06_Biblica_AN_Leuchter_269_279 15/07/14 12:22 Pagina 271 271 INTER-LEVITICAL POLEMICS 271 Deuteronomy. The great hostility preserved in Ezra-Nehemiah toward the homeland population (a feature that permeates every redactional stratum of the work) 10 would certainly have been directed to the Levites of the homeland as well. Thus when Nehemiah rallies “the Levites” to his gu- bernatorial cause, this most likely did not include Levites connected to groups that the gola returnees rebuffed and rejected. This fracturing of Levites into separate camps must have been a point of special contention and debate. Though the image of a united Levite front in Ezra-Nehemiah may be rhetorically motivated, it presupposes some semblance of an earlier reality when Levites in late monarchic Judah had galvanized in different ways. From the late 8th century BCE onward, Levite clans had developed a sense of tribal kinship, had adopted Moses as a patron saint, and shared ownership of ancient liturgical traditions de- riving from the pre-state period 11. Throughout the 7th century, most had also endured socio-economic disadvantage and marginal or liminal social standing in the wake of Hezekiah’s program of urbanization (705-701) and the subsequent devastation of Sennacherib’s campaign (701) 12. By the end of the monarchic period, the early edition(s) of Deuteronomy be- came symbolic of the Levites’ vital role in mediating between YHWH and Israel, and certainly bound Levites together in a sort of solidarity as the monarchic infrastructure began to crumble 13. Levitical solidarity must have been tested, however, when the condi- tions of exile fractured their ranks. Those in exile adjusted their shared traditions in response to their own experiences (leading to expanded ver- sions of the books of Deuteronomy and Jeremiah later utilized in the Ne- hemiah Memoir, for instance) to which homeland Levites were not privy during the period of Persian restoration, and to which these homeland Levites could not turn as icons of their own identity 14. For those Levites 10 JANZEN, “The Cries of Jerusalem”. 11 COOK, Social Roots, 262-266. Cook argues that the Levites were a tribe dating to the pre-state period. Other scholars have provided evidence to the contrary, but both P and Deuteronomy identify them with tribal language. Cook’s observation about the Levite promotion of pre-state traditions is therefore still applicable, though Levite tribalization may be the result of their own evolving social function and organization over a long period of time. 12 N. NA’AMAN, “Sojourners and Levites in the Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh Century B.C.E.”, ZABR 14 (2008) 237-279, here 274-279, though some of NA’AMAN’s skepticism regarding northern Levites residing in Judah will be challenged below. 13 See above re: the Levitical contribution to the construction of Deuteronomy. 14 See especially M. LEUCHTER, The Polemics of Exile in Jeremiah 26–45 (New York – Cambridge 2008) 161-176, for the Shaphanide development of tradition in an exilic context.