The Levitical Authorship of Ezra-Nehemiah

Download or read book The Levitical Authorship of Ezra-Nehemiah written by Kyung-Jin Min and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of Ezra-Nehemiah has been revolutionized in recent years by a growing rejection of the long-established belief that it was composed as part of the Chronicler's work. That shift in scholarly paradigms has re-opened many questions of origin and purpose, and this thesis attempts to establish an answer to the most important of these: the question of authorship. Here, Kyungjin Min argues that Ezra-Nehemiah most likely originated in a Levitical group that received Persian backing during the late-fifth century BCE and that valued the ideologies of decentralization of power, unity and cooperation among social groups, and dissatisfaction with the religious status quo.