Fitzpatrick-McKinley on indigenous elites

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

Indigenous Elites in the Nehemiah Memoir

But setting aside the means through which Nehemiah sought to deal with opposition and to assert himself, the heart of the imperial mission seems to have been the establishment of a birta (citadel) in Jerusalem which is likely to have been a response to problems in the region. These problems concerned the aggrandisement of indigenous elites who seem to have extended their rule beyond what the Persian government permitted.

See Also: Empire, Power and Indigenous Elites (Brill, 2015).

By Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley
Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies
Trinity College Dublin
May 2016