left among them who knew the Torah by heart, and he" ('Uzair, i.e. Ezra),
"when God brought him to life after 100 years, dictated
(املى) to them the
Torah from memory, accordingly marvelled at that." Under the circumstances it was not
surprising that they should marvel, but it is surprising that anyone should believe such a
story. Even Second (or Fourth) Esdras tells us nothing so absurd. Yet both it and Baizawi
agree that Ezra was a Hafiz of the Torah, not a compiler of a forged Torah. If the tale
told in Second Esdras were true, it would show that, just as the Qur'an would not perish
if every copy of it were burnt, because there are men who know it by heart, and who could
and would dictate it to others, so the Torah did not perish, because Ezra knew it by heart
and dictated it to his scribes. This does not establish the destruction of the Torah, as
Shaikh Rahmatu'llah thinks it does.
It may be well to mention, however, that no scholar accepts the Second (or Fourth) Book
of Esdras as the work of Ezra. A study even of its contents proves that the earlier part
of it was written between 81 and 96 A.D., and the later part as late as 263 A.D., whereas
Ezra lived in the fifth century before Christ. (Such passages as 2 Esdras ii. 47; vii. 28,
29, &c., show that the book was written after Christ's time, and not before it.) The
book was never accepted by the Jews. The latter join with all scholars in rejecting the
fable which is told in this book, though in the third century of the Christian era some
people who knew no Hebrew were foolish enough to let themselves be deceived by it.
We must now show that the Torah and other ancient Sacred Books of the Jews did not
perish in Nebuchadnezzar's time. This will be clear, if we prove that they still existed
in Ezra's day, much more than a hundred years after the destruction of the Temple by the
Babylonians. The proof is not difficult, for in the genuine Book of Ezra, which is in the
Canon of both Jews and Christians, we are told that Ezra "was a ready scribe in the
Torah of Moses" (Ezra vii. 6;
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