mainstream Judaism, which fits with the interpretation that the verse merely speaks of a small group of Jews. The book 2 Esdras, a non-canonical book attributed to Babylonian captivity, associates a near-divine or angelic status to Ezra. Mark Lidzbarski and Michael Lodahl have also hypothesized existence of an Arabian Jewish sect whose veneration of Ezra bordered on deification. The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia states: "In the Koran (ix. 30) the Jews are charged with worshiping Ezra ("'Uzair") as the son of God—a malevolent metaphor for the great respect which was paid by the Jews to the memory of Ezra as the restorer of the Law, and from which the Ezra legends of apocryphal literature (II Esd. xxxiv. 37-49) originated (as to how they developed in Mohammedan legends see Damiri, "Ḥayat al-Ḥayawan," i. 304-305). It is hard to bring into harmony with this the fact, related by Jacob Saphir ("Eben Sappir," i. 99), that the Jews of South Arabia have a pronounced aversion for the memory of Ezra, and even exclude his name from their category of proper names." Rabbi Allen Maller states that there is a hadith in Jami` at-Tirmidhi which states that Jews worship their rabbis, because they accept what their rabbis say over the Word of God. He affirms this to be true because Orthodox Jews practice Judaism based on the rabbi's interpretation of the oral Torah. He also cites that ibn Abbas narrated that four Jews believed that Uzayr was the son of God. Identification with Osiris and Metatron Some modern scholar identify Uzair with Osiris (pronounced wsjr), the ancient Egyptian God, who was considered to be resurrected from dead. Osiris is considered to be the son of God. Some of the pagan traditions while in exile might have adopted by some Jews and the Qur'anic verse could be referring to this, similar to the story of the worship of the golden calf by the Jews. Muslim scholars like Timothy Winter identify Uzair with Metatron, one of the archangels. Ibn Hazm mentions that Jews, although regarding Metatron as an angel, would celebrate Metatron as a lesser god 10 days each year, probably a reference to Rosh Hashanah in connection with Merkabah mysticism that Metatron took part on the creation of the world. Alternative readings of the name Some scholars proposed emendations of the received spelling of the name, عزير. Paul Casanova and Steven M. Wasserstrom read the name