It’s time for another Apocalypse! After the Book of Revelation and The Book of Enoch, I give you the Apocalypse of Ezra. This centuries-old text of indeterminate origin has 3 versions – Jewish, Latin, and Greek – each with varying degrees of Christian influence. The edition I’m using claims the original text is super old, but others say it might’ve been written as late as the I Century AD. Ezra’s visions of the Apocalypse also appear in some bibles as “Esdra”. This post is about the Jewish version and was published by the Scriptural Research Institute, so if there are any translation issues, you know who to blame.
THE APOCALYPSE OF EZRA
“The world will soon pass away, and cannot comprehend the things that are promised to the righteous in the time to come, as this world is full of unrighteousness and infirmities.”
Ezra is stuck in Babylon, 30 years after the fall of Jerusalem, and doesn’t understand why God is allowing all those heathens to torment his Chosen People. He’d very much like to know why and, especially, when it will end. Throughout his pleading, Ezra will beg, flatter, and appeal to God’s common sense. He’ll also repeatedly rephrase his questions after each annoyingly cryptic answer from God’s messenger, the angel Uriel, who will repeatedly find new ways to avoid giving him a straight answer to anything. Some may see Ezra as the Karen of the apocalyptic prophets, but I believe that anyone who’s had to deal with customer support will sympathize with his attempts to get God to explain what the hell is going on and commit to a deadline for the beginning of the good times.
We begin with some groveling (God just loves a good groveling) as Ezra reminds God of how utterly ungrateful and fickle his Chosen People have been throughout the centuries, returning to ungodly bad habits every few generations. It all started with Adam, who got Humanity locked out of Paradise and with evil in their hearts after he went against God’s commandments. It’s interesting that Ezra doesn’t mention Eve and puts the blame squarely on Adam. When you follow the evolution of God’s strategy to deal with unruly believers, he actually appears to have become nicer. Sure, Ezra’s situation isn’t ideal, but at least God stopped responding to his Chosen People’s disobedience by drowning the entire world population minus one family. Ezra engages in a little whataboutism as he asks if the heathens are so much better than his people that they should have the right to oppress them. Yeah, the heathens aren’t respecting God’s law either, but they weren’t the ones who promised to follow God’s commandments, were they? Not that that will save them when the End comes. Ezra also tries to make God see how destroying his only worshippers isn’t in his best interest, which would be a better argument if God weren’t capable of making new ones. Still, after all the begging, God sends one of his angels, Uriel, to answer Ezra’s questions with riddles and metaphors because it seems that the only thing God hates more than heathens and sinners is giving clear and concise answers. Unlike Enoch and John of Patmos, Ezra won’t be travelling to Heaven. Instead, God just gets him to starve himself for a total of 2 weeks (7 days + 7 days, though Ezra mentions 3 weeks) and then makes him eat nothing but poppies for 2 more weeks so he’ll be able to show him visions. Clearly, God decided to take a more DIY approach to apocalyptic prophesying this time. He also uses that classical tactic of emotional manipulation employed by shitty parents everywhere and reminds Ezra that he was the one who gave his people life and therefore no one could possibly love them more than him, even when he’s torturing them. He does (claim to) like Ezra, though, who is worthier than he believes himself to be, and praises his chastity, which frankly sounds more like a Catholic thing. Still, because he’s no ho, Ezra will get to see what’s in store for everyone, which is basically that the heathens will be punished and all who followed God’s law will be saved and enjoy the beautiful paradise that God built for them (at an unspecified time in the future), so there’s no need to be sad now. He understands this after a long conversation about the paths leading to Paradise having been made narrower due to Adam screwing up. Thanks a lot, Adam.
“Nevertheless the righteous will allow narrow things, and hope for wide, for they that have done wickedly have allowed the strait things, and yet will not see the wide.”
To be fair to Ezra, at the time he reached this conclusion, he had already been fasting for 2 weeks, so… Hopefully, he’ll find a better way to express this notion to his people. Anyway, there will be signs before the End, so those who know what they are, will know it’s coming. The list is split between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4:
— iniquity will rise
— people will hear 3 trumpets
— the Sun will shine in the night
— the Moon will shine 3 times during the day
— wood will bleed
— stone will speak
— birds will fly away
— the Dead Sea will have fish and make a noise in the night
— wild beasts will change their place
— menstruating women will give birth to monsters
— salt water will turn sweet
— friends will turn against friends (War!)
— sense and understanding will hide themselves
— 1-year-old children will speak
— 3-4 month old fetuses will be born and live
— food and crops will vanish (Famine!)
— fountains will stop running for 3 hours
So, there’s some Cronenbergian body horror with the walking fetuses and women giving birth to monsters, a handful of not very impressive natural phenomena, the Dead Sea suffering from some nocturnal flatulence, a 3 hour water shortage, a bird exodus that will at least rid people of pigeons and their suspiciously accurately aimed poop, a paltry musical selection (only 3 trumpets? Really?), a shocking lack of Pestilence, the promise of everyone turning into your average Twitter user, and the cryptic wild beasts changing places that makes those videos of puppies hopping like bunnies look a lot less cute. This is very much a low budget Apocalypse. Still, while they’re busy measuring the iniquity levels and listening for the 3 trumpets, the Chosen People won’t be complaining about God’s dereliction of duty. Well played, God.
Ezra may be a jerk occasionally, like when he “comforted” what he thought was a grieving mother by calling her stupid for daring to cry for a single son’s death when Zion had lost so many of its children. Thankfully, she turned out to be a representation of Zion itself, which allowed God to razzle dazzle the complaining Ezra with his mad city building skills (no doubt with a little help from all those poppies he had made his chosen prophet eat in the previous 7 days). However, Ezra does care. He cares about his own people, but he also wants to keep praying for the sinners and heathens like his forefathers did. Aw, that’s nice. Except, it’s too late now, and there’s no point in praying for those who haven’t accepted God’s law anymore, because they’re DOOMED!
“Ask no more questions concerning the multitude of them that perish, for when they had freedom, they hated the Highest, and thought to mock his law, and forgot his ways”
Ezra has enough common sense to know that no one’s perfect and tries to get God to lower his standards, but God is undeterred and makes it clear that not even every one of his people will be saved.
Before we get to the End of everything, there’s still time for another needlessly complicated vision that was done better in the Book of Daniel. So, instead of a ten-horned beast with iron teeth trampling everything (Daniel 7:7) that grows an eleventh horn with “eyes like the eyes of a man” and “a mouth speaking unnatural things” (Daniel 7:8) (and he didn’t need to eat a single poppy), Ezra sees a 3-headed eagle with rising feathers. How Roman. By the way, both he and Daniel see the beast coming out of the sea. Uriel directly links the two and explains it to Ezra. Though it had already been explained to Daniel. An explanation Ezra and his people should’ve already known. Sigh… writing exposition isn’t easy. Also, why is God showing these weird visions to his prophets if he then has to send someone to explain things? It’s all very impractical. Anyway, the vision is about a scary kingdom, its kings, and 3 more kingdoms that “in the last days the Highest will raise” so they can torture the inhabitants of the earth some more before it’s all over. But don’t worry, God will then send a magical lion to “reprimand (…) rebuke, and correct them”… with FIRE! That’s a bit much, especially since he was the one who created them. How about not raising those 3 kingdoms? After God gets to show his awesomeness by fixing his own mess, it’s time for the End.
Now, this isn’t as clear cut as expected because God didn’t tell Ezra everything about this last part at the same time. The eagle vision + explanation are split between Chapters 9 and 10, and are followed by the coming of God’s son (likely a Christian modification according to the translation) to earth to get rid of all the heathens with the metaphorical fire of God’s law and gather all the missing Jewish tribes so he can “show them great wonders”. (Let’s hope the budget for End of Days Wonders is bigger than the one for Apocalyptic Prophesying) In Chapter 5, however, Ezra was told that Jesus (another, clearer, Christian modification) and the people with him would appear and live together for 400 years, after which they would all die. And after that, “the world will be turned into the old silence for seven days”, which would be followed by all the dead, missing, and, I don’t know, unborn?, returning, plus God judging everyone and finally vanquishing all evil from the world. There’s no mention of this bit again, which makes things a little confusing. I’m guessing that much like a greedy Hollywood producer, God decided to milk his creation by splitting the last installment in 2. That said, these two descriptions don’t quite mesh. The violence of the final End of Days from Chapter 11 contrasts with the quietness of the one described in Chapter 5, which states that with Jesus will die “all men that have life”. However, there’s nothing in Chapter 11 that indicates that those people, both good and bad, were brought back from the dead to be judged. God was lucky that Ezra was too hungry and high to notice this lack of continuity. What’s certain is that no one is getting Raptured because God doesn’t believe in coddling his followers. Now, this may be due to the translation, but the lucky few who will be experiencing this new, heathen-free world are referred to more than once as the ones left behind. This is ironic since, in the works featuring the Rapture, “left behind” applies to those that God deemed unworthy.
This edition ends with Chapter 12, which sees Ezra having to wait 3 more days before he hears God’s voice coming from a bush (which, after all all the fasting and poppies, isn’t exactly surprising), and it’s not even a burning bush. God isn’t even trying anymore, is he? However, it’s that talking bush that finally gives Ezra the deadline he’s been begging for and sets the End of Days for 500 AD (which, according to this edition, was a popular belief at one point). Yeah, God clearly got that one wrong. Wonder what his excuse was. He gives Ezra a special drink that makes him dictate all these revelations and more to five scribes. Ezra speaks nonstop for 40 days and ends up with 204 books. That’s impressive. But why 204? Why not 205? Or 200? It’s such an odd number. And how much more did he say? Was it anything useful or was it more annoying metaphors? Anyway, God tells him to publish the first book so that everyone can read it, and to only show the other 203 to the wisest. Wait, after all of this, Ezra is going to have to promote 204 self-published books?! I have the sneaking suspicion that he’ll probably end up wishing that God hadn’t answered him.
By the way, according to this edition, Ezra doesn’t seem to know much about Judaism or Christianity. The only thing my ignorant self caught was him calling Behemoth, Leviathan’s land-based counterpart, Enoch, which is a pretty big mistake. Maybe this was written by a heathen hoping to profit from the Apocalyptic craze?
EZRA AND THE BOOK OF REVELATION
After reading, I noticed that there are some interesting comparisons to be made between this Apocalypse and the Book of Revelation. The most obvious one is that neither has any grand scale Rapture-type event, but there’s more.
In Chapter 4, Ezra mentions the faithful getting a seal – “before they were sealed who have gathered faith as a treasure” – and so does John of Patmos in Revelation 7:3 – “Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads”. They both show the promised city as a woman, and Ezra mentions a mysterious bride in Chapter 5 – “Look, the time will come, that these signs which I have told you will come to pass, and the bride will appear, and she will be seen coming out, but that is now removed from Earth.” -, which brings to mind Revelation 21:2 – “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband”. The husband, by the way, is Jesus (Revelation 21:9) and it’s, of course, a metaphorical wedding.
The End in 2 phases happens in both Apocalypses, but while Ezra has Jesus living with a select few for a measly 400 years, John of Patmos has the First Resurrection last for 1000 years, which seems a more appropriate number for this type of events. Maybe some impatient Christians who didn’t want to wait 1000 years for Paradise on Earth came up with that? Five chapters later, the text would link the 3-headed eagle vision to the more famous Book of Daniel, so it makes sense that they would try to attach themselves to the Book of Revelation (which was written a bit earlier) by including a 2-part Apocalypse. Or maybe John of Patmos and those nameless Christian editors just got the idea from the same source. They certainly seem to follow the same order of events: God/Jesus lives in peace and harmony with the worthiest of the worthy for a period of time, and then, at a later date all the dead people are brought back and everyone is judged and rewarded/punished accordingly before the good people finally get to have good things. John of Patmos ends the First Resurrection by having Satan wreak havoc one last time, but with Ezra, it sounds as if everyone, including Jesus, just suddenly dies for no reason. It’s a creepy and unsettling image that contrasts with the Book of Revelation’s flashier version. However, if there are parts missing from this Apocalypse of Ezra, it’s possible that the full prophecy was closer to the one made by John of Patmos. There’s certainly enough elements in common between the 2 texts.
Now, for the most interesting bit. As you may recall, in this Apocalypse, the son of God comes out of the sea. And we all know who came out of the sea in the Book of Revelation, don’t we?
“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy”
(Revelation 13:1)
That’s some conflicting information, God. Yes, he gives Ezra some flimsy excuse about the unfathomable mysteries of the sea, but considering how the 3-headed eagle + Daniel’s beasts all came out of there, and Leviathan also lives there, the whole thing is a little suspicious.
VERDICT
Ezra is more relatable than Enoch and John of Patmos, but sadly, he’s surrounded by unoriginal predictions with neither standout characters, nor visually impressive moments. It starts differently, with Ezra actively questioning God’s actions (or lack of them) instead of being randomly surprised by a heavenly messenger, which promises a more dynamic interaction between God and prophet, but the results end up being mostly the same except duller. This was the Apocalyptic equivalent of a celebrity’s PR-mandated apology – the God in this version of the Apocalypse of Ezra just did the bare minimum to appease the public, confident that his loyal fanbase wouldn’t turn against him. Simply disappointing.
By Danforth