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Nehemiah | |
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| Prophet and Leader of the Israelites | |
| Honored in | Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church |
| Feast | 13 July (Catholic) Sunday of the Holy Forefathers (Orthodox)[1] |
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Nehemiah (/ˌniːəˈmaɪə/; Hebrew: נְחֶמְיָה Nəḥemyā, "Yah comforts")[2] is the central figure of the Book of Nehemiah, which describes his work in rebuilding Jerusalem during the Second Temple period. He is portrayed as governor of Persian Judea.
The historicity of Nehemiah, his mission, and the Nehemiah Memoir have recently become very controversial in academic scholarship, with maximalists viewing it as a historical account and minimalists doubting whether Nehemiah existed.[3] Nehemiah is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, where his feast day is July 13, the same as his contemporary, Ezra. He is also considered a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is commemorated on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers
- ^ "Prophet Nehemiah".
- ^ Gesenius, Friedrich Wilhelm (1846). Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon. Baker Book House; 7th edition, 1979. p. 544. ISBN 0801037360. Archived from the original on 1 December 2018. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
- ^ Frevel, Christian (2023). History of Ancient Israel. SBL Press. p. 262. ISBN 9781628375145.
Since there are no extrabiblical testimonies for Nehemiah's person or work, one is initially dependent on the biblical data as a source…There is no clarity regarding the background, the concrete form, or the exact dating of Nehemiah's mission. For a long time the history of Nehemiah was reconstructed based on the assumption that Neh *1-7; *11-13 comprised an authentic so-called Nehemiah Memoir dating from the second half of the fifth century BCE. More recently, the historicity, background, and intention of these texts have become highly controversial. The maximalist position evaluates the details of the conflicts, Nehemiah's mission, and the actions initiated by him to be, as far as possible, historical, which then is authentically witnessed by Nehemiah's first-person report (e.g., Rainer Kessler, Titus Reinmuth, Ralf Rothenbusch). The minimalist position, on the other hand, doubts even the historicity of the person of Nehemiah. It does not see the Nehemiah Memoir as an authentic document but as a fictional account of later writers with theological intentions, who stylized Nehemiah as the model political leader. The Nehemiah Memoir is thus understood, as far as possible, to be an archetypal depiction without historical value (e.g., Joachim Becker, Erhard S. Gerstenberger).