Embracing Nehemiah: Restoration as a Performance of Social Cohesion

CONTENTS:

Guest EditorialDr. Eugene “Gene” Carpenter Anthony J. Tomasino

RemembrancesEulogy for Eugene Carpenter J. B. Stump

Blue and Pink: Remembering Gene and Kathy Timothy Paul Erdel

An Encomium for Eugene Carpenter Chad V. Meister

Biblical Articles in Honor of Eugene CarpenterThe Covenant at Sinai J. Duane Beals

God’s People in Isaiah: Trembling at God’s Word Andrew T. Abernathy

Reading the Scroll of Ezekiel for the Love of God John T. Strong

Embracing Nehemiah: Restoration as a Performance of Social Cohesion Jeremiah W. Cataldo

Learning Christ: The Dynamics of Moral Formation in Ephesians Fredrick J. Long

Theological Articles in Honor of Eugene CarpenterToward a Theology of Self-Care John Dendiu

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A Publication of the Missionary Church Historical Society

2014 and 2015Volumes 16 and 17

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Reflections: essays in HonoR of eugene caRpenteR

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Dealing with the Devious Devices of the Devil: A Wesleyan Perspective in Honor of Eugene Carpenter LaVerne P. Blowers

“Every Man a King”?: Image of God as Sovereignty Anthony J. Tomasino

Physical Death and Philosophical Judgment Timothy Paul Erdel

BibliographyA Bibliography of Eugene Carpenter’s Writings Compiled by Kevin Blowers

Review EssayNew Testament Theology: An Introduction, by James D. G. Dunn Reviewed by David C. Cramer

Book ReviewsMoral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism, by David R. Swartz Reviewed by Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas

Surprised by Scripture by N. T. Wright Reviewed by Sam Ochstein

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cataldo: EmBracing nEhEmiah

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Embracing Nehemiah: Restoration as a Performance of Social Cohesion

__________________________________Jeremiah W. Cataldo

It is unsettling to know that without his influence upon my life, I would not be sitting here in my university office writing this contribution for a volume that posthumously honors Gene Carpenter. He was a man with enough grace and discipline to challenge a naïve undergraduate student to continually push the limits of the student’s own knowledge. To not be afraid of questions nor their answers, and to always be asking questions in the pursuit of something greater than oneself. And he made study of the Old Testament exciting. His extensive knowledge of ancient cultures and languages added depth and inspired one to always be learning. He never shied from wrestling with apparent contradictions between any given account in the biblical text and that of the archaeological or other historical record. He was willing to see the humanity in the Bible, that the Bible contained evidence of human struggles, shortcomings, and failures, as still being compatible with revelation. It is in that spirit, the willingness to embrace academic dialogue as something inherently productive, that I write this chapter to honor Gene Carpenter, a man of good character.

“Restoration” in Ezra-Nehemiah (Defining the Term)Scholars have accepted that while Ezra and Nehemiah may have originally been two individual texts, the versions that we moderns enjoy were clearly redacted to form a functional unit. There are varying views on the historical dating of the text. Some will take as an accurate historical marker the superscription of the text (identifying authorship during the time of Artaxerxes). Others accept that parts of Nehemiah were likely written during the 5th century BCE while its remainder and very likely the whole were written during the Hellenistic Period or slightly later.1 Yet it seems fair to say that in all academic proposals and conclusions, there exists a common ground on an acceptance that the social-political situation that did not mirror that of pre-exilic Judah–this is a critical point because that disconnect between reality and ideal largely shapes the biblical view of restoration, a point we will discuss in more detail below. Ezra-Nehemiah testifies to this with its persistent emphasis upon preserving the boundaries that distinguish the community, an act assumed to be a precursor to restoration. Nehemiah 1:1–3 quickly sets the tone by having Hanani, one of Nehemiah’s brothers, tell Nehemiah, “The survivors there in the province who escaped captivity are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken


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down, and its gates have been destroyed by fire” (v. 3). Nehemiah’s response invokes confession, covenant, and the possibility of a restored state (1:4–11). To be clear, restoration entails not only reconstruction of the city wall and gates of Jerusalem but also the establishment of a new social-political norm in support of the authority of the golah community (Ezra-Nehemiah’s returnees). After all, the land was not wholly vacated of people during the period of the Babylonian exile.2 The continued presence of the “people of the land” and social and political exchange,3 which can be safely presumed, means that these people defined the qualities of their society in the absence of those taken into exile. In other words, the golah community was for all intents and purposes an immigrant community that could either assimilate itself into the existing cultural world of Yehud or establish clear boundaries of distinction and exclusion in support of an alternative normative order unique to the community itself. The latter option is consistent with utopian thinking in that it emphasizes a new, unseen world in which social-political stability and the experience of it is thought to be certain, or controllable. The absence of that certainty, however, is anxiety producing. In Ezra-Nehemiah, those anxieties lay behind the author’s vision of restoration. Simply put, Ezra-Nehemiah’s vision of restoration is utopian. By “utopian” we mean “no place.” The restoration that Ezra-Nehemiah envisions is not a true restore-ation; it is not restoration in the traditional sense of a return to an original position or circumstance. Instead, in the case of Ezra-Nehemiah, it is a proposed construction of a new society (one in which the people already in the land are considered “other,” marginal, and external) based on the centrality of the golah community. This construction is done by employing and appropriating historical and religious traditions shared with the people who remained in the land as a form of mutual legitimation of the golah community. (In this situation, the people already in the land would provide external legitimation of the physical presence of the community and its identity by addressing it as a distinct community.) To note, “When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of families and said to them, ‘Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do …’” (Ezra 4:1–2). The sense of this is that by accepting its own “otherness” in relation to the returned exiles, the people already in the land accepted their own subordinate position in the hierarchy centralized on the authority of the “God of Israel.” In this way, it provided external legitimation of golah collective identity as one central within the dominant social-political normative of Yehud. By “legitimation” we mean the sense in which Peter Berger defines it, “socially objectivated ‘knowledge’ that serves to explain and justify the social order. Put differently, legitimations are answers to any questions about the ‘why’ of institutional arrangements.”4 What Ezra-Nehemiah attempts to do, and what many readers have accepted as valid, is paint a context, describe its arrangements, in which the foundations for golah social-political authority were

already objective facticities that even the people in the land must accept. Take, for example, the following passage:


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Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.” I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, “Let us start building!” So they committed themselves to the common good. But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they mocked and ridiculed us, saying, “What is this that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” Then I replied to them, “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem” (Neh 2:17–20).

Nehemiah’s connection of the fallen wall with disgrace is telling. The physical wall of Jerusalem would make not only a political statement–“herein lies the city of Jerusalem”–it also represents for the text the symbolic division between the golah

community and the am ha’aretz (or, “people of the land”). The sanctity of the land is contingent upon the preservation of this division and its physical manifestation. What is more, the parameters of this division can be seen also in the so-called Golah List in Neh 7:5–73 (parallel Ezra 2:1–70).5 In that list, members of the community are considered to be those who had been uprooted from Judah. In other words, membership required displacement; “These are the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had carried into exile…” (Neh 7:6). It is those to whom Nehemiah refers with the 1st person, common, plural form of בנה (bnh; in 2:17), which can be translated as “let us build.” This precative command speaks not only to the physical walls and gates of Jerusalem but to the ideological separation that they represent for the author; that much is clear in the response of the returnees when “they committed themselves to the common good” (literally, “they stretched out their hands to/for good/welfare,” which implies both attitudinal and behavioral commitment; v.18). That טובה (twbh; “good,” “welfare,” etc.) has such an important role in deciphering Ezra-Nehemiah’s conception of restoration is demonstrated elsewhere. Nehemiah 2:10 describes Sanballat and Tobiah as “displeased” that someone was seeking the “welfare of the people of Israel.” In this context, the term “Israel” does not denote the social-political polity of the Northern Kingdom, nor does it refer to the historical kingdom of Judah. It holds a utopian meaning–and this exists in the social, political, and theological senses since those spheres were not so easily distinguishable as modern readers often entertain. For Ezra-Nehemiah, “Israel” denotes a “restored” polity based on the golah community as the model for citizenry. Ezra, for example, begins its roster of returnees with the phrase, “the number of the Israelite people” (2:2). And in 6:13–22, the people of “Israel” completed the Jerusalem temple and celebrated the Passover: “On the fourteenth


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day of the first month the returned exiles kept the Passover. For both the priests and the Levites had purified themselves; all of them were clean. So they killed the passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves” (vv. 19–20). On a sociological level, this ritualized event promotes social cohesion within the framework of golah collective identity by reminding the people of the exile itself (and its correlation with the tradition of the Exodus), that the exile was a defining moment for the society, that God played an active role in selecting the remnant, and that, presumably, the returned exiles were now the beneficiaries of the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants.6 Ezra 8:22 helps clarify the ramifications of the correct attitude and behavior before God when Ezra describes why he is ashamed to ask the king for protection, “since we had told the king that the hand of our God is gracious to all who seek him.” What the NRSV translates as “gracious,” the Hebrew reads as טובה (twbh), or “good,” or “welfare.” Those who seek “good” and manifest external signs through rituals that demonstratively express the collective identity of the community will, or so it was presumed, benefit from the welfare and protection of God. What we are referring to here is a type ritualization of exchange that offers security and stability for a pattern of moral and ethical behavior that provides external validation of the authority of God.7

“Good/welfare” is also used to describe Tobiah (see Neh 6:17–19). That passage does two things: it sets up a contrasting foil to help distinguish between the golah community and the am ha’aretz (or, “people of the land”), and it confirms for us that טובה (twbh) is a broader sociological concept than one denoting something restricted to righteousness, or general theological goodness. As a sociological concept it reveals that what was considered beneficial for the community, the foundation of social cohesion, was open to interpretation. Elements of this can be seen in that while people spoke of Tobiah’s good deeds before Nehemiah, Nehemiah views Tobiah as a disruption to social-political stability, threatening not only the governor (who was, by happy circumstance, also a member of the golah community) but also the very boundaries that distinguish the golah community from the am ha’aretz. In 7:1–4, for example, Nehemiah gives Hanani, along with Hananiah the commander of the citadel, charge over Jerusalem because “he was a faithful man and feared God more than many” (v. 2). It is clear that Nehemiah’s interpretation of God is of a deity loyal to the immigrant community when in vv. 5–73 he “finds” a book of genealogy of “those who were the first to come back” (v. 5) in partial fulfillment of the restoration. It is not that the assembly of nobles, officials, and the people was being restricted to the original immigrants. Nehemiah articulates a genealogy in which the social structure begins with those who originally returned. Within this articulated framework, immigration after displacement became associated with the preliminary distinction between the citizen of a restored society and the outsider. In other words, membership was defined preliminarily through a qualifying experience of the exile. All this is further supported by the correlation of “Israel” and the “book of the law of Moses” brought by Ezra (see 8:1–2). The law was not merely a theological law, nor was it the dominant law of the land.8 It was a constructivist


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law. Its intent, in other words, was to define and regulate the parameters of behavior that were suitable for the “people of Israel” as the beneficiaries of a restored community. That the people were not adhering to the proper pattern of behavior explains why they wept upon hearing the law within the ritualized framework in which it was presented (8:9). That their failed adherence was unintentional, the law was not “known,” explains why greater ritualistic atonement, which serves as a reminder of the proper pattern of behavior, was not necessary. Don’t grieve your disobedience of a law you didn’t know, Nehemiah might have said, but now you

understand (נין and שכל, see v. 8) the law by which you should be governed. The very next section confirms this in its description of the heads of the people (לכל–העם r’shy h’bwt lkl-h’m) priests, and Levites coming to Ezra to “study the ;ראשי האבותwords of the law” (8:13). The sudden revelation there that “the people of Israel” should observe the Festival of Booths during the seventh month ritualizes overt behaviors and signs that mark a distinction between community members (the “remnant,” or “Israel”) and those outside the community (“foreign,” or “profane”). And as further evidence of ritualistic intent, we must not forget Nehemiah’s assertion that Ezra read from the book of the law from the first day to the last day (8:17). The ritualistic behavior that Ezra-Nehemiah describes emphasized, and would legitimate, the centrality of the “remnant” in a “restored” Israel. Ezra-Nehemiah’s expression of the attributes of restoration is nearly synonymous with those of the “common good,” but when that concept is restricted to the welfare and benefit of the golah community as the beneficiary of the favor of God (cf. Neh 2:18).9 This refers primarily to (1) clearly legitimated boundaries, internally and externally recognizable, that mark the distinction of the community from outsiders, and (2) a radical decrease in anxieties over the possible social-political irrelevance of the community (a metaphoric death of the community in which the community ceases to be externally recognized or legitimated).10 This is in part one reason why Nehemiah persuaded the affluent to forgive debts owed to them by those less fortunate, the ones who had been selling their fields and children to make ends meet (see Neh 5:1–13). Given the larger context of the text, it is most likely that Nehemiah’s concern was for social-economic stability within the community, which would prevent an internal social-economic decay, entail a recentralization of power in favor of the golah community in contrast to the people already in the land, and ritualize a structural mechanism for a perpetual legitimation of group boundaries. This last point refers to the text’s emphasis upon economic equalization–and this is really a utopian ideal–among members within the community and including an absence of a corresponding or equivalent equalization between members of the community and those outside it. In short, the common good that is characteristic of restoration entails a balance of economic power, yes, but only within the community.


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Performance as a Mechanism of Social Cohesion

[I]f the dignity of the individual derived from his individual qualities, from those particular characteristics which distinguish him from others, one might fear that he would become enclosed in a sort of moral egoism that would render all social cohesion impossible. But in reality he receives this dignity from a higher source, one which he shares with all men.11

Our understanding of what drives social cohesion, one that has already shaped our conversation here, is not a new one. Even Herodotus noted that the desire for unity, a productive desire, motivates social cohesion (Hist. 1.131–40). In more modern times, the great philosopher of the productivity of difference, Gilles Deleuze, did well to demonstrate the productive nature of desire, one that originates from a fundamental desire to live, or survive, and becomes increasingly more complex.12 On a collective level, desires are encoded within the identity of a society or culture. In the context of Yehud, the community of immigrants found themselves in the middle of a “foreign” context (there had been at least seventy years of social and cultural development between exile and return [cf. 2 Chron 36:17–21]13) in which assimilation would have provided an easy route to finding one’s “place.” The oft-repeated emphasis upon boundary maintenance, as well as the expressed concern over intermarriages (cf. Ezra 9-10; Neh 13:23–29), in Ezra-Nehemiah suggests that assimilation was happening. For the author(s), however, assimilation could not be a viable response because it would lead to the loss of the identity of the remnant, out of which Yahweh would produce a “restored Israel”. Daniel Smith-Christopher described Ezra-Nehemiah’s emphatic distinction upon group distinction as a survival mechanism.14 He was partly correct. They do reflect the actions of a group, or a representative of the group, reacting to the threat of community’s looming irrelevance (which intermarriage helped aggravate). The identity of the golah community as the seed of Israel was one that was also very political.15 The author’s rigid distinction between members and non-members (see again the so-called Golah List) should be read not simply as a matter of theological purity but as an attempt to redefine the social-political hierarchy. Nehemiah’s disdain for Tobiah (cf. Neh 13:8) can be seen as an example of this. Likewise, the text’s emphasis upon the need to rebuild the temple is not motivated solely by a concern for any fulfillment of the Deuteronomic ideal of a single location for the temple in a theological sense (cf. Deut 12:5).16 The physical object of the temple emphasized the presence and power of the divine but, because rebuilding the temple was the responsibility of the golah community, only as connected to the restoration of Israel through the golah community. The observable authority of God, the text seems to imply, requires the authoritative presence of the golah community. This leads us to the point that Ezra-Nehemiah’s emphasis upon restoration is not upon the fact of restoration but upon its active realization. In other words, Ezra-Nehemiah emphasizes the performative dimension of ideology, enforced


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and internalized through ritualization. Catherine Bell’s summary of Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah’s use of “performative” may be helpful here. “[R]itual acts are ‘performative’ linguistic categories. By ‘performative,’ Tambiah meant the particular way in which symbolic forms of expressions simultaneously make assumptions about the way things really are, create the sense of reality, and act upon the real world as it is culturally experienced.”17 Ezra-Nehemiah’s emphasis upon reading the law in a public forum, on Passover observance, and even upon a public display of separation of foreign women from the community should be read in this way. Each act entails a response to the “real world” of a social-political context whose normative order was marked more by pluralistic tendencies than what was consistent with the exclusivity of the community. Each act also “creates a sense of reality” by ritualizing behaviors prescriptive of a new, “restored” reality. The performance of “the remnant,” as a cultural identity, orders the experiences of the community in an attempt to resolve the social-political problem linked to immigration.18 The rituals that Ezra-Nehemiah describes were not performed for the sake of religious experience alone, where “religious experience” meant a psychological response to theological value statements. Public rituals introduce individuals to the values of a dominant moral order while also legitimating and enforcing a dominant moral order. This is why Bell, for example, states generally, “The goal of ritualization as such is completely circular: the creation of a ritualized agent, an actor with a form of ritual mastery, who embodies flexible sets of cultural schemes and can deploy them effectively in multiple situations so as to restructure those situations in practical ways.”19 Within the case of Persian-period Yehud, the moral order desired by Ezra-Nehemiah did not exist. It was one that the community yearned for. In that way it was utopian. It was not a pointless utopia, of course. The utopian aspirations of Ezra-Nehemiah sought a prescriptive function–their performative role, collectively, was in defining the moral order of a society that embodied the ideals of Yahwism (specifically the community’s version of it). Ritualistic activities described in Ezra-Nehemiah, which aided the construction of this order, differentiated between the sacred world and profane reality.20 The public ritualization of the Passover and of divorce, for example, both frames the distinction between sacred and profane and involves its participants with visual imagery, dramatic sounds, and even tactile stimulation.21 Where the real world of Yehud was inarticulate-able as a coherently ordered totality (the real world in any situation is usually so), these events as public rituals provided a microcosm that offered a substitutionary and interpretable totality in the form of utopia.22 The performance of public ritual fulfilled a productive act of social cohesion by establishing a dominant moral order and a corresponding internal stability, alleviating external threats by reinforcing the strength of the group, and reinforcing consistent expectations for the behaviors and attitudes of individuals within the community.


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Restoration as a Reaction to AnxietyThe events of the exiles and the “return” to a seemingly non-supportive context heightened feelings of anxiety within the golah community. We are using “anxiety” here a referent to a response to feelings or fears of death or annihilation.23 This anxiety was less likely a direct threat to the golah community by the am ha’aretz than to the former’s fear of a loss of its collective identity through assimilation and other forces opposed to exclusivism. In fact, that intermarriage was practiced in Yehud, which gave reason for Ezra-Nehemiah’s dramatic ritualization of divorce, would suggest that the people already in the land were as a practice accepting of immigrants. The antagonism of Sanballat, Tobiah, and others should be read in this light. Moreover, this antagonism makes sense only if the restoration that Ezra-Nehemiah described was already taking place, or in the least if Sanballat et al. believed that it could. In fact, as Gösta Ahlström argues, it seems that Sanballat and Geshem tried to avert a conflict by reaching out to Nehemiah four times. “Had Sanballat wanted to stop the project by force, he would not have urged Nehemiah so many times to come to the negotiating table.”24 Nehemiah, of course, concludes that the invitations were preludes to a trap and suggests that Sanballat considered the reconstruction of Jerusalem, and the control of the project by the golah community, to be a direct threat to the authority of the imperial king. But this negativity toward being scorned, as portrayed by the text, is strategic on the part of the author in that it implies that external communities, represented by Sanballat, viewed the golah vision of restoration as a reality or a very possible reality. And that, to restate, would have meant that restoration was occurring in an obvious manner. Yet the dogged emphasis upon enforcing group boundaries and distinguishing between the sacred and the profane in Ezra-Nehemiah continues to hound the text; it suggests that the attitudes and behaviors so essential to restoration were not the norm. Moreover, that Ezra needed to read the law to the people and that the levites needed to teach it suggests that the immigrating community needed to learn the proper attitudes and behaviors upon their arrival in Yehud. To be sure, ritualization in Ezra-Nehemiah does appeal to a shared tradition between the golah community and the am ha’aretz. In fact, it is this appeal that gives the ritualistic activities and attitudes of the community more plausible credence.25 We do not have a historical circumstance in which the golah community was the only community in Yehud who knew and worshipped Yahweh. Yahweh would likely have been known well enough in the land. What one has is an appropriation of the deity for uniquely communalistic purposes, namely, centralizing upon a particular community the right to rule over the land.26 That desire, which motivated the attitudes and behaviors that framed the collective identity of the community, is fundamental to the biblical concept of restoration. Moreover, Ezra-Nehemiah’s emphasis upon divine benevolence is less for any strict theological purpose but reflective of what the author envisions as the new social-political status quo. The text’s emphasis upon wall, temple, and city in and of Jerusalem, taken together with its lack of emphasis upon the ethnos or neighboring cities, makes an unmistakable statement regarding the traditional seat of political


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and religious powers: the restoration of the city and its physical accouterments parallels the return and restoration of “Israel”–a concept that took on theological and artificially ethnic meanings27–in the form of the golah community, a limited and exclusive people whose identity was based on its sole access to Yahweh, which Ezra-Nehemiah argued was the gateway to control over the land.28

In a historical sense, the society envisioned by Ezra-Nehemiah was not a reality, nor would it become one until possibly much later on in history. What that makes us question, however, is not whether or not to accept Ezra-Nehemiah as a historical or cultural artifact. It asks us to question the author’s intent, which in the case of Ezra-Nehemiah is prescriptive rather than descriptive. In other words, Ezra-Nehemiah reveals utopian aspirations for a reality in which the social-political normative and status quo supported the centrality of the community. If fully representative of the community itself, Ezra-Nehemiah reveals anxieties of a community and a plan for alleviating those anxieties. In a pluralistic context, as was the case for Yehud,29 the centrality of a single community would have depended upon a relatively secure hold over material power. As an immigrating community, the golah did not have that, which was one reason, presumably, why individual members were intermarrying into landed families (again, cf. Ezra 10:11-15).30 What Ezra-Nehemiah feared was the loss of the social-political forces that were productive of golah identity, which would result in a type of ideological death, or dissolution of the group–a threat that heightened the anxiety of the author. The utopian and prescriptive intent of the author included ritualizing behaviors and attitudes that would preserve the basis and meaning of the golah collective identity as the “remnant” upon whom the favor of Yahweh was shown.

Ezra-Nehemiah for the Modern ContextWhat is the relevance of this analysis for the modern reader? When read from a social-scientific vantage point, Ezra-Nehemiah provides us with two primary examples, a group invoking religious ritual and ideology as a survival mechanism (an example that Jewry nearly perfected during the Diaspora) and an example of the limits and dangers of exclusion. The tyrannical actions of Nehemiah (cf. Neh 13:25), for example, provide no possibility for reconciliation or for mutual understanding and benefit (one need not look far into the pages of Judeo-Christian history to see examples in this regard). But biblical interpretation does not need to end there. For the Christian reader, “loving one’s neighbor as oneself” (Matt 22:39; Mark 12:31) certainly expects concern for the wellbeing of others. What our reading of Ezra-Nehemiah has shown us is the biblical text’s human dimension. This text portrays a community, complete with human, and even selfish, desires for advancement, stability, power, etc., trying to preserve itself in the face of uncertainty. And in light of that, the Synoptic Gospels’ call to love others, despite our differences and conflicts, or because of them, rather, becomes all the more poignant. That we see a form of religion that will continue to be historically and socially relevant for many people today develop out of the troublesome context of Yehud may be best described as impressive.


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Jeremiah W. Cataldo is Assistant Professor of History in the Honors College at

Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan.

Notes1. For an introduction to this larger discussion, cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Judaism,

the First Phase: The Place of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Origins of Judaism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2009), 87-90; Wilhelm Rudolph, Esra Und Nehemia Samt 3. Esra (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1949), xxiv-xxv. See also Lisbeth S. Fried, “Ezra’s Use of Documents in the Context of Hellenistic Rules of Rhetoric,” in New Perspectives on Ezra-Nehemiah:

History and Historiography, Text, Literature, and Interpretation, ed. Kalimi, Isaac (Winina Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 15-16; Mario Liverani, Israel’s

History and the History of Israel (London ; Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2005), 363; James C. VanderKam, From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests After the Exile (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 85-99.

2. The appointment of Gedaliah (2 Kgs 25:22), for example, indicates the intent of the Babylonians to establish a governmental arm to govern people in the province. For a sampling of the scholarly discussion of this issue, see Hans M. Barstad, “After the ‘Myth of the Empty Land’: Major Challenges in the Study of Neo-Babylonian Judah,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian

Period, ed. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisen-brauns, 2003); Bob Becking, “‘We All Returned as One!’: Critical Notes on the Myth of the Mass Return,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, ed. Lipschits, Oded, and Manfred Oeming (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 7; Robert P. Carroll, “Exile! What Exile? Deportation and the Discourse of Diaspora,” in Leading Captivity Captive: ‘the Exile’ as History and Ideol-

ogy, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998); Richard J. Coggins, “The Exile: History and Ideology,” in The Expository Times, ed. Cyril S. Rodd (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999); Philip R. Davies, “Exile! What Exile? Whose Exile?,” in Leading Captivity Captive: ‘the Exile’ as History and

Ideology, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998); B. Oded, “Where is the ‘Myth of the Empty Land’ to be Found? History Versus Myth,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, ed. Oded Lip-schits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003).

3. The ways in which identity can be shaped by systems of exchange was clearly shown by Claude Lévi-Strauss (throughout Structural Anthropology. [New York: Basic Books, 1963]).

4. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Re-

ligion (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 29.5. Daniel Smith follows S. Mowinckel’s conclusion that the bet abot structure

that characterizes the Golah List is not a continuation of the pre-exilic mispa-

hot but a fictionalized family unit (cf. “The Politics of Ezra: Sociological In-


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dicators of Postexilic Judaean Society,” in Second Temple Studies, 1: Persian

Period, ed. Philip R. Davies [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991], 82).6. C. Bell describes that in ritual behaviors agents define the environment while

understanding themselves to be reacting to or responding the very same environment (Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions [New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 2009], 81-82). In the ritualization of the Passover, the golah community is both defining the environment of Yehud as a space dedicated to Yahweh and defining itself as though Yehud was objectively the territory of Yahweh, who had chosen the community to be the land’s proper inhabitants.

7. I am drawing from Bell’s discussion of the rites of exchange, which can be found in ibid., 108-16.

8. I make this case in the following works Jeremiah W. Cataldo, Breaking Mono-

theism: Yehud and the Material Formation of Monotheistic Identity (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 113-48; idem, A Theocratic Yehud? Issues of Government

in Yehud (London: T & T Clark, 2009), 170-93.9. This definition is consistent with even a theological understanding. C. Vogt

(“Fostering a Catholic Commitment to the Common Good: An Approach Rooted in Virtue Ethics,” 68, no. 2 [2007], 396-97), for example, identifies “common good” as beginning with the community and not the individual. Con-sequently, the good of the individual is inseparable from the good of the com-munity of which she is a part.

10. For further reference regarding the productive role that anxieties play in identity formation see M. Klein, who describes the role that anxieties over death play in the formation of identity in Envy and Gratitude, and Other

Works, 1946-1963 (New York: Vintage Digital, 2011). While her theory fo-cuses primarily upon the individual, the productive forces and their responses that act upon the individual are consistent with those that act upon collectives, making her theory suitable for social psychology.

11. Émile Durkheim, “Individualism and the Intellectuals,” in Durkheim on Reli-

gion, ed. Pickering, W. S. F. (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1994), 64.12. Cf. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizo-

phrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 139-40.13. Note also that Ezra 1-6 calculates a seventy-year interval between the

destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem and the completion of the second (cf. Peter R. Ackroyd, “Studies in the Book of Haggai,” Journal of Jewish

Studies 2 [1951], 173; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah [Philadelphia: For-tress Press, 1988], 130; Diana Edelman, The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple:

Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem [London: Equinox Publishing Limited, 2005], 168; Hugh G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah [Waco, TX: Word Books Publisher, 1985], 84).

14. See Smith, “Politics of Ezra,” passim.15. Cf. Sara Japhet, “Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel Against the Background of the

Historical and Religious Tendencies of Ezra-Nehemiah: Part 2,” in From the


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Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 65-66.

16. See also J. Wellhausen’s discussion of the larger social-political issues of this selection in Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 33.

17. Bell, Ritual, 51.18. Regarding performance as an ordering of experience to solve social problems,

cf. ibid., 63-64.19. Ibid., 81.20. Ibid., 159.21. These qualities are noted by Bell to be essential to the qualities of performance

in terms of rituals (see ibid., 160).22. I am drawing from Bell, who writes, “Since the real world is rarely experi-

enced as a coherently ordered totality, the microcosm constructed on stage pur-ports to provide the experience of a mock-totality, an interpretative appropria-tion of some greater if elusive totality” (ibid.).

23. I am drawing in part from Klein’s description of the relationship between anxi-ety and the death instinct (cf. Envy and Gratitude, 4).

24. Gösta W. Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 863.

25. In a more general sense, note Bell, who writes, “Most rituals appeal to tradition or custom in some way, and many are concerned to repeat historical precedents very closely. A ritual that evokes no connection with any tradition is apt to be found anomalous, inauthentic, or unsatisfying by most people. Thus, tradition-alism is an important dimension of what we tend to mean and identify as ritual, while activities that are not explicitly called ‘rituals’ may seem ritual-like if they invoke forms of traditionalism” (Ritual, 145).

26. R. Carroll (cf. “Textual Strategies and Ideology in the Second Temple Period,” in Second Temple Studies, 1: Persian Period, ed. Philip R. Davies [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991], 115) finds in the Persian-period portions of Jeremiah ideological justification for land acquisition by those who could claim association with the Babylonian Jews.

27. Cf. Mary J. W. Leith, “Israel Among the Nations: The Persian Period,” in The

Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. Coogan, Michael D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 367-68.

28. The emphasis within the golah community upon the exclusivity of the com-munity in relation to the people already in the land paralleled the emergence of exclusive, or strict monotheism in Yehud (cf. Cataldo, Breaking Monotheism, passim; Norman K. Gottwald, “Rethinking the Origins of Ancient Israel,” in ‘Imagining’ Biblical Worlds: Studies in Spatial, Social and Historical Con-

structs in Honor of James W. Flanagan, ed. David M. Gunn and Paula M. Mc-Nutt (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 195).

29. Cf. Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine, 822-23.


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30. For further discussion on the issues surrounding intermarriage in Yehud, see for example, Mary Douglas, “Responding to Ezra: The Priests and the Foreign Wives,” Biblical Interpretation 10 (2002); Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, Ezra-

Nehemiah (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 124; Lisbeth S. Fried, The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 211; Gary N. Knoppers, “Intermarriage, Social Complexity, and Ethnic Diversity in the Genealogy of Judah,” Journal

of Biblical Literature 120 (2001); VanderKam, From Joshua to Caiaphas, 53-54.

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Embracing Nehemiah: Restoration as a Performance of Social Cohesion

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