Le deuxième livre d’Esdras: clef de l’histoire textuelle de la Septante?

This paper argues that the Second Book of Ezra (2 Esd) deserves more attention than it has received from students of the text history of the Septuagint. The Greek text has, indeed, been studied in great detail by R. Hanhart; and is referred to constantly in the apparatus of D. Marcus’ BHQ edition of the Hebrew text of Ezra-Nehemiah (2006). However, a closer look at Marcus’ apparatus reveals that, while more Greek readings are reported here than in the old BHS, they are often written off as “free renderings” (an inherently unlikely explanation, given the translator’s habits, which are briefly documented here), rather than being taken seriously as variants. Apart from individual readings, it is argued that 2 Esd has important contributions to make to two central questions in the text history of the Septuagint, both of which were first brought to prominence by the late D. Barthélemy. The first is the problem of the “καίγε group”: here, the contribution of 2 Esd, which seems to be a marginal member of the group, is to show that the group is less uniform than Barthélemy and others have thought. The second question is the problem of the so-called “Lucianic” text. Barthélemy’s view that the “Lucianic” text is merely corrupt, rather than the product of scholarly work, may be demonstrated more readily in the “Lucianic” text of 2 Esd than in the examples he himself chose to support his hypothesis.