The translation is from Mr. M. R. James's text in Texts and Studies, ii.3, p.130ff., published from a fifteenth century ms. in the Bodleian Library. The original, Mr. James conjecturally assigns to the tenth or eleventh century. It is notable for its close resemblance in several passages to 4 Esdras, to the Greek original of which the author seems to have had direct access.

Like the Apocalypse of Esdras it deals with the subject of intercession for sinners and the reluctance of the seer to die. The parallel passages in 4 Esdras and the Apocalypse of Esdras are pointed out in the margin of the translation.

Chapter I. consists of a few lines from the beginning and end of a homily on love which appears in the ms. at the beginning of the Apocalypse, but which Mr. James regards as "quite unimportant and quite irrelevant."