Acknowledgments
This book is a translated and substantially revised version of my doctoral dissertation, submitted in 2016 at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. The thesis was written in Spanish and its title was Los orígenes del canon de la Biblia Hebrea. Análisis de los testimonios de Flavio Josefo y de 4 Esdras. My first expression of gratitude goes to the supervisor of the thesis, Prof. Joseph Sievers, for his help, his wise advice, and his scientific rigor throughout the development of this project, from its inception as a paper in his seminar on “Josephus and the New Testament” to its completion. Thanks are due to the other members of the examination commission: Stephen Pisano, S.I., John J. Collins, and José María Ábrego de Lacy, S.I. for their observations, and to all the professors and staff of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, especially to Jean Noël Aletti, S.I, and Carlo Valentino.
I have received valuable support from my colleagues at my home institution, the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce (Rome). Among them, I am especially grateful to Carlos Jódar, for his encouragement and for his expertise in Syriac, to Eusebio González, Sergio Henríquez, Paul O’Callaghan, Filippo Serafini, and Robert Wielockx for their suggestions, and to the other members of the Department of Biblical Theology for their help and interest in this project throughout these years: Michelangelo Tábet, Bernardo Estrada, Giuseppe de Virgilio, Marco Valerio Fabbri, Iranzu Galdeano, Anthony Sepulveda, and James Mwaura Njunge.
My thanks go also to Karina M. Hogan and René S. Bloch, editors of the series, for accepting the book, to the two anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions, to the associate editors, Hindy Najman, Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, and Benjamin G. Wright III, and to the staff of Brill.
Further thanks are due to several scholars who have helped me in different ways. I ask forgiveness of anyone whose name I have omitted inadvertently. I am grateful to Vicente Balaguer, Claudio Balzaretti, John Barclay, Juan Chapa, Guy Darshan, Lorenzo DiTommaso, Elena Duggan, Timothy H. Lim, Steve Mason, Lee Martin McDonald, Enrico Norelli, Isaac Oliver, Alexander Rofé, José Manuel Sánchez Caro, Michael Tait, Francisco Varo, Benjamin G. Wright III, Marco Zappella, and Jason Zurawski. To these names, I would like to add those of the chairs of the Sixth Enoch Seminar (2011), Matthias Henze and Gabriele Boccaccini. This meeting allowed me to update myself very rapidly on the scholarship about 4 Ezra so I am in debt to all its participants.
On a personal level, I cannot forget my Prelate, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, my family, spread over the world, especially my parents Juan Carlos and María Eugenia, and many friends both in my country, Chile, and in Italy. Without their support, this book would never have been written.
In closing, I would like to remember in particular three persons who have passed away while this work was coming to an end. Prof. Gonzalo Aranda Pérez (1943–2016) died a few weeks before the public defense of the dissertation. It was during his lessons in the Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona, Spain) on the history of the biblical canon where the seminal idea of this book was born. A couple of years before his premature death, Gabriel Nápole, O.P. (1959–2013) sent me a hard copy of his doctoral dissertation on 4 Ezra from Buenos Aires. I never had occasion to meet him and thank him personally for his generosity. Finally, I am very grateful to my former bishop, Monsignor Javier Echevarría (1932–2016), who will see this book from the place to which Ezra was taken (cf. 4 Ezra 14:49–50).