What Ezra & Nehemiah tell us about Inclusion. Hebrew Bible scholar Dr. Roger Nam

I am delighted to welcome Dr. Roger Nam to the podcast! Dr. Nam is a Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. He was the Dean of Portland Seminary while I was getting my MDiv there. While Dean there, Roger reached out to his fellow Presbyterian students. I felt an immediate connection with Roger because we both worked in the technology industries, coming to ministry and biblical students after a career on the outside. Roger is an expert on Ezra and Nehemiah, books that Presbyterians largely ignore. His interest in the restoration period under Persian rule intrigues me. His fascinating and highly relevant 2024 book The Theology of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah shows why we should pay more attention to this period. 

Welcome Roger! Thank you for coming on the podcast!

Potential Questions:

1. Can you tell us a bit about your history and what brought you into biblical studies?
2. The preface to your book touches on the "in-betweenness" of being a Korean American and the challenges your return to Korean presented for you and your kids. Can you describe how this enriched your study of Ezra-Nehemiah?
3. Ezra and Nehemiah are often used by evangelicals for an idealized triumphalist narrative, which is why I suppose Presbyterians have avoided this period. Your work shows a much more complicated narrative. Was this your main purpose for you focus on these books? 
4. I appreciated the understanding and sensitivity in your book about the resistance of the left behind Judahites response to the returning exiles portrayed in Ezra. How should we view the harshness of the exiles response? In what ways can we draw comparisons to modern Israel-Palestine? What should we avoid in drawing these comparisons?
5. I loved the deep dive into complications of funding and taxation stalling the reconstruction of the temple. To what extent was this about the politics of Cyrus vs. Artaxerxes vs. Darius? What role did opposition of the surrounding communities play?
6. It seems that building of the wall in Nehemiah was perceived as a threat to the Persians. What role did propaganda in preventing reconstruction? 
7. How do these complications help us resist idealization of the narrative? I try hard to make the Bible real for people. Was this one of your purposes in writing the book? 
8. Tensions between diaspora and homeland residents. Describe how the Jewish diaspora formed. What roles did the diaspora affect the narrative in later generations. Do we get any clues from DSS or differences between the Septuagint and masoretic texts?
9.  When did the focus on Jerusalem come? Did the second temple period heighten the cultic centrality of Jerusalem? I’m always puzzled how Bethel, Shechem and the holy mountain fell out of favor. 
10. Language and code switching in Nehemiah 
11. Social changes from the patriarchal and tribal families to the Persians. Extended to nuclear. Polygamy? Interest in Persians to control their vassals. Similar to the Romans? Colonialism
12. Changed definition of god’s presence. Torah becomes presence. Beginning of Jewish eschatology?
13. Mixed marriage crisis and repentance of ancestral sins. 
14. The character of God in Ezra–Nehemiah does not fit well with the largely abandoned presentations of Old Testament theology from the twentieth century. Quote All three of these landmark Old Testament theologies paid scant attention to Ezra–Nehemiah since divine absence did not fit well within such grand organizing schemes. These theologies also neglected much of the wisdom literature and the Bible’s liturgical texts. 
15. God seems more modern in Ezra Nehemiah. Distant and people have more agency. 
Cyrus as agent of Gods will vs Nebuchadnezzar. EzraNehemiah vs 2nd and 3rd Isaiah