06_Biblica_AN_Leuchter_269_279 15/07/14 12:22 Pagina 270 270 MARK LEUCHTER 270 lay leadership. A recent examination discusses how tropes from Deutero- nomy and the book of Jeremiah, both steeped in Levitical rhetoric, were applied to Nehemiah’s initiatives 5. These range from the importance of the term r[X in Deuteronomy and its deployment in the construction of the wall around Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3) to the enforcing of the Sabbath (Neh 13,15-21) and his proclamation of economic liberty for indebted Jews (Nehemiah 5), both of which find notable precedent within the Jer- emiah tradition as well (Jer 17,19-27; 34,14-20) 6. We should also note the nearly identical superscription forms of Jer 1,1 and Neh 1,1, suggest- ing hermeneutical equivalency between Nehemiah’s policies and the or- acles of a prophet who advocated submission to foreign imperialism 7. II. Levites in Exile and Levites in Judah Major turns in Nehemiah’s tenure are therefore refracted through these Levitical traditions, and the implication is that the gola group represented by Nehemiah had the allegiance and support of the Levites who promoted and preserved these traditions. But this certainly flattens a far more tex- tured and complicated set of circumstances characterizing Yehudite soci- ety in the late 6th – mid 5th centuries BCE. As Schaper, Hanson and Tiemeyer and others have rightly noted, the Judahite populations who did not endure exile possessed their own Levites who sustained religious life in the homeland throughout the Neo-Babylonian period 8. These scholars view Levites as almost entirely associated with these homeland groups and only gradually incorporated into a larger social collective involving the gola community 9. Though this view requires some adjustment ― there is good evidence for Levite populations in exile (e.g., Ezra 8,15-19) ― there can be little doubt that the homeland communities retained their own Levite clans, certainly suggested by the intimate connection between Levites and small scale hinterland settlements intimated throughout 5 M. LEUCHTER, “The Politics of Ritual Rhetoric: A Proposed Sociopolitical Context for the Redaction of Leviticus 1–16”, VT 60 (2010) 345-365. The matter of Deuteronomy’s connection to the Levites is still debated, but Levite- scribal authorship may still be defended. See LEUCHTER, Samuel and the Shaping of Tradition, 16-20. 6 LEUCHTER, “The Politics of Ritual Rhetoric”, 361. 7 LEUCHTER, “The Politics of Ritual Rhetoric”, 360. 8 J. SCHAPER, Priester und Leviten im achämenidischen Juda (FAT 31; Tübingen 2000) 163-164; P.D. HANSON, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Minneapolis, MN 1979) 226-227; L.S. TIEMEYER, “Abraham – A Judahite Prerogative”, ZAW 120 (2008) 49-66, here 63. 9 SCHAPER, Priester und Leviten, 290-301.