06_Biblica_AN_Leuchter_269_279 15/07/14 12:22 Pagina 273 273 INTER-LEVITICAL POLEMICS 273 purpose of Nehemiah 8–10 by making this older liturgical work its cen- terpiece. That this centerpiece is placed in the mouth of Levites is sug- gestive of the sacerdotal typology that initially composed it and which may well have preserved it before its incorporation into Nehemiah 8–10. Of particular interest is the northern/Israelian linguistic profile of the prayer as noted by Rendsburg in a learned study that appeared in this jour- nal in 1991 19. From Rendsburg’s perspective, the linguistic features reveal that at least some northern populations retained a sense of cultural and religious contiguity during and after several crises involving foreign em- pires, with Nehemiah 9 serving as a parade example 20. Tiemeyer has more recently offered a different proposal, namely, that northerners mingling with Judahites at the Mizpah administrative center which endured throughout the period of the exile provides the basis for the northern, Is- raelian linguistic features that Rendsburg noted 21. None of these proposals demands that the prayer be categorized as a product of Levites, but two additional factors warrant attention. First, most scholars agree that the Levites in late-monarchic Judah are in large part refugees from the fallen northern kingdom 22 and were thus already given to northern/Israelian forms of dialect in their own traditional litur- gies. The retention of these linguistic modalities among Levites seems to have been quite durable, as the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 (a northern composition ultimately preserved in a Judahite literary work) demonstrates 23. This is reinforced by the second consideration, and that is the evidence marshalled by Lipschits that the majority of the homeland population fled from the southern and central Judahite hills to the northern frontier of Judah and the region of Benjamin, i.e., a territory where the Israelian linguistic forms were part of native speech 24. Levites already pre- serving northern/Israelian dialects would have been able to engage more freely in the composition of traditions bearing this linguistic trait when 19 G.A. RENDSBURG, “The Northern Origin of Nehemiah 9”, Bib 72 (1991) 348-366. 20 RENDSBURG, “Northern Origins”, 365-366. 21 TIEMEYER, “Abraham”, 63. 22 LEUCHTER, Polemics of Exile, 105-107, O. LIPSCHITS, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem (Winona Lake, IN 2005) 84-85; H.P. NASUTI, Tradition History and the Psalms of Asaph (SBLD 88; Atlanta, GA 1988) 194; COOK, Social Roots, 65-66. For epigraphic evidence, see W.M. SCHNIEDEWIND – G.A. RENDSBURG, “The Siloam Tunnel Inscription: Historical and Linguistic Perspectives”, IEJ 60 (2010) 188-203. 23 On the northern/Israelian features of Deuteronomy 32, see G.A. RENDSBURG, Linguistic Evidence for the Northern Origin of Selected Psalms (SBLM 43; Atlanta, GA 1990) 64-65, 76-77, 99-100. 24 LIPSCHITS, The Fall And Rise of Jerusalem, 258-271.