Neuanfang und Kontinuität in Jerusalem

In this monograph, Raik Heckl deals with the hermeneutic strategies presented in the composition of the book of Ezra-Nehemiah. These shed light on the political and religious discourses of its time of origin, thus making it possible to understand why the book presents a re-contextualization of older texts. The book of Ezra-Nehemiah itself is a late postexilic ideological manifesto which presents the return from the Babylonian exile, the Jerusalem Temple and the Jerusalem interpretation of the Torah as the only foundations of postexilic Israel. Its background was the conflict with the community of the Samarians. The new beginning is founded on an alleged unbroken continuity of the election of Jerusalem and the related interpretation of the Torah. It is directed against the temple on Mt. Garizim and its use of the Torah.