Enochic Judaism — a Judaism without the Torah and the Temple?Nehemiah 8-10: A Master Narrative
The whole narrative starts with the reading of the Torah and the celebration
of Sukkoth (7:72b-8:i8). Then comes the prayer where the foundational
events in history are recorded (9:1-31): creation, Abraham, exodus, Sinai, wil
derness wandering, conquest, life in the land ending in a final disaster. After
the revelation of the law at Sinai, the apostasy of the people starts and in
creases, especially after the conquest. The prayer ends in a petition for mercy
and a confession (9:32-37).^5 The narrative continues in Neh 10 by telling how
the people join an agreement to follow the Torah, which includes renounce
ment of mixed marriages, keeping the Sabbath regulations, and obligations
toward the temple.
The different parts of the unit have different origins and dates.^6 The
whole composition is generally held to be one of the youngest in the He
brew Bible; both Pakkala and Blenkinsopp see it as an insertion after the
Chronicler's redaction of Ezra/Nehemiah.^7 We are thus moved at least to
the beginning of the Hellenistic period. The date and origin of the prayer in
9:5ff. have been intensively debated.^8 After a long discussion Boda dates the
prayer to the period that preceded Ezra and Nehemiah, i.e., in the very early
postexilic period.^9 An early postexilic date seems unlikely, however, because
the prayer uses both the Priestly source to the Pentateuch and the
Deuteronomistic Work of History — for instance, it knows the literary unit
Exod 19-20.
We will first concentrate on the prayer. Already von Rad in 1971 charac
terized the genre of Neh 9 as Gerichtsdoxologie, together with especially Ezra
9:6-15 and Dan 9. The history of the community was recalled under the per
spective of disobedience to the Torah and contrasted to the patience and for
giveness of God.^10 Boda follows von Rad and characterizes the prayer as a
- For the structure, cf. H. G. M. Williamson, "Structure and Historiography in Nehe
miah 9," in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes,
1985), 117-31 (here i2off). - Cf. J. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, OTL (Philadelphia: SCM, 1989), 284ff, 30iff.,
3ioff. - J. Pakkala, Ezra the Scribe: The Development of Ezra 7-10 and Nehemiah 8, BZAW
347 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 180-211; Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, 54f. - Cf. the discussion in M. J. Boda, Praying the Tradition: The Origin and Use of Tradi
tion in Nehemiah 9, BZAW 277 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999), 11-16. - Boda, Praying the Tradition, 189-97.
- G. von Rad, "Gerichtsdoxologie," in Gesammelte Studien zum alten Testament II
(Munich: Kaiser, 1973), 245-54.