RBL 02/2009 Boda, Mark J., and Paul L. Redditt, eds. Unity and Disunity in Ezra-Nehemiah: Redaction, Rhetoric, and Reader Hebrew Bible Monographs 17 Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2008. Pp. x + 384. Hardcover. $110.00. ISBN 1906055408. Andrew E. Steinmann Concordia University River Forest, Illinois In the last fifty years, scholarship on Ezra and Nehemiah has gone from attributing the final form of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah to one source the Chronicler to denying that the Chronicler had a hand in the production of the book of Ezra-Nehemiah and then to a debate about whether Ezra and Nehemiah were intended by their author(s)/ redactor(s) to be read and understood as single book or two separate works. This collection of seventeen essays plus introduction is designed to contribute to the ongoing debate about the unity or disunity of Ezra/Nehemiah. Fourteen of the essays are placed in a section entitled Articles. Each of these attack the problem from a specific perspective. A second section, entitled Responses, contains three essays from seasoned veterans of Ezra-Nehemiah studies: Joseph Blenkinsopp, Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, and H. G. M. Williamson. All but one of the essays argues for viewing Ezra and Nehemiah as a unity. Richard Bautch s The Function of Covenant across Ezra-Nehemiah looks at covenants forged by the Jerusalem community under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. He concludes that Ezra 9 10; Neh 5:1 13; 10:1 40 exhibit a distinct kind of covenant that arises from the community s internal resolve to follow some portion of the Torah. All three covenants demonstrate a common reliance on the language, rhetoric, and ideology
of kinship. Perhaps the major item to criticize in Bautch s essay is that the term covenant is somewhat misleading, since the term tyrb is not prominent in these agreements. Mark Boda s The Redaction of the Book of Nehemiah: A Fresh Proposal examines the several source documents in the latter half of the book of Nehemiah, searching for evidence from which to build a theory of the redaction history of the book. Boda concludes that those responsible for Nehemiah as we have it today incorporated documents from the earliest period of the Achaemenid community in Jerusalem. The redactors, however, connected them to Nehemiah and his accomplishments in order to augment his reputation as a religious reformer. Those responsible for Ezra 1 6 were also responsible for this transformation of the materials in Nehemiah. The lone essay to argue that Nehemiah is a distinct work from Ezra is Leave Nehemiah Alone: Nehemiah s Tales and Fifth-Century BCE Historiography, by Margaret Cohen. She argues that the book of Nehemiah is comprised of short vignettes (she calls them tales ). These fall into two categories: first-person narratives; and document accounts that explain a list or record. These two types of tales are interwoven in the book to create its own structure (apparently independent of the book of Ezra). Cohen draws parallels between this and other historiographical works of the fifth century B.C.E., such as those of Herodotus. While the parallels with other fifth-century works are intriguing, Cohen s method used to demarcate the tales from one another is never clearly defined or defended, making it difficult to assess her method and conclusions. In Who Wrote Ezra-Nehemiah and Why Did They? Lisbeth Fried argues that Ezra- Nehemiah was written by a follower of Ezekiel. This redactor/author presents the story of the return to Israel and the rebuilding of the temple and city wall as the implementation of Ezekiel s vision. Both Ezra and Nehemiah are presented as matching Ezekiel s conception of the ideal prophet/priest, with Ezra as a second Moses. By the end of the work the Torah is the center of the people s devotion, and the people are protected from foreign influences by a wall (both literally and figuratively), reflecting Ezekiel s ideal. Creative as Fried s thesis is, I was unconvinced by several of the parallels she sees between Ezra- Nehemiah and Ezekiel. Often they are weak and have to be qualified in various ways in order to make them fit. Thus, it seems to me that this is much more Fried wanting Ezra- Nehemiah to fit Ezekiel s program for Israel than the text actually having been written to align the history of postexilic Jerusalem to Ezekiel s vision. Hannah Harrington s Holiness and Purity in Ezra-Nehemiah argues that Ezra and Nehemiah share the same concept of holiness and purity, one that is more exclusionary than other biblical texts. Ezra-Nehemiah applies traditional impurity language and ritual in order to maintain ethnic purity, a first in Jewish history. This, Harrington believes,
indicates a single author. While Harrington makes an interesting case for a shared ideology of purity and holiness in Ezra and Nehemiah, I remain unconvinced that this proves common authorship. It could just as easily prove a common ideology shared by two authors. David Janzen contributes The Cries of Jerusalem: Ethnic, Cultic, Legal and Geographic Boundaries of Ezra-Nehemiah. He argues that continuity of theme throughout Ezra- Nehemiah supports, but does not prove, common authorship. He sees several plot changes in Ezra-Nehemiah but a consistent theme throughout: Israel must be separate from the surrounding peoples. Interestingly, Janzen sees four major plots: Ezra 1 6 draws a cultic boundary between Israel and the nations; Ezra 7 10 stresses legal and geographic separation; Neh 1 6 emphasizes geographic isolation; and, finally Neh 7 13 reinforces all the boundaries between Israel and the nations ethnic, cultic, legal, and geographic. Janzen is right to be cautious in claiming to prove common authorship. In reading his essay I came to the conclusion that one could rearrange the observations he makes to argue in the opposite direction: that the books share a common theme but are distinct works. (Note the plot break between Ezra and Nehemiah, which Janzen himself admits.) Based on Janzen s data, one could even argue that the author/redactor of Ezra purposely shaped his work to be a prequel to a previously written book of Nehemiah. Scrutinizing the Conceptual Unity of Ezra and Nehemiah, by Christiane Karrer-Grube, seeks to find unity in Ezra-Nehemiah on conceptual grounds. She finds hints that the story is not closed at the end of Ezra, since several of his tasks remain unfulfilled and are later addressed in Nehemiah. Moreover, she sees a diarchic concept of leadership in Ezra 1 6, which can also be seen in Ezra 7 Neh 13, if it is read as a unit. Finally, since Ezra begins with a reference to the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, Karrer-Grube sees a fulfillment of the new covenant of Jer 31:31 34; 32:40 by the covenant in Neh 9 10. Again, I was unconvinced by this essay s arguments. For instance, while it is possible to read Ezra 7 Neh 13 as demonstrating diarchic leadership, there is little in the text before Neh 8 to indicate that one ought to be thinking along those lines, and the concluding chapter, Neh 13, certainly leads on to think of only Nehemiah as leader. Moreover, I am unconvinced that Jeremiah s new covenant is in view in Neh 9 10. Jeremiah s covenant is centered on no one having to teach his or her neighbor God s law, whereas in Nehemiah both Ezra and the Levites are clearly presented as teaching the people God s law. Moreover, the new covenant is centered on Yahweh s statement that I will forgive their sins and remember their iniquity no more (Jer 31:34), a theme that is not prominent in Neh 9 10. Kyung-jin Min s Nehemiah without Ezra? argues that Nehemiah ought not to be read without Ezra, since they are internally dependent on one another and share a consistent
and coherent structure. He claims especially the date with no mention of a king in Neh 1:1 and theme reversal in Neh 1 6 in support of his thesis. The supposed defective date in Neh 1:1 is often used as an argument in the unity/disunity debate, but I remain unconvinced that it is adequately explained by reference to Ezra. One especially nice feature of Min s essay is that he presents a critique of the arguments of those who view Ezra and Nehemiah as separate books. This not only presents their views (something lacking in the rest of this volume) but also gives reasoned conclusions as to why those arguments do not prove separate authorship. In Restoration of Israel by God s Word in Three Episodes from Ezra-Nehemiah, Douglas Nykolashien employs the tools of narrative criticism in order to identify shared features of three episodes from Ezra Nehemiah (Ezra 1:1 11; 5:1 6:4; Neh 1:1 2:8). Four features are highlighted: (1) reference to words from God s authorized spokesmen as it relates to the subsequent narrative; (2) God as an agent who controls the outcome of events; (3) indication at the end of each episode that a vital step toward the restoration of Israel from the exile has been accomplished; and (4) the Persian king is a tool used by God to accomplish his purposes. Because all three episodes share these features, Nykolashien argues that Ezra-Nehemiah is a single, unified work. However, in examining the details of the analysis, one could argue that these four themes are only shared in the most general of ways. For instance, in all three episodes prophets are mentioned (Jeremiah, Haggai and Zechariah, and Moses). However, a close reading of Nykolashien s discussion reveals that all three are treated in diverse ways in order to integrate them into the context of their respective episodes. Is this an indication of common authorship or simply a common respect for prophetic revelation among several authors? Similar observations could be made for the other three features. The tenth essay, Juha Pakkala s The Disunity of Ezra Nehemiah employs traditional source criticism to argue that the final text of Ezra-Nehemiah cannot be regarded as a unity since even the subsections of the work are the result of heavy editing. The resulting merger of Ezra 1 6, Ezra material, and Nehemiah s memoir resulted in a text with even more tensions and confusion, producing a text characterized by redaction and additions partly in contradiction with one another. I found Pakkala s method to be one of imposing a conception of what the text ought to be and then excluding what did not fit that conception. It leaves no room for an ancient author or editor who may have sought to weave two or more themes together or who purposely digressed from the main plotline for reasons of his own. In fact, Pakkala s essay is the only one that is criticized by another essay in this collection. Reinmuth notes: Upon closer scrutiny, the alleged tensions and doublings he [Pakkala] cites do not really turn out to be such. What seem to be anachronistic to the modern reader,
what one may expect concerning the structure of the text, whether variation in speaking of the book of the Torah can be interpreted as literary tension in view of the few parallels all this has to be demonstrated and confirmed by the text. (244 45 n. 7) Paul Redditt s The Dependence of Ezra-Nehemiah on 1 and 2 Chronicles looks afresh at the arguments about the direction of borrowing between Chronicles and Ezra- Nehemiah. Redditt argues that the direction of borrowing must be from Chronicles to Ezra-Nehemiah. He demonstrates that most of the evidence used by scholars who argue for borrowing in the opposite direction is inconclusive. However, in a few passages where the Chronicles departs from his source in Kings, the same departure is found in Ezra- Nehemiah, making it likely that Ezra-Nehemiah borrowed from Chronicles. His main argument is that Ezra 1:1 4 was borrowed from the end of Chronicles because 2 Chr 35 36 mentions Jeremiah frequently, whereas Ezra has only one mention of Jeremiah. The portion of Cyrus s decree in Ezra 1 that is unique to Ezra, therefore, must have been a later expansion by the redactor. I remain unpersuaded by Redditt s argument. It is just as likely that Ezra was written first and that the Chronicler borrowed a portion of the Cyrus decree because it fit his emphasis on Jeremiah at the end of his book. The Chronicler may have cited only part of the decree in order to end with a jussive verb form indicating a sense of hope and optimism. As for the few other passages that Redditt perceives as evidence for Ezra-Nehemiah borrowing from Chronicles, the links between the books are slight and weak. I believe it would be better to leave the direction of borrowing between Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah an open (and probably unsolvable) question. Titus Reinmuth contributes Nehemiah and the Authority of the Torah in Ezra- Nehemiah. It is, perhaps, the essay that most appeals to this reviewer. Reinmuth argues that Neh 8 was composed for its present setting in Nehemiah and that it was not originally part of the Ezra account in Ezra 7 10, as most scholars hold. He demonstrates that Neh 8 contains few relevant parallels in language or content to Ezra 7 10. This is supported by intertextual relationships between Neh 8, on one side, and Deut 31:9 13, Josh 8:30 35, and 2 Kgs 22 23 on the other. The most prominent connections and parallels for Neh 8 are found in the Nehemiah material of Ezra-Nehemiah, not the Ezra material in Ezra 7 10. I have always doubted that Neh 8 was originally part of Ezra 7 10, though this is widely held by scholars (including many who contributed to this volume). The main arguments in its favor are flimsy: that Ezra is mentioned in both texts and that 1 Esdras appends a portion of Neh 8 at the end of its Ezra material. Since all of the essayists in this book are in general agreement with the current scholarly consensus that 1 Esdras is a pastiche of material created long after Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, there really is little to hold the weight of a Neh 8 displaced from Ezra 7 10. Reinmuth may have exposed the emperor as having few, if any, clothes.
In Contextualization of Ezra-Nehemiah Armin Siedlecki observes that all the source texts of Ezra-Nehemiah, whether narrative or documentary, categorically affirm Persian political dominance. However, when these sources were incorporated into the canonical Ezra-Nehemiah, the support of imperial rule as well as the optimism of these sources is muted. Setbacks are reported to balance the successes, and both Ezra and Nehemiah conclude with unresolved situations. In contrast, 1 Esdras subordinates political authority to religious authority. Thus Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras contrast in the way that they elicit different readings through different ways in which source materials are contextualized. The last essay, Seeking, Finding and Writing in Ezra-Nehemiah, by Jacob Wright, argues that the theme of seeking and finding unites Ezra-Nehemiah, indicating that they are one work. Wright points out that seeking and finding results in writing throughout Ezra-Nehemiah. The three responses by Blenkinsopp, Eskenazi, and Williamson round out this volume. Blenkinsopp evaluates all fourteen essays, whereas Eskenazi and Williamson respond to select articles as they set fit. The book concludes with a helpful bibliography, an index to references of ancient works, and an index of modern authors cited. While this collection is stimulating and thought-provoking, it would have been helpful to have more views from those who view the two books as intended to be read as distinct works and perhaps a response from one of the leading proponents of reading the books separately, such as James VanderKam or David Kraemer. I do not know why the volume lacks a more balanced selection. Perhaps the editors could not find more essays from those who favor disunity, since at present that appears to be the minority opinion among scholars of these books. Perhaps VanderKam or Kraemer were unavailable to write response essays. Whatever the reason, this is a major drawback for an otherwise fine collection of essays. On the whole, I have never been convinced by arguments for or against the unity of Ezra and Nehemiah. After reading this book, I am still agnostic on this subject. Both Ezra and Nehemiah contain too much material compiled from sources and too little indisputable text from the editor(s) to come to any firm conclusions on this matter. None of the arguments on either side of the unity/disunity debate are strong enough to be decisive. The tradition that these books are one is older and stronger than the view that they are two, but even that older tradition is removed by several centuries from the presumed date of the writing of Ezra and Nehemiah. Thus the appeal to tradition is less than helpful one could make a case that the authorship of the Pentateuch by Moses is old and very strong, but that has not stopped critical scholars from dismissing it. Arguments from
content or authorial tendencies the basis for a number of essays in this collection cannot prove common authorship, since two or more authors can share similar or even nearly identical ideologies. Despite my skepticism that any of the observations in these essays has carried the day for one side or the other, anyone seriously interested in Ezra- Nehemiah studies will find much here to contemplate, and reading this book will certainly enhance one s knowledge of both the book(s) under discussion and the present state of Ezra-Nehemiah scholarship.