Rebuilding Identity

Winner of the 2008 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise!

This monograph presents a fresh and detailed treatment of the problems posed by the Nehemiah-Memoir. Starting from the pre-critical interpretations of Ezra-Neh, the study demonstrates that the use of the first-person does not suffice as a criterion for distinguishing between the verba Neemiae and the additions of later authors. The earliest edition of the Memoir is confined to a building report, which was expanded as early generations of readers developed the implications of Nehemiah's accomplishments for the consolidation and centralization of Judah. The expansions occasioned in turn the composition of the history of the "Restoration" in Ezra-Neh.

Abridged edition of a Dr. theol. dissertation completed at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen, 2003. Jacob L. Wright is now lecturer at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany.

"Die Arbeit besticht durch gute Beobachtungen, eine klare Argumentation und ein überzeugendes Gesamtbild, das zudem gewichtige Konsequenzen für die frühe ›Second Temple Period‹ hat."
Uwe Becker in: ZAW 1/2006

"Wright's Rebuilding Identity promises a great deal and delivers even more. [...] Its scholarly sophistication is coupled with elegant formulation as Wright illustrates how the story of Nehemiah has grown into the drama of the court-Jew who discovers his own identity in a foreign land and then moves to redirect the identity and destiny of his people."

Tamara Cohn Eskenazi in JBL 124/4 (2005)