"And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people; . . . and when he opened it, all the people stood up: . . .
So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." (Neh. 8:5, 8.)"When the Jews returned from the captivity, we read that the people were called together and Ezra and the priests stood before them to instruct them," wrote Joseph Fielding Smith in Doctrines of Salvation. "This is the passage: `So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.' This verse is a perfect treatise, in a sentence, of the art of reading aloud."
In The Articles of Faith, Elder James E. Talmage wrote that during fifth century B.C., "in the days of Ezra, the edict of Cyrus permitted the captive people of Judah, a remnant of once united Israel, to return to Jerusalem, there to rebuild the Temple of the Lord, according to the law of God then in the hand of Ezra.
"From this we may infer that the written law was then known; and to Ezra is usually attributed the credit of compiling the books of the Old Testament as far as completed in his day, to which he added his own writings. In this work of compilation he was probably assisted by Nehemiah and the members of the Great Synagogue - a Jewish college of a hundred and twenty scholars."
