The Ascetic Practices in the Third Book of Ezra
The article aims at exploring ascetic practices featured in one of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament. It focuses mainly on fasting and praying. Since the Third Book of Ezra was most likely composed in the first century CE, the proposed analysis reveals people’s attitude to asceticism and self-denial as a gate to spiritual life in the beginning of the new era. Taken in both Jewish and Christian framework, it suggests topics for further research potentially leading to new insights into the emergence of various formats of monastic life. The article dwells on Ezra’s different modes of abstinence (such as fasting, for instance) and on the sources and forms of praying invocations. The text of the Third Book of Ezra is filled with allusions and oblique references to the biblical Books of Prophets, which is yet another point in consideration here. Among the primary concerns of the article are the concept of asceticism and the reason behind ascetic practices; the history of the composition of the Third Book of Ezra; analysis of the passages dealing with an ascetic’s spirited feats; identifying the references to ascetic practices in Philo’s essay “On the Contemplative Life" and comparing them with those described by Ezra. Notably, according to the Third Book of Ezra self-denial and ascetic practices weren’t supposed to be mandatory for everybody: they were either chosen by the Prophet himself or suggested to him as a way of achieving communion with God and discovering the secret truths concealed from lay people. Last but not least, the cited and otherwise considered excerpts of the text were studied by the standard translation of the Russian Orthodox Church (the so called Synodal Bible) and then compared against the Latin version of the Old Testament (the Vulgate), which allowed detect a number of inconsistencies between the two translations.