Uzayr As Azariah
Viviane Comerro, Professeur in Islamic literature at INALCO, considers the possibility of quranic Uzayr not to be Ezra but Azariah, relying on Ibn Qutaybah, and identifying a confusion committed by Muslim exegetes. She declares : "There is, from muslim traditionalists, a confusion between two distinct characters, Ezra et Azariah (...) Thus, it is possible that the quranic vocable Uzayr could find its origin in Azariah's one."
The deuterocanonical version of the book of Daniel confirms this hypothesis. The Theodotion's version, used by Catholics and Orthodox Christians contains the Prayer of Azariah, an apocryphal prayer added by Hellenistic rabbis in the Septuagint version of the book of Daniel, which curiously mentions Abednego by his other name, Azariah, rather than Abednego which is used in the whole chapter 3 of the Hebrew and Protestant version, without any mention of the name "Azariah" in this chapter. This mention precedes the appearance of an angel qualified by Nebuchadnezzar as having the form of the "son of god". Legends from Jewish communities of Arabia which were using the Septuagint version of the Book of Daniel made the confusion between the fourth character, the angel who is like the son of god, and Azariah himself, as confirmed by H. Schwarzbaum.
In this perspective, the quranic narrator seems to blame the Jews who believed in such a legend and who considered Azariah as the son of God, legend which finds its origin in a confusion due to an addition in the original biblical corpus by the rabbis who elaborated the Septuagint.
Read more about this topic: Uzair