Ezra–Nehemiah

In the early 6th century Judah rebelled against Babylon and was destroyed (586 BCE). The royal court and the priests, prophets and scribes were taken into captivity in Babylon. There the exiles blamed their fate on disobedience to God and looked forward to a future when a penitent and purified people would be allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. (These ideas are expressed in the prophets Jeremiah (although he was not exiled to Babylon), Isaiah, and, especially, Ezekiel). The same period saw the rapid rise of Persia, previously an unimportant kingdom in present-day southern Iran, and in 539 BCE Cyrus the Great, the Persian ruler, conquered Babylon. ==Composition==

In the 19th century and for much of the 20th, it was believed that Chronicles and Ezra–Nehemiah came from the same author or circle of authors (similar to the traditional view which held Ezra to be the author of all three), but the usual view among modern scholars is that the differences between Chronicles and Ezra–Nehemiah are greater than the similarities, and that Ezra–Nehemiah itself had a long history of composition from many sources, stretching from the early 4th century down to the Hellenistic period. Sara Japhet, and Gary Knoppers. H. G. M. Williamson (1987) sees three basic stages to the composition of Ezra–Nehemiah: (1) composition of the various lists and Persian documents, which he accepts as authentic and therefore the earliest parts of the book; (2) composition of the "Ezra memoir" and "Nehemiah memoir", about 400 BCE; and (3), composition of Ezra 1–6 (the story of Zerubabbel) as the final editor's introduction to the combined earlier texts, about 300 BCE. More recently Juha Pakkala (2004) has carried out an extensive analysis of the layers in Ezra. He sees the account of the rebuilding of the Temple (Ezra 5:1–6:15) and the core of the "Ezra memoir" (Ezra 7–10/Nehemiah 8) developing separately until they were combined by an editor who wished to show how the Temple and the Torah were reintroduced into Judah (known to Persian rulers as Yehud Medinata) after the exile. This editor also added Ezra 1–5. The combined text was then further developed by priestly circles who stressed Temple over Torah, transformed Ezra from scribe to priest, and stressed the primacy of the Babylonian returnees over those who had remained in the land, a distinction that had not appeared in the original Ezra material. Still later, Levitical editors combined Ezra and Nehemiah to produce the final form of the book, reintroducing interest in Torah and stressing the primacy of the Levites. Jacob Wright (2004) has carried out similar work on Nehemiah. According to his study the original "Nehemiah memoir" was an account of the rebuilding of the city walls. Successive layers were then added to this, turning the building report into an account of Judah's restoration and depicting Nehemiah as a Persian governor who reforms the community of Israel. Finally, after Ezra had come into existence through the combination of Ezra 1–6 with Ezra 7–10, the accounts of the repopulation and dedication of the city and the friction between the Temple and the Torah were added to produce the final book of Nehemiah. Lester Grabbe (2003), based on various factors including the type of Aramaic used in the youngest sections and the ignorance of Ezra–Nehemiah as a single book displayed by other Hellenistic Jewish writers, suggests that the two texts were combined, with some final editing, in the Ptolemaic period, c. 300c. 200 BCE. ==Textual history==

The Hebrew Ezra–Nehemiah was translated into Greek by the mid-2nd century BCE. The Greek and Roman rendering of Ezra's name is Esdras, and there are two versions of the Greek Ezra–Nehemiah, Esdras alpha (Ἔσδρας Αʹ) and Esdras beta (Ἔσδρας Βʹ). The fact that Ezra–Nehemiah was translated into Greek by the mid-2nd century BCE suggests that this was the time by which it had come to be regarded as scripture. (To confuse the matter further, there are other quite distinct works in the name of Esdras, largely dealing with visions and prophecies.) The Masoretic Text of Ezra–Nehemiah is largely in Late Biblical Hebrew, with significant sections in Biblical Aramaic there are occasional reflections of Old Persian vocabulary, but little significant influence from Greek. ==Summary and structure==

with the text of Ezra 10:24–Nehemiah 1:9a. The break between the books is designated by a single blank line. Ezra 1 (the Edict of Cyrus) and Ezra 2 (the list of returnees) are presented as Persian documents; Ezra 3–6, which contains further supposed Persian documents mixed with third-person narrative, may be based on the prophetic works of Haggai and Zechariah, who were active at the time; Ezra 7–10, partly in the first-person, is sometimes called the "Ezra Memoir", but has been so heavily edited that the source, if it exists, is very difficult to recover. All but one are in Aramaic language, the administrative language of the Persian empire. A study by Lester Grabbe argues that while genuine Persian documents may underlie a number of them, they have been reworked to fit the purposes of later writers from the Hellenistic era. The narrative is highly schematic, each stage of the restoration following the same pattern: God "stirs up" the Persian king, the king commissions a Jewish leader to undertake a task, the leader overcomes opposition and succeeds, and success is marked by a great assembly. Ezra–Nehemiah is made up of three stories: (1) the account of the initial return and rebuilding of the Temple (Ezra 1–6); (2) the story of Ezra's mission (Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8); (3) and the story of Nehemiah, interrupted by a collection of miscellaneous lists and part of the story of Ezra. ;Ezra 1–6 God moves the heart of Cyrus to commission Sheshbazzar (whose other name is Zerubbabel) "the prince of Judah", to rebuild the Temple; 40,000 exiles return to Jerusalem led by Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest. There they overcome the opposition of their enemies to rebuild the altar and lay the foundations of the Temple. The Samaritans, who are their enemies, force work to be suspended, but in the reign of Darius the decree of Cyrus is rediscovered, the Temple is completed, and the people celebrate the feast of Passover. ;Ezra 7–10 God moves king Artaxerxes to commission Ezra the priest and scribe to return to Jerusalem and teach the laws of God to any who do not know them. Ezra leads a large body of exiles back to the holy city, where he discovers that Jewish men have been marrying non-Jewish women. He tears his garments in despair and confesses the sins of Israel before God, then calls all the community's men to Jerusalem, where he commands them to send their foreign wives away. An investigation is then conducted, and Ezra 10 ends with a list of offending marriages and a statement that the foreign wives and their children were exiled. ;Nehemiah 1–6 Nehemiah, cup-bearer to king Artaxerxes, is informed that Jerusalem remains without walls. He prays to God, recalling the sins of Israel and God's promise of restoration in the land. Artaxerxes commissions him to return to Jerusalem as governor, where he enforces the cancellation of debts among the Jews and rebuilds the walls while facing opposition from the governors of neighboring peoples. ;Nehemiah 7–10 The list of those who returned with Zerubbabel is discovered. Ezra reads the law of Moses to the people and the people celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days; on the eighth they assemble in sackcloth and penitence to recall the past sins which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the enslavement of the Jews, and enter into a covenant to keep the law and separate themselves from all other peoples. ;Nehemiah 11–13 Nehemiah takes measures to repopulate the city and returns to Susa after 12 years in Jerusalem. After some time in Susa he returns, only to find that the people have broken the covenant. He enforces the covenant and prays to God for his favour. ==Themes==

The Mercer Bible Dictionary notes three notable theological themes in Ezra and Nehemiah: God's use of foreign rulers for Israel's sake; opposition to Israel from foreign neighbours; and the need to separate Israel from foreign neighbours to preserve the purity of the people of God. In the last half of Nehemiah the emphasis shifts to the joint role of Ezra and Nehemiah in instructing the people in the Law and in the dedication of the wall, these two activities together forming the reconstitution of Jewish life in Jerusalem; Dillard and Longman describe this as the moment when "the whole city becomes holy ground."{{cite book ==Division into Ezra and Nehemiah==

The single Hebrew book "Ezra–Nehemiah", with the title "Ezra", was translated into Greek around the middle of the 2nd-century BCE. Slightly later a second, and very different, Greek translation was made, commonly referred to as 1 Esdras. The Septuagint includes both 1 Esdras and the older translation of Ezra–Nehemiah and names the two books as Esdras A and Esdras B, respectively. The early Christian scholar Origen remarked that the Hebrew 'book of Ezra' might then be considered a 'double' book. Jerome, writing in the early 5th century, noted that Greek and Latin Christians had since adopted this duplication. Jerome himself rejected the duplication in his Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin from the Hebrew. Consequently, all early Vulgate manuscripts present Ezra–Nehemiah as a single book, ==Questions==

Chronological order of Ezra and Nehemiah The order of the two figures, Ezra and Nehemiah, is perhaps the most debated issue regarding the book. Ezra 7:8 records that Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the seventh year of king Artaxerxes, while Nehemiah 2#Verses 1–8:1–9 has Nehemiah arriving in Artaxerxes' twentieth year. If this was Artaxerxes I (465–424 BCE), then Ezra arrived in 458 and Nehemiah in 445 BCE. Nehemiah 8–9, in which the two (possibly by editorial error) appear together, supports this scenario. Olyan argues that Ezra-Nehemiah motivates the intermarriage ban by associating foreign peoples with impurity in a number of ways, and that this association is an innovation by the authors of Ezra-Nehemiah. The logic of the anti-alien rhetoric is not entirely consistent between sections of the text; Olyan writes that the "[p]ollution is associated with aliens and with intermarriage only in select texts, and the nature of the pollution in question varies with the texts." Due to the inconsistent rhetoric, Olyan sees that it may be possible to identify stages in the development of the anti-alien polemic. The earliest two ideas would be that priestly intermarriages defile the priestly lineage, and that the presence of foreigners in holy places makes the holy places "ritually" impure. The "moral" pollution associated with foreigners and intermarriage with them, and the idea that the Israelites should be separated from them would be a later development. Paul Heger takes a different stance on the expulsion of the gentiles in Ezra–Nehemiah. According to Heger, Ezra's motive for expelling gentile women and their offspring was a belief that the identity of the Israelites did not depend of the ethnicity of their mothers, but on the seed of their fathers. The motive behind prohibiting intermarriage with all gentile women was due to the danger of assimilation resulting from the influence of social interaction with the surrounding nations. The expulsion of the foreign women and their offspring was directed in order to preserve the purity of the Israelite "holy seed". Thus, Ezra did not introduce the idea of matrilineal identity. Katherine Southwood emphasizes that Ezra and Nehemiah are similar in their views of intermarriage in that both Ezra and Nehemiah allude to the Deuteronomic text in their narratives, and believe intermarriage to be a type of transgression. There are other similar nuances that lead some scholars to believe that they are from a similar source. However, there are also differences in the two sources that should not be forgotten. Firstly, the intermarriage debate is between different classes of people, each of which is trying to reserve their sense of ethnicity. Ezra argues that marriage with non-exilic Jews is a transgression, and Nehemiah emphasizes that marriage to non-Jews is a sin. Even though this book says specific groups, the book of Ezra prohibits all exogamy. According to Christine Hayes, Ezra is concerned about the holy seed being profaned since he believes God has chosen his people as being holy. Since anyone that is not inside of the chosen group is considered not holy, it would be sinful to marry and reproduce with them, according to Ezra. Scholars also believe that there were further political reasons behind Nehemiah's protest against intermarriage, and Ezra had a variety of different reasons. In either case, these two viewpoints on intermarriage with exogamous groups have differences, but ultimately, each is trying to promote and protect the ethnicity of their own group. Southwood goes on to discuss that both Ezra and Nehemiah display a "consciousness of ethnicity', Pieter M. Venter argues that most of the so-called "gentiles" in Ezra–Nehemiah were actually indigenous Judeans who emulated the Canaanites. The foreign women, in particular, symbolized the "foreignness" of female impurity, which was "powerful enough to impart ritual havoc". Venter cites verses such as and notes that only the Ammonites, Moabites and Egyptians existed as separate ethnicities during the times of Ezra–Nehemiah. adds the Philistines from Ashdod. This implied that the other ethnicites were "symbolic". Despite this, there are verses such as which indicate that these "gentile Judeans" abandoned their pagan background to join Ezra–Nehemiah's exclusive community. Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel Ezra begins with Cyrus entrusting the Temple vessels to Sheshbazzar, "prince of Judah"; this apparently important figure then disappears from the story almost entirely, and Zerubbabel is abruptly introduced as the main figure. Both are called governors of Judah and are both credited with laying the foundation of the Temple. A number of explanations have been proposed, including: (1) the two are the same person; (2) Sheshbazzar was in fact Shenazzar, Zerubabbel's uncle (mentioned in Chronicles); (3) Sheshbazzar began the work and Zerubbabel finished it. The "law-book of Moses" read by Ezra Ezra's mission according to Nehemiah 8 was to apply "the law of Moses" in Jerusalem, which he does by reading a "book of the law of Moses" (a "scroll" in Hebrew) in a marathon public session. Scholars disagree on what the law-book precisely was. Some have suggested it was some form of Deuteronomy, since Ezra's laws are heavily skewed towards that book; others have proposed that it was the "Priestly Writing", which probably dates from the Persian period; a third suggestion, and most popular, is that it was a form of the Torah, as it was clearly associated with Moses and contained both Deuteronomistic and Priestly elements; and the fourth view is that Ezra's law-book is lost to us and cannot be recovered. ==See also==