Courtier and the Governor

The Nehemiah Memoir, the narrative of the royal cup bearer sent to rebuild Jerusalem, is central to Ezra-Nehemiah's account of Persian Judah. Yet its emphasis on one individual's efforts makes it a text that ill fits the book's story of a communal restoration. Sean Burt analyzes the nature of this curious text through the lens of genre criticism and identifies the impact of its use of genres on its early reception in Ezra-Nehemiah. Drawing upon contemporary theorist of literary genre, within the field of Biblical studies and beyond, he builds an understanding of genre capable of addressing both its flexibility and its necessarily historical horizon.