Catholic Bibles mostly follow the Vulgate’s designation of these books, as can be seen in the old Douay-Rheims, though in today’s English translations 1 Esdras is usually called “Ezra” and 2 Esdras is called “Nehemiah”. To avoid confusing matters further, I shall refer to the canonical material as “Ezra-Nehemiah” mostly, but also as “canonical Esdras”. The apocryphal Esdras I shall refer to as “1 (3) Esdras” with the first number being the designation from the Septuagint and the latter from the Vulgate. At times, I shall also refer to it as “apocryphal Esdras”.
[28] “A brief addition shows what books really are received in the canon. These are the desiderata of which you wished to be informed verbally: of Moses five books, that is, of Genesis, of Exodus, of Leviticus, of Numbers, of Deuteronomy, and Josue, of Judges one book, of Kings four books, and also Ruth, of the Prophets sixteen books, of Solomon five books, the Psalms. Likewise of the histories, Job one book, of Tobias one book, Esther one, Judith one, of the Machabees two, of Esdras two, Paralipomenon two books…” Pope Innocent I’s Letter to Exuperius, translation from The Sources of Catholic Dogma (Herder & Co., 1954), Henry] Denzinger, p. 42.
Note that Innocent wrote this letter in 405 A.D., the same year the Vulgate was completed by Jerome and one year before the latter’s Letter Against Vigilantius wherein he claims that 1 (3) Esdras is not received by the Church. No move is made by Innocent to correct Jerome, nor is there any evidence that the pope adopted Jerome’s supposed innovation as opposed to the purported traditional one on 1 (3) Esdras [meaning apocryphal Esdras as “1 Esdras” and Ezra-Nehemiah as “2 Esdras”].
