Esdras

the name of two books of the Apocrypha, the first, written 2nd century B.C., containing the history of the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of its cultus, with a discu ion on the strangest of all things, ending in a igning the palm to truth; and the second, written between 97 and 81 B.C., a forecast of the deliverance of the Jews from oppre ion and the establishment of the Me ianic kingdom.