Organization of the Books of Ezra

[WolfKook]

Is there any official (or non-official) information on the internal structure of the Books of Ezra. If don't, how do you think they would be organized?

[Nathan of the FoS]

According to John Mangrum's article, where snippets of each of the books appears, they're organized into a book/chapter/verse format (like the Bible).

[WolfKook]

I guess you're talking about "Anchors of Faith".

By the article, it would seem that each "Book of Ezra" is an equivalent to a Book of the Bible. However, there's no reference to chapters, just to verses. Wouldn't that make for rather thin books of Ezra?

I had hoped for a bible-like organization, with each book being like an entire testament or so, with colorful names for their internal "books" (And mystical references throughout the text. Perhaps the first test is not just to present a Book, but to present a book which portrays some kind of divine revelation...).

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Well, remember that the Church of Ezra has had less than a century to accumulate holy text, and is still growing. Each of the four Books took a single person only a matter of months to write, maybe a couple of years at most.

Leave out all but the first four books of the Old or New Testaments -- i.e. the ones that date back the farthest and lay out the faith's ground rules -- and the Bible starts looking a bit thin, too. In a couple centuries, Ezrans might hold their own ecclesiastical debates on which later documents and writings should be added to their sacred canon, but for now, there's just the initial Big Four.

[WolfKook]

If we believe the tradition, Moses did not write just one, but five books (The Pentateuch), while Muhammad wrote the 114 chapters (azoras) of the Quran, a very voluminous book, all by himself.

Indeed, if the first Book of Ezra is the book that establishes the religion as such, it should contain at least:

-A creation myth.
-An explanation for the damnation of humanity.
-Religious tenets and beliefs.
-Organization and Structure of the Church.
-Laws and codes within the Church.

It may also contain some optional elements:

-Myths and legends.
-Moral lessons, perhaps in the form of paraboles.
-Historical lessons, perhaps somewhat twisted.
-Denounces of the crimes and sins of the people.
-Warnings to wrongdoers.
-A message of hope for humanity.

Off course, no matter which kind of organization is followed by the first Book, it surely was copied by the next books. Obviously, as the basic laws were set since the first book, the next would probably concentrate in other faces of the religion: I see the third book as containing obscure passages, as those in the books of Daniel and the Gospel of St John, and the fourth book having passages very similar to the Book of Revelations.

[Garudos Celestar]

Indeed, if the first Book of Ezra is the book that establishes the religion as such, it should contain at least:

-A creation myth.
-An explanation for the damnation of humanity.
-Religious tenets and beliefs.
-Organization and Structure of the Church.
-Laws and codes within the Church.

Well, going by the sample excerpts in "Anchors of Faith," all four of them contain a creation myth - or more precisely, a "how Ezra gained the mantle of protector in the Mists" story - and different ones at that. I would say that the second and fourth notes on the list are not requirements: the second might be replaced for a salvation explanation, but what happens to those who aren't saved could very well be left a mystery (think about how many centuries it took before any mention of a Hell was added into the Judeo-Christian scriptures). While any religious text will almost certainly contain various rules for the faithful, actual management/beauraucratic issues may very well be left out (again, to follow the Judeo-Christian example, it takes a couple of books of the Bible before any formal temple is established, and quite a bit of time passes between, say, Abraham and Moses with the Israelites settling for faith and cooperation rather than a formal institution).

Off course, no matter which kind of organization is followed by the first Book, it surely was copied by the next books. Obviously, as the basic laws were set since the first book, the next would probably concentrate in other faces of the religion: I see the third book as containing obscure passages, as those in the books of Daniel and the Gospel of St John, and the fourth book having passages very similar to the Book of Revelations.

Agreed; while there may be very few actual requirements for the content of any given book, stylistically from what we know about the original bastions, those observations seem very reasonable.