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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Ezra is Malachi???

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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ezra is Malachi???
  • Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:50:32 +0200

> Yigal wrote:
> Tradition considers Malachi, a.k.a. Ezra (and yes, I know that there's > no scriptual basis for that
> >identification!)

To which Lisbeth S. Fried responded:
Huh? But why is the identification necessary?

To which Yitzhak Sapir answered:
Maybe this depends on an idea that only those prophets who are included
in the Neviim were true prophets. But if that is so, that would mean Ezra
missed the boat, and came just a few years too late to be considered a
true Navi, unless he was Malachi and so was born just in time to achieve
the title of true prophet before the Neviim was canonized...


Dear Liz and Yitzhak,

I think it's more than that. First of all, the rabbis of the Talmud had a tendency to identify everyone with someone, in order to give them "more to work with" when expanding on a character. This is especially true with characters about whom the Bible gives us little to go on. I've already mentioned that Ruth was the daughter of Eglon King of Moab. Sennacherib is the father of Nebuchadnezzar. Zerubabel and Nehemiah are the same person, as are Cyrus, Darius, Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes - all just one Persian King! Never mind that these identifications are historically impossible; the rabbis were not historians, and anyone who even thinks that they were intended to be taken as "history" is missing the point!

In the case of Ezra/Malachi, the book of Malachi tells us nothing about the person, and the rabbis wanted to know more. "Malachi", meaning "my messenger", could very well be a title rather than a proper name. But the "problem" is actually about Ezra. The rabbis considered Ezra to be "the great reformer", who basically founded Second-Temple Judaism. He was the person who authorised the transfer from old Hebrew script to the square (Aramaic) script, the adoption of Babylonian month-names (Tishri, Marheshvan etc, rather than just "first, second" and so on), the public reading of the Torah on weekdays (Moses founded the Sabbath readings) and more. In fact, Ezra is considered to be the person who "sealed" (cannonized) the Tanakh - no books later than his own could achieve the status of scripture. In other words, the Rabbis realized that Second-Temple Judaism was very different than the religion of the Bible, and needed an authority with whom to credit the change. And so Ezra "the scribe" (in other words, a rabbi) was posthumously made head of the Sanhedrin (actually, the term used is "Great Assembly", since the rabbis realised that "Sanhedrin" is a Greek word that could not have been used so early). He was also endowed with the authority of the High Priest - never mind that the book of Ezra does not call him one, the genealogy in chapter 7 shows that he had the right lineage to be one. So what was missing was pophetic authority - identifying him with Malachi, an accredited prophet who did live at about the same time and about whom we know nothing anyway - solved the problem. The rabbis stated: Ezra was fitting that the Torah could have been given to Israel by him, except that Moses came first. So Ezra was seen as a kind of "Second Moses" - Rabbi, Priest and Prophet all in one.

And yes, I know that all of this does not quite accord with what we know about the "historical" Ezra. So what? To the rabbis of 700 years later, it seemed right on the button!

Yigal




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