Cambridge Bible Commentaries on the Apocrypha – serie

The plan of this volume of commentary on the New English Bible texts of the shorter books of the Apocrypha follows the pattern of the now well established New Testament series. The main divisions of the text are those provided by the New English Bible itself, but these are further subdivided for the purposes of the commentary which is printed in short sections following the relevant portion of the text. The books presented in this volume are Tobit, in which the angel Raphael guides Tobit's son Tobias on various adventures, Judith, with its dramatic tale of the beheading of Holophernes, The Rest of the Chapters of the Book of Esther (together with the Book of Esther), Baruch, A Letter of Jeremiah, The Apocryphal Additions to Daniel (The Song of the Three, Daniel Daniel, Bel, and the Snake), and The Prayer of Manasseh.

Mr Bartlett's volume, like the others in the series, contains the text in the New English Bible. After a general introduction to the book as a whole, the text is given in short passages, with a commentary directly following each. These Jewish historical works, the two books of the Maccabees, were written to describe the struggles of the Jews in the second century BC against encroachment of the Greek way of life and against the political domination of the Syrians. The particular purpose of this commentary is to bring out the political and religious motives of the various parties to the struggle.

The aim of this series is to provide the text of the New English Bible closely linked to a commentary in which the results of scholarship are made available to the general reader. Teachers and young people have been especially kept in mind. The commentators have been asked to assume no specialized theological knowledge, and no knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. Bare references to other literature and multiple references to other parts of the Bible have been avoided. Actual quotations have been given as often as possible.

The two books of the Apocrypha treated here have little in common apart from the attribution of their authorship to Ezra (Esdras in Greek), the 'second founder' of Judaism. The commentators resolve the confusion arising from different ways of referring to the various Ezra writings before examining each book separately.