Mark Leuchter, «Inter-Levitical Polemics in the late 6th century BCE: The Evidence from Nehemiah 9», Vol. 95 (2014) 269-279
The Levitical prayer in Nehemiah 9 contributes to the gola-ideology running throughout Ezra-Nehemiah, but scholars have generally recognized that its compositional origins are to be connected to the Homeland communities of the exilic or early Persian periods. The present study identifies features in the prayer which suggest that its authors were Levites associated with the Homeland communities and that these authors crafted the prayer in response to the exclusive and elitist ideology of the gola groups. The prayer testifies to tensions within Levite circles well into the Persian period and possibly even beyond.
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279 INTER-LEVITICAL POLEMICS 279
outsider groups and institutions like the Samaritans and their cult and tem-
ple at Mt. Gerizim contributed to the change in attitude 47. Or perhaps the
biblical writers simply saw fit to let bygones be bygones as the rising storm
from Macedon forced them to re-evaluate the terms of their own survival.
Department of Religion Mark LEUCHTER
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122 (USA)
SUMMARY
The Levitical prayer in Nehemiah 9 contributes to the gola-ideology run-
ning throughout Ezra-Nehemiah, but scholars have generally recognized that
its compositional origins are to be connected to the Homeland communities
of the exilic or early Persian periods. The present study identifies features in
the prayer which suggest that its authors were Levites associated with the
Homeland communities and that these authors crafted the prayer in response
to the exclusive and elitist ideology of the gola groups. The prayer testifies
to tensions within Levite circles well into the Persian period and possibly
even beyond.
47
J.W. WATTS, Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus. From Sacrifice to
Scripture (New York – Cambridge 2007) 164-170.
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