According to the Bible, the Persian king sent Ezra to bring the Torah, the five books of the Laws of Moses, to the Jews. Modern scholars have claimed not only that Ezra brought the Torah to Jerusalem, but that he actually wrote it. In this study Lisbeth S. Fried separates historical fact from biblical legend, presenting the historical Ezra in the context of authentic Persian administrative practices and concludes that Ezra neither wrote nor edited the Tora.

Lisbeth S. Fried is a visiting scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, an emeritus program lecturer at Washtenaw Community College, and an associate editor for ancient Near Eastern religions for the forthcoming Routledge Dictionary of Ancient Mediterranean Religions. Fried is the author of The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire and editor of Was 1 Esdras First? An Investigation into the Priority and Nature of 1 Esdras.