Embedded Written Documents as Colonial Mimicry in Ezra-Nehemiah

Abstract

The unity of the final form of Ezra-Nehemiah has long been the consensus position among scholars in the field. This article challenges that consensus by comparing and contrasting the use of embedded written documents in Ezra 7 and Nehemiah 10 through the theoretical lens of colonial mimicry. I argue that the Artaxerxes rescript in Ezra 7 strategically mimics imperial discourse by assuming that propagandistic Persian rhetoric to Babylon and Egypt should also naturally apply to Yehud despite its peripheral status. By contrast, Nehemiah 10 invokes indigenous Judean writing to challenge the legitimacy of imperial domination. The sharply differing political programs articulated by these two texts, combined with literary and manuscript evidence from antiquity, suggests that the canonical book of Ezra-Nehemiah is an outlier among ancient Judean texts in juxtaposing the figures of Ezra and Nehemiah.