At http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/june2014/jovial622.htm and http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/july2014/jovial727-2.htm I commented on Irenaeus seemed to be relying on Ezra when he said the Church would "be taken away." And since he gave no details not in Ezra previously, Ezra is more the source. I probably should have commented more on what Ezra said.
Some texts of the apocryphal 4 Ezra/Esdras say in chapter 5:1
"behold, the days shall come, that they which dwell upon earth shall be taken in a great number, and the way of truth shall be hidden, and the land shall be barren of faith
Other texts read...
"behold, the days shall come, that they which dwell upon earth shall be seized with great terror..."
Let me line these up more. They read....
Version 1
Version 2
"behold, the days shall come, that they which dwell upon earth shall be
taken in great measure (אמה),
and the way of truth shall be hidden,
and the land shall be barren of faith"behold, the days shall come, that they which dwell upon earth shall be
seized with great terror (אימה)..."Note the differences. The underlined part is the same in both versions. The bold part differs, and the italicized part is in one version only. Sometimes scribes lost track of where they were and dropped text, and this was often fixed by later scribes when they noticed the difference. So the italicized part is not a big deal. "Taken" and "seized" are not significantly different words. Grammatical differences are often merely translational, and both "in a" and "with" would be represented by a Hebrew "BET" prepositional prefix.
This bold variant is probably due to different interpretations from a Hebrew source text. "אימה" in Hebrew can mean "terror" while "אמה" is a unit of measurement. For this reason, I changed "number" in the original translation I used to "measure" the second time I quoted it because that was probably the more literal conveyance of the original Hebrew text. Bad handwriting or a little ink that peeled off or smeared over could be to blame for this variance. Let me write both versions in Hebrew....
Version 1
Version 2
"לקח באמה רבה "
= "taken in great measure (אמה),"לקח באימה רבה "
= "seized with great terror (אימה)..."Only 1 letter difference in Hebrew.
Most people would agree that Esdras was probably originally written in Hebrew, but no Hebrew manuscript of it was preserved in Iraeneus' time. It was preserved in Latin, Syriac and Arabic.
Which one is more original? Hard to say. But let's consider this. If version 2 is more original, then there's nothing here to indicate a rapture at all. If version 1 is more original, there is not enough detail to draw any firm conclusions, but to me, it is out of place. In most of Scripture, we see nothing about the Rapture until the Gospels. Before the first coming of the Messiah, they had enough trouble correctly interpretting His first coming. Nearly all verses people cite to support a rapture are found in the Gospels or later, and this was written before Gospel times.
Catholics and East Orthodox cannonized Esdras at the Council of Carthage (349-419). Judaism rejected it as cannon due to a lack of a Hebrew source text. Protestants have sided with Judaism on that issue.
So overall, I don't think either Iraeneus or the book of Esdras he probably relied on have enough detail to draw any real conclusions about a rapture. I hope the rapture theory is true. I don't want to go through that mess. Most people don't. But we should not grab vague references to try and "prove" that it will happen because no amount of believing it will happen will cause it to happen. Either it will or it won't. We should simply try and search for the truth so we can be prepared. I am not trying to comment one way or another it will or won't happen. But you should be prepared for the worst case possibility.
Shalom,
Joe