likely inspired writer. The audit should confirm this.

Supernatural Witness

After a few days of reflection on what I saw in 4 Esdras, I began to wonder why Christianity survived at all across the past 2000 years. Indeed, at a cultural level it is collapsing, and the countries that kept Christianity are being wiped out by the modern heirs of Ezra. The invasion of Europe by African refugees, and the open southern US borders are but 2 examples.

The war council held in Switzerland this past week is working towards nuclear destruction of these same territories as wall as Russia. This has been their goal since the last 3 chapters of Judges.

Visions of this were tacked on to the end of 4 Esdras.

But why did Christianity even survive until now?

I suspect that miracles have always been endorsing the core truth claims of the NT. Performing simple miracles within faith communities is how Joshua himself has fought this system since its founding.

Another way to say this is that answered prayer is how Joshua has fought this system since the beginning. As I work in the shop, with Christian radio playing in the background, testimonies of miracles are the most important content, the songs do not matter. Theology does not matter.

The empty tomb is how Joshua fought this system 2000 years ago. Since history repeats, something like that is about to happen again.

We serve a miracle working, wonder working, god. Joshua is active in the affairs of men, and that cannot be counterfeited by all the various heirs of Ezra who follow the precepts of 4 Esdras.

VR Updates

Last week we added the VR app to our stable of apps.

This week we did a major refresh of that app. In this refresh we changed it to follow the same structure as a paged Bible app, like we use on the BRB, TT and related apps.

This means the VR now has a cover, contents, back cover and then a page for every book. The cover colors can be set in the normal way. The table of contents lays out the book in the normal way. Back cover is also normal.

For each book, the URL handling is matching the BRB app, with #c1 to mark and request a specific chapter, chapter 1 in this example. In the VR app, this URL syntax is then extended to add verse numbers, so #c1:1 is asking for chapter 1 and then verse 1.

There is lots of error checking to watch for correct format and values on the URL. In error cases the app usually moves to some sort of known first verse.

By switching to this style we are setup for appendix pages should those become interesting to add in the future. This change also allows us to share most of the VR code with regular Bibles. These are all good changes. Apocrypha books are still to come.

Headline Review

Virtually all interesting headlines are coming out of the Ukraine and Israel war fronts. These are of course the same war, Benjamin and his secret friends are making their first great attempt to finish taking over the world. Will they win? We will see.

Moex Cancels USD Base Trading

The Moex is a trading platform based in Moscow. They had to stop trades based in USD because of sanctions. The link here is to the details. The last time this happened, the Russian economy got stronger because it was forced to break away and run its own show. We would expect Moex to get better from this too, even if it looks bad at first.

BRICS+ and Gold

The ability of the west to conduct war against the BRICS nations is based on the ability of the west to print USD at will. This is fundamentally why the Federal Reserve Bank of New York exists. It was setup in 1913 ahead of WWI.

The natural military move against the West's ability to make war is to sink the dollar, stopping the west from being able to afford war.

The sanctioning of Russia has caused the USD to weaken, against everyone's expectations. The link here explains that a gold backed system is expected to replace the USD. This so that no country has the ability to use the currency system to fund wars of conquest.

This is an event that should come as a surprise. One day we wake up and gold is the international medium of exchange. But at a time that nobody really knows. We have an echo of the Exodus this fall which might involve plundering Egypt of her gold. This could also be years away. We will see.

Saudi Off Petro Dollar

This link is to an article that explains the Saudis have let lapse a 50 year old agreement involving the pricing of oil in USD and related issues. 50 years ago was early in 1974. This was the start of the calendar alignment timeline.

Nixon's resignation in late August of that year began the fall of the USA. Likely a few more years to go, but still an interesting interval related to the currency which is what Nixon had blown up and which the Petro Dollar and IOU based trade with China was intended to fix. Both are now ending.

Draft in the USA, Including Women

The article linked here is the USA preparing for a draft to conscript everyone to go fight the Russians. Benjamin wants everyone else dead, should we be surprised?

Internet Content Disappearing

The link here is dealing with Chinese Internet content. Their early content is nearly all gone, with several examples given. The English language content is slowly disappearing too. Erasing and changing history is a signature of Ezra and his secret friends. China is not immune. The tech used to build the internet is better than Ezra's wildest dreams for rewriting history.

Dominion Voting Machines

Anyone believe the 2024 voting is not rigged? Already, they are up to the same tricks used in the past. The article linked here describes an example in Puerto Rico, where the counts were small enough to be seen as changed by polling operators.

Covid, He Wanted Billions Dead

So with 4 Esdras digested, this sort of headline now makes sense too. This is the plan. Revenge for the last 3 chapters of Judges. Working towards that goal for about 3000 years. Nearly there.

NATO Rejects Peace With Russia

This clip is profound. Nobody in the west has taken responsibility for being at war with Russia. Nobody has declared war, at least not publicly. Perhaps they are following some of Ezra's 70 secret books? Maybe it says go to war in secret?

So someone unknown has been at war with Russia since 2014. Suddenly, a spokesman for NATO rejects Putin's offer of peace. This video is the first time we have anyone in NATO accepting that NATO is in an undeclared war with Russia.

NATO is still hoping Russia escalates so they can blame the war on Russia. 4 Esdras looks to be the first time Ezra created the end-times narrative we now take for granted. They are running their play book. Who does this NATO clown actually work for? Answer: Its a secret.

Europe Bets on War

Finally, Pepe Escobar weighs in on the war summit in Switzerland. The terms of NATO's surrender will only be getting worse going forward. (If there is indeed anything left to surrender to Russia.)

More Later,

Phil