Unlocking the Book of Zechariah

Mark Leuchter

Hebrew Studies, Volume 59, 2018, pp. 393-409 (Review)

Published by National Association of Professors of Hebrew

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hbr.2018.0020

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/707119

Access provided by University of Winnipeg Library (11 Nov 2018 03:45 GMT)
Hebrew Studies 59 (2018): 393–409

UNLOCKING THE BOOK OF ZECHARIAH

Mark Leuchter
Temple University
mark.leuchter@temple.edu

A review of
The Book of Zechariah. By Mark J. Boda. NICOT. Pp. xxiii + 911. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. Cloth, $58.00.
and
Zechariah’s Vision Report and Its Earliest Interpreters: A Redaction-
Critical Study of Zechariah 1–8. By Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer. LHBOTS 626.
Pp. xiv + 278. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Cloth, $120.00.

The book of Zechariah occupies center stage on multiple fronts in the

study of the biblical prophets. It is at once a crucial resource for recon-
structing the social world of the Early Persian period and the reckoning
with Persian imperialism, a barometer for gauging the reception history of
monarchic-era Israelite literary traditions, and a forum for evaluating the
nexus between prophecy and the scribal craft.1 In this last sense, the book
of Zechariah plays triple-duty. The literary relationship between its major
and distinct component parts (Zechariah 1–8 and 9–14) has long received
scholarly attention, as has its uneasy relationship with the book of
Haggai.2 But the book of Zechariah also holds a special position in the
study of the Book of the Twelve (Hosea–Malachi), raising serious ques-
tions about the redaction-history of that work.3 Finally, the book of
Zechariah has factored significantly into the study of the origins of
apocalyptic thought and writing in ancient Judaism, with many scholars

1. See especially the discussion of Zechariah and Haggai as resources for historical reconstruc-
tion of this period by P. R. Bedford, Temple Restoration in Early Achaemenid Judah (JSJSup 65;
Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 32–36.
2. The history of scholarship is exhaustive. Full overviews and bibliography may be found in
the volumes by Tiemeyer and Boda that are the focus of the present study.
3. See R. Kessler, “The Twelve: Structure, Themes, and Contested Issues,” in The Oxford
Handbook of the Prophets (ed. C. Sharp; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 210–211, 213–
214, 217–218, 220–222.
Mark Leuchter

arguing for both its visions and ornate explications as a major catalyst in
the genre’s evolution.4
Of course, these issues barely scratch the surface of this over-
whelmingly complex literary work, and its classification and interpreta-
tion rests largely on a scholar’s critical presuppositions. The history of
critical scholarship throughout most of the twentieth century saw much
disagreement on the compositional character of Zechariah 9–14, but most
scholars agreed that it was a supplement of sorts to a coherent collection
of oracles in chapters 1–8 that emanate primarily from the historical
prophet Zechariah.5 Recent decades have seen scholarly investigations
that challenge this, promoting models whereby both Zechariah 1–8 and
the supplemental material in chapters 9–14 grew into their current form
over many centuries through successive, brief scribal additions and redac-
tional recasting.6 Such models have, consequently, raised questions about
the nature of prophecy in the Persian period, the role of textuality and
literacy, and even the degree to which these and related texts (i.e., Haggai,
Malachi) can factor into studies regarding the evolution of the Hebrew
language.7
Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer and Mark J. Boda both stand at the forefront of
research on the aforementioned issues attending the study of the book of
Zechariah, with each scholar standing behind a major work that moves the
needle forward in profoundly important ways. Tiemeyer’s monograph
focuses primarily on the material in Zechariah 1–8 and builds on an earlier
study regarding the vision texts within those chapters.8 Boda, by contrast,
has produced a commentary that treats the entirety of the book of

4. P. D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), pp. 27, 186–
187, 230; S. L. Cook, The Apocalyptic Literature (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), pp. 99–104; L. L.
Grabbe, Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Belief and Practice from the Exile to Yavneh
(London: Routledge), p. 17.
5. See the succinct comments by R. Kessler, “The Twelve,” p. 220; J. D. Nogalski, Redactional
Processes in the Book of the Twelve (BZAW 218; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993), pp. 188–189.
6. J. Wöhrle, Der Abschluss des Zwölfprophetenbuches: Buchübergreifende Redaktionzpro-
zesse in den späten Sammlungen (BZAW 389; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 156–166; M. Hallaschka,
Haggai und Sacharja 1–8: Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (BZAW 411; Berlin: de
Gruyter, 2011).
7. I will address this issue further below, but briefly: the dating of substantial passages in
Haggai and Zechariah 1–8 to the late Persian period or later clashes with studies that identify the
linguistic character of those passages as occupying a sort of transitional space between Classical
Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew.
8. L.-S. Tiemeyer, Zechariah’s Vision Report and Its Earliest Interpreters: A Redaction-
Critical Study of Zechariah 1–8 (LHBOTS 626; London: T & T Clark, 2016). The earlier companion
work was published by Tiemeyer as Zechariah and His Visions: An Exegetical Study of Zechariah’s
Vision Report (LHBOTS 605; London: T & T Clark, 2015).

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Zechariah.9 As a result, Boda’s work is much lengthier than Tiemeyer’s

(911 pages versus 256 pages), but both works are extremely detailed,
delving into their respective sets of subject matter with great rigor and
care, and bringing equal degrees of skilled analysis and productive discus-
sion. In what follows, I will address what I regard as the more prominent
related issues that arise from each scholar’s treatment of the material, and
attempt to elucidate the broader implications of their respective analyses
as they relate to the study of biblical prophecy and textuality in the Persian
period.
Though Tiemeyer and Boda differ in how they approach the material
they study, their respective works have a number of notable points of con-
tact. Both Tiemeyer and Boda are invested in discussions of the Book of
the Twelve and the long history of its redactional growth, and both
scholars recognize the crucial role that Zechariah 1–8 plays within it. Both
scholars also recognize that the final form of Zechariah is certainly the
result of a long process of transmission and redaction. However, both
scholars view much of Zechariah 1–8 as emerging from the writing of the
prophet Zechariah himself with a limited set of secondary scribal de-
velopments accounting for additional accretions (in Boda’s case, a more
protracted timespan for the development of Zechariah 9–14 is also pro-
posed). This goes against the grain of much recent scholarship that posits
much greater textual input from these successive redactors, with the ear-
liest stages of the Zechariah tradition providing only a very limited
amount of original textual product.
In clearing space in a different critical direction, Tiemeyer and Boda
do not ignore these issues or dismiss the work of those who hold opposing
views. Indeed, a tremendous amout of attention is devoted to these
scholarly views and the critical methods used to support them. But
Tiemeyer and Boda manage to provide compelling arguments in the other
direction through clearly laying out the explanatory potency of the
methods they adopt in their respective examinations. In each case, what
emerges is a recognition that the book of Zechariah is a learned, inter-
textual collection, a parade example of schriftgelehrte Prophetie (as they
both note). But the production of this learned, scholarly work of prophetic
literature is, for both scholars, primarily traceable to distinct social, his-
torical, and cultic settings in the first half of the Persian period. This de-
mands a different concept of writing and text, one that does not necessarily

9. M. J. Boda, The Book of Zechariah (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016).

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Mark Leuchter

react to textual complexities by dividing a work into multiple and succes-

sive redactional layers to explain its complicated literary structure.
No serious critical scholar will deny the presence of heavy redaction
throughout the prophetic corpus, but prophetic compositions are not
strictly assortments of brief lemmas or fragments. Rather, they are works
that reflect human cognition of social and political realities that often defy
ideological or rhetorical consistency. This does not diminish the value of
careful attention to textual features that might signal multiple scribal con-
tributions over time, but it does indicate that such a model is not always
the best way to account for a text’s self-presentation. Additional factors
should be brought to bear on any evaluation of a biblical text, including
the way that texts function as sites of cultural memory. 10 Insofar as
Zechariah 1–8 is concerned, these chapters construct a memory of a time,
a social-political circumstance, and an individual’s response to these con-
ditions. That memory includes the picture of a prophet whose oracles re-
treat into much older priestly and prophetic traditions—an intertextual
feature of Zechariah 1–8 that both Tiemeyer and Boda highlight—in the
face of an indomitable foreign imperialism. How would a prophet such as
Zechariah have engaged in the enterprise of prophecy? How would tradi-
tional Israelite/Judahite prophetic experiences translate into this new
environment?
The memory of a prophet having visions and generating oracles in con-
versation with earlier Israelite literary sources may not be historically ac-
curate in any given case, but most researchers would agree that it is
historically authentic. Authentic, too, is the concept of such a prophet at-
tempting to use his own oracles and earlier literary sources to make sense
of the imperial universe surrounding and permeating Persian Yehud. With
this in mind, let us first turn our attention to Tiemeyer’s study, which pro-
poses that most of Zechariah 1–8 can be bifurcated into two primary
layers: the night visions and subsequent oracles that attempt to explain and
discern revelatory meaning through them (p. 2). Tiemeyer exhibits robust
engagement with contemporary research on Zechariah 1–8, much of
which involves the model that posits detailed and minute accretions over

10. For survey discussions on memory in the biblical record, see H. G. M. Williamson,
“History and Memory in the Prophets,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Prophets (ed. C. Sharp; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 132–145; D. V. Edelman, “Introduction,” in Remembering Biblical
Figures in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods (ed. D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. xi–xxiv; I. D. Wilson, Kingship and Memory in Ancient Judah
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 22–40.

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 Review Essay

many generations of scribal activity (pp. 13–26). Tiemeyer’s critique of

this perspective is compelling insofar as this approach can create more
problems than it purports to solve. The over-reliance on redaction-critical
explanations for literary features can assume compositional distinctions
that are unnecessary or reduce source material to inconsequential syntac-
tical constructs lacking context or purpose (good examples of her critique
can be found on pp. 139 and 162). Tiemeyer’s approach more tenably ac-
counts for how redaction contributes to the building of these texts, as she
takes seriously that redactors set about working on coherent units of pro-
phetic discourse rather than isolated statements that do not, on their own,
forge or contain ideologically productive material.
Tiemeyer’s argument finds support in research into literacy and text-
building elsewhere in the biblical record as well. Brief comments, glosses
and expansions are clear throughout the Pentateuchal sources and other
prophetic texts, but these are regularly found appended to textual units
drawn from well-developed oral discourses or originating wholesale on
the textual level in substantial form.11 One may look to Jeremiah 29, a
chapter whose sources are unapologetically displayed and which are syn-
tactically coherent within their own self-disclosed boundaries. The
various letters and replies in Jeremiah 29 may be fairly concise—the
prophet’s own original “letter to the exiles” introduced in Jer 29:4 is only
three verses long (vv. 5–7)—but it conveys a fully developed and clearly-
expressed concept. Jeremiah 29 is redactionally composite, but it begins
with coherent, self-contained sources and continues with the creation of
additional discourses that are not easily fragmented into brief glosses or
clauses.12
The genres of the letters in Jeremiah 29 and that of Zechariah’s vision
accounts are obviously different, but the analysis of the latter should be

11. See the similar discussion by J. Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the
Documentary Hypothesis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 59, applying a similar critique
to the formation of Pentateuchal traditions from brief written sources. Scribal convention in ancient
Israel does not support the tracing of original textual sources to brief, fragmentary comments but to
more substantial discourses. On the substantial origination of complex scribal discourses, see F. H.
Polak, “Style is More Than the Person: Sociolinguistics, Literary Culture, and the Distinction between
Written and Oral Narrative,” in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. I. Young;
JSOTSup 369; London: T & T Clark, 2003), pp. 41–43, 51–55.
12. On the composition of Jeremiah 29, see M. Dijkstra, “Prophecy by Letter: Jeremiah xxix
24–32,” VT 33 (1983): 319–321; A. Berlin, “Jeremiah 29:5–7: A Deuteronomic Allusion,” HAR 8
(1984): 3–11; K. A. D. Smelik, “Letters to the Exiles: Jeremiah 29 in Context,” SJOT 10 (1996): 282–
295. See also W. M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 156–157, for the secondary addition of Jer 29:16–
20 in the MT.

397
Mark Leuchter

conducted with the former firmly in mind in terms of conventions of text-

building in Jewish antiquity. We cannot overlook the difference in cir-
cumstances between Jeremiah 29 (redacted during the exile) and the com-
position of Zechariah’s vision reports, but an important verse in the
introduction to the vision reports (indeed, the introduction to the entire
book of Zechariah) carries considerable weight, that is, the opening canto
in Zech 1:1–6:
In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of YHWH came
to Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, the prophet, saying:
YHWH has been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say to them,
“thus says YHWH of hosts: Return to me, says YHWH of hosts, and I will
return to you, says YHWH of hosts. Be not as your fathers, to whom the
ִ ‫ְ ִב‬‫ ] ַה‬proclaimed, saying: thus says
former prophets [‫ ֹנִ ים‬‫יאים ָה ִרא‬
YHWH of hosts: Return now from your evil ways, and from your evil
doings; but they did not hear, nor attend to me, says YHWH. Your fathers,
where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? But my words and
my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not
overtake your fathers? so that they turned and said: ‘Like as YHWH of
hosts purposed to do to us, according to our ways, and according to our
doings, so has he dealt with us.’” (author’s translation based on the JPS)

This introductory passage is universally regarded as a composition that

post-dates the vision accounts, but it also functions as a gateway into them
and tells us much about how they were conceived even before they were
subjected to oracular analysis and elaboration. These verses situate the
visions in a Persian imperial context, but are overwhelmingly concerned
with the past, emphasizing the ancestors of previous generations, the past
actions of YHWH against them, and most importantly, the durable au-
thority of the prophets of those earlier generations who proclaimed the
imminence of those divine actions. The introduction in Zech 1:1–6 serves
many purposes, but among them is the intent to establish typological
parallels between Zechariah’s visions, their interpretations, and the words
of the former prophets that are still binding. In the context of the early
Persian period, the binding power of those words rested in their material
textuality. It is not simply the memory of earlier oracular performances
that these verses invoke but the physical manuscripts—scrolls that were
not only read but studied—wherein those oracles were preserved.13

13. On the increased importance of textuality during the early Persian period, see D. M. Carr,
The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),
pp. 204–207, 224. This is rooted, however, in exilic concepts of text and textuality as a more edifying

398
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Zech 1:1–6 implies strongly that for Zechariah, prophecy is now a tex-
tual matter rather than something located in living performances (“and the
prophets, do they live forever?”), and the visions that follow are part of a
prophetic phenomenon of which textuality and scribalism are genetic
components.14 The conceptual model that inheres in Zech 1:1–6 pre-
supposes that the vision accounts, like the extant collection of earlier pro-
phetic texts, are coherent textual sources (even if tertiary glosses and notes
accumulated through the course of their transmission). If this is the case,
then it is difficult to sustain scholarly arguments that break the vision ac-
counts down into smaller fragments that cohere only in their ultimate or
penultimate redactional contexts. Zech 1:1–6 points to the different redac-
tional layers or categories in the book as consistent with those earlier pro-
phetic conventions—inclusive of the visions.
Tiemeyer did not rely on such an analysis of Zech 1:1–6 in mounting
her own case for the vision accounts as drawn from a coherent textual
source; indeed she regards these verses as deriving from the redaction of
the Zechariah tradition into the Book of the Twelve (p. 252), and thus
assigns them to a much later redactor. There are reasons for parting ways
with this perspective to which I will return below. For the moment,
though, it will suffice to note that if Zech 1:1–6 does preserve some
authentic memories regarding the concept of earlier prophetic textual
sources as I have just suggested, then these verses corroborate Tiemeyer’s
own arguments regarding the textual cohesion of the vision report and its
place as the earliest compositional layer of Zechariah 1–8.
A related matter arises from this aforementioned scribal-textual bent.
Tiemeyer’s earlier monograph on Zechariah’s visions made a credible
case that the historical prophet did experience actual visions/dreams, and

source for religious identity; see M. Leuchter, “The Pen of Scribes: Writing, Textuality, and the Book
of Jeremiah,” in The Book of Jeremiah: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation (ed. J. R. Lundbom
et al.; VTSup 178; Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 3–23.
14. Scholars have long noted that the style of Hebrew used by Zechariah stands fairly close to
the Classical Hebrew of the late-monarchic and exilic prophets. See A. Hurvitz, “Historical Linguistics
and Hebrew Bible—The Formation and Emergence of Late Biblical Hebrew,” in Hebrew through the
Ages in Memory of Shoshanna Bahat (ed. M. Bar Asher; Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew
Language), p. 20; A. E. Hill, “The Book of Malachi: Its Place in Post-Exilic Chronology Linguistically
Considered” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1981), pp. 47–75. Different approaches to the
Classical Hebrew in Haggai and Zechariah 1–8 are addressed by I. Young, “Late Biblical Hebrew and
Hebrew Inscriptions,” in Biblical Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology (ed. I. Young;
JSOTSup 369; London: T & T Clark, 2003), pp. 276–317. The use of this linguistic style in this opening
canto alongside references to earlier prophetic texts creates the impression that the vision report should
be similarly regarded as a coherent textual source.

399
Mark Leuchter

that the vision reports are rooted in this authentic experience.15 There is
no reason to doubt that Zechariah shared in the well-attested phenomenon
of prophetic vision/dream experience and that the vision accounts are a
result of this. However, contemporary neurological research into dreams,
visions, and trance-state experiences draws distinctions between those
experiences (which are autonomic and unconsciously generated) and
lucid, cognitive processes that attempt to assign them to existing and
preconceived intellectual taxonomies.16 To remember a dream or vision,
and describe such a dream or vision, is by definition to interpret it and
impose perceptual and linguistic strictures upon it.
Just as one should distinguish between rituals and ritual texts, so too
should one distinguish between a vision and a vision account. Tiemeyer’s
investigation works within this paradigm by emphasizing that the oracles
throughout Zechariah 1–8 are interpretations of a literary document (the
vision report), not interpretations of the actual visions. But this is an im-
portant nuance because it clarifies that from the outset, the interpretive
process was an integral part of even the earliest layer of Zechariah 1–8,
that is, the remembering and literary description of these visions in the
composition of the vision report. Tiemeyer’s discussion is persuasive with
regard to the characteristic differences between the oracles and the vision
accounts, as the learned and intertextual character of the former contrasts
with the multivalence and ambiguity of the latter. Yet the latter is still a
textual source, produced and formalized according to standard criteria that
accompanied the creation or preservation/transmission of other ancient
texts by the late sixth century BCE. Thus even the earliest compositional
stratum of Zechariah 1–8 was a product of the norms of scribal culture
emerging from the exile and characterizing the early Persian period.
This last issue is important because it provides support to Tiemeyer’s
own observations regarding the frequency and nature of intertextual
references in the oracles versus the vision accounts. While the intertextual
connections between the oracles are dense and frequent, the intertextual
dynamics in the vision accounts are less frequent and oblique (pp. 3–4).
Yet the fact that they are there at all may constitute a relic of the social

15. L.-S.Tiemeyer, Zechariah and His Visions.

16. G. W. Domhoff and K. C. R. Fox, “Dreaming and the Default Network: A Review,
Synthesis, and Counterintuitive Research Proposal,” Consciousness and Cognition 33 (2015): 342–353;
Paul Allen et al., “The Hallucinating Brain: A Review of Structural and Functional Neuroimaging
Studies of Hallucinations,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 32.1 (2008): 175–191; Y. Nir and
G. Tononi, “Dreaming and the Brain: From Phenomenology to Neurophysiology,” Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 14.2 (2010): 88–100. I thank Dr. Ian Mutchnick for discussing these studies with me.

400
 Review Essay

setting and discursive conventions whereby the vision accounts were re-
garded as divine revelation and committed to textual form. The actual act
of textualization would consequently have taken place in a socio-cultic
setting where the tropes of extant liturgical traditions (prophetic or other-
wise) were preserved and rehearsed in some way. Tiemeyer suggests that
the vision report was composed before the commencement of the temple’s
rebuilding in 520 BCE (p. 251). Nevertheless, the production of the vision
report as a literary source should also be seen as emerging from a direct
antecedent situation where a variety of Hebrew texts traditions—
including earlier prophetic texts—were available and regularly discussed,
studied, or recited and consequently left their mark on the formation of
the vision report.
It is this attempt to set Zechariah’s visions in relation to earlier pro-
phetic literary sources that returns us to the matter of Tiemeyer’s position
on Zech 1:1–6. To reiterate, she argues that this unit entered the book only
as it was worked into the larger Book of the Twelve, and therefore at a
significant temporal distance to both the visions and the exegetical
oracles. Yet the redaction of the Book of the Twelve sought to establish a
sort of hermeneutical unity across these prophetic sources, creating a uni-
fied new prophetic message from disparate components.17 Though Zech
1:1–6 creates associations between older prophecy and the material in
Zechariah 1–8, it does so by recognizing that the earlier prophets ( ‫יאים‬ ִ ‫ְ ִב‬‫ַה‬
ָ are literarily distinct from the ensuing visions and oracles which
‫ ֹנִים‬‫)ה ִרא‬
are to serve as points of comparison. The tenor of Zech 1:1–6, then, better
suits the aims of a redactor who sought to contextualize a discrete written
Zechariah collection within a social circumstance or a physical space (e.g.,
a temple library) where other discrete collections of written prophecy were
preserved and consulted. The redactor added Zech 1:1–6 to an existing
Zechariah corpus to argue that its contents be read in the same way as
these earlier works, but not that the contents of Zechariah 1–8 and earlier
prophetic texts be viewed as part of a single literary work.
Tiemeyer’s observation that Zech 1:1–6 knows and draws from the
(late) oracles in Zechariah 7–8 remains compelling (pp. 246–247, 252),
but these introductory verses are better viewed as an attempt to classify
Zechariah 1–8 alongside (but not stitched into) other prophetic works. The
introduction in Zech 1:1–6 points to a library or collection where earlier

17. I have recently laid out my own more detailed treatment of this issue. See M. Leuchter,
The Levites and the Boundaries of Israelite Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 241–
247.

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Mark Leuchter

prophetic texts were either consulted/studied, used for ritual purposes, or

both. Indeed, Tiemeyer notes that the exilic prophetic texts, especially
Jeremiah, loom large in these verses (p. 240). And since Jeremiah is not
part of the Book of the Twelve, the view that Zech 1:1–6 emerges from a
redaction unrelated to the Book of the Twelve is reinforced. We must
pause, therefore, to consider why Zech 1:1–6 appears to appeal to earlier
prophecy, and Jeremiah in particular. What is it about the Jeremiah tradi-
tion that commanded the exegetical attention of the scribes who forged
not only Zech 1:1–6 but also Zechariah 7–8 (where Jeremianic references
abound)?
The appeal to Jeremiah’s oracles is one of the major running themes
that Boda takes up in his commentary as evidence that Zechariah 1–8 and
9–14 should be read as a single, unified book. In his view, the Jeremiah
tradition was particularly influential over the prophetic and scribal tradi-
tions that contributed to the book of Zechariah. Boda sees substantial
material in Zechariah 1–8 as originating with the prophet himself or a
scribal group connected to him, with the majority of material emerging in
or around 520 BCE (pp. 32–33). In this, he is similar to Tiemeyer in
moving away from models that see a centuries-long redactional process in
the aforementioned chapters. However, Boda also brings a similar per-
spective to his treatment of Zechariah 9–14, which he views as completed
by about 445–433 BCE (pp. 35–37). Boda aligns this redaction with the
administrative activity of Nehemiah, at which point Zechariah 9–14 was
brought together not only with Zechariah 1–8 but with the Haggai and
Malachi materials as well, forming a stand-alone corpus. In Boda’s view,
this corpus bore prophetic witness to the forces surrounding Nehemiah’s
restoration efforts and was shortly thereafter incorporated into a form of
the Book of the Twelve (p. 37).
While Boda recognizes that Zechariah 1–8 constitute a distinct source
that came together independently of chapters 9–14, he notes that the two
parts share so much that the common scholarly urge to separate them into
completely different works should be resisted (pp. 28–29), especially in
terms of how both works take up the book of Jeremiah.18 The approaches
to Jeremianic source material are consistent across the entirety of the book
of Zechariah, which leads Boda to argue that the second part of the book
was designed with the earlier chapters’ “editorial intention” in mind (pp.

18. See Boda’s thorough discussion of Jeremianic influence on pp. 76–77, 192, 199, 255–256,
399–400, 421, 428–429, 644–645.

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29–30). The allusions to earlier prophecy in Zech 1:1–6, then, applies not
only to Zechariah 1–8 but to the entirety of the book, hermeneutically
classifying the decidedly schriftgelehrte Prophetie dimensions of chapters
9–14 with the oracular and visionary material of chapters 1–8: both con-
stitute the divine word.19 It broadens the scope of the earlier collection to
anticipate an expansion of its contents through the grafting of newer
oracular content into its material boundaries.
To anyone who has engaged in research on the book of Jeremiah, the
parallels here are obvious. There is little doubt that the Jeremiah tradition
saw changes that accompanied its transmission over several centuries, but
a substantial and mature form of the proto-MT version of the book was
very likely in existence by the end of the exilic period.20 In that version,
an earlier collection of prophetic oracles (Jeremiah 1–25 + “oracles
against the nations”) was taken up by later scribes concerned with the
prophet’s legacy and expanded into a far more ornate literary collection.
The scribal expansion of this material was licensed as revelatory through
a number of literary devices, including the notice in Jer 36:32 that “many
similar words” (‫ה‬ָ ‫ ֵה‬ָ ‫ים‬ִ ‫ ָב ִרים ַר‬)ְ were added to the prophet’s original
oracles, the emergence of the scribe Baruch ben Neriah as the prophet’s
trustee (Jer 32:6–15; 36; 43:1; 45), and the submergence of learned scribal
material within an expanse of demarcated prophetic words (the ‫ ְב ֵרי יִ ְר ְמיָ ה‬ִ
of Jer 1:1//54:61b).21
The appeals to Jeremiah in Zechariah 1–8 may be assigned not only to
the towering role Jeremiah played in public memory but also to the
scribal-exegetical processes at work within those chapters that recognized

19. Tiemeyer’s observation of the links between Zech 1:1–6 and chapters 7–8, however,
suggest that Zech 1:1–6 was already part of a Zechariah corpus before chapters 9–14 were appended to
it. Alternately, if these verses entered the book at a later time, it may also be the case that the scribe who
added them deliberately sought to highlight the role of Zechariah 7–8 as the “end” of the first part of
the prophetic book, thereby emphasizing that chapters 9–14, while still standing in the authentic
Zechariah tradition; see further below.
20. M. Leuchter, The Polemics of Exile in Jeremiah 26–45 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), pp. 145–155. I do not suggest that the MT as we now have it dates back to so early a
period, or that the individual textual units one finds in the Septuagint are later than the MT. Rather, as
I discussed in my monograph on this topic, the textual units within the Septuagint are probably older
than most of their parallels in the MT version, but the sequence of material in the MT—the skeletal
structure of the work—most likely derives from a redactional effort in the first half of the exilic period,
and predates the sequence/structure of the Septuagint, which I assign to the Persian period. More
recently, A. Hornkohl’s linguistic study of the material in Jeremiah points to the principle composition
of its contents in the mid-sixth century BCE (A. Hornkohl, Ancient Hebrew Periodization and the
Language of the Book of Jeremiah: The Case for a Sixth-Century Date of Composition [Leiden: Brill,
2014]), aligning well with redaction-critical and tradition-historical studies that situate its principal
production in the same period.
21. M. Leuchter, Polemics of Exile, pp. 142–144, 151–152.

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the methodological precedent set in the book of Jeremiah and its own em-
phasis on scribalism as revelatory.22 As Boda points out, the engagement
of Jeremiah’s oracles in Zechariah 1–8 positions Zechariah to become a
sort of “second Jeremiah” (p. 429). But the use of Jeremianic material in
chapters 9–14 (and the clear supplemental nature of chapters 9–14) raises
the possibility that the book of Zechariah was itself crafted to become a
sort of “second” book of Jeremiah. Looking at the composite whole, the
book of Zechariah does much of what the book of Jeremiah does, setting
the earlier prophetic oracles into a larger scribal context, building new
oracles from the lemmas and lexemes of earlier oracles, and providing
strict qualifications on the brokers of priestly power.
Boda is indeed keen to point out that both parts of the book give space
to a critique or qualification of the Zadokite priesthood in Jerusalem (pp.
42–43). Even the language used to characterize the vision of Joshua the
high priest in Zechariah 3 manages to qualify his authority according to
priestly standards connected to the Levite discourses in Jeremiah; this in-
tertwines the Jeremiah tradition with ensuing limitations placed on
priestly authority in Zechariah 4 and is echoed further in Zech 6:9–15 (pp.
385–386). A similar feature accompanies Zechariah 7–8, which Boda
notes speaks more broadly of priesthood rather than empowering a spe-
cific priest or priestly family, a trait also evident in the Jeremiah tradition.
But parts of chapters 9–14 adopt a similar approach, making reference to
the temple and its leaders without referring to priests specifically (Zech
11:13), and cresting in a reference to the Levites alongside mention of the
Davidic line in Zech 12:10–14—drawing again from the same Jeremiah
tradition undergirding Zechariah 3 and 6:9–15 (cf. Jer 33:21).
The way that Boda sees the use of Jeremiah across the book of
Zechariah finds support in the sociological situation in Persian Yehud cor-
responding to his proposed dating of the book’s sources. Both the late
sixth century BCE (to which he dates Zechariah 1–8) and the mid-fifth
century BCE (to which he dates the finalization of Zechariah 9–14) see
increased anxiety among various Jewish groups in Persian Yehud. The
initial golah returnees attempted to redefine communal identity features
that depended upon claims to exclusive Israelite heritage from earlier

22. Jeremiah appears to hold an especially prominent place in Second Temple thought evident
in late Hellenistic works like the Epistle of Jeremiah and 1 Baruch, as well as the unique mention of
Jeremianic prophecy in Daniel 9. But this stature is already in place in the Persian period, as witnessed
in the prominence afforded Jeremiah in Ezra 1:1–4//2 Chr 36:22–23.

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eras.23 These efforts were redoubled later around the time of Nehemiah,
whose policies reflect a separatist impulse within the same golah commu-
nity and with even greater intensity.24 There is much evidence that
Jeremiah’s oracles held special significance for the golah community of
the late-sixth century, and material within Ezra-Nehemiah points to the
ongoing importance of Jeremiah in challenging religious hierarchies and
delineating new social categories in Nehemiah’s day (and possibly the
historical Ezra’s as well).25
Assigning the ultimate (or penultimate) redaction of the book of
Zechariah to the mid-fifth century BCE yields another possible explana-
tion for its literary shape. There can be little doubt that by this time, most
of the other major prophetic works—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah—had
obtained fairly well-developed or even definitive forms. All of these pro-
phetic collections were characterized by discernible structural divisions in
one way or another: Jeremiah 1–25 is clearly distinct from chapters 26–
45, which are themselves distinct from the oracles against the nations in
chapters 46–51. Likewise, Ezekiel 40–48 constitute a clear break from
Ezekiel 1–39, and the book of Isaiah, especially, contains multiple distinct
units (Isaiah 1–12; 13–23; 24–27; 28–33; 34–35; 36–39; 40–55; 56–66)
whose boundaries are deliberately left in plain sight. If we are to judge by
these works, prophetic books in the Persian period held power and
authority not despite their redactionally composite nature, but because of
it. That is, a prophetic book was something different than its sources,
creating a deeper sense of meaning and even containing renewed revela-
tion through the rhetorical and linguistic interaction between its compo-
nent parts as encountered by the reader.
Boda’s proposal that Zechariah 1–14 be viewed as a unity is supported
by these factors, as the redaction of Zechariah 9–14 into an existing col-
lection of Zechariah 1–8 transforms the meaning of both units through
their alignment within a single scroll. The making of the book of
Zechariah may, therefore, be the precursor to the making of the Book of

23. For a full examination of this phenomenon, see D. Rom-Shiloni, Exclusive Inclusivity:
Identity Conflicts between the Exiles and the People Who Remained (6th–5th Centuries BCE)
(LHBOTS 543; New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).
24. J. P. Blenkinsopp, Judaism: The First Phase (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 63–71;
see also M. Leuchter, “The Exegesis of Jeremiah in and beyond Ezra 9–10,” VT 65 (2015): 65–77.
25. On Jeremiah’s oracles among the early golah-returnees, see M. Leuchter, “Exegesis of
Jeremiah,” pp. 63–64. I refer to Ezra above in a more tentative manner because of the scholarly debates
about whether the historical Ezra’s mission should be dated to the reign of Artaxerxes I (and thus to ca.
458 BCE) or Artaxerxes II (and thus to 398 BCE). I prefer the former dating scheme, but this matter is
not relevant to the present study.

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the Twelve, which was also guided by the hermeneutical principle that the
collection/inscribing of diverse prophetic sources into a single scroll re-
newed and transformed their revelatory contents.26 Boda’s understanding
of the book’s role in the creation of the Book of the Twelve may be de-
fended, as he argues against scholars who see Zechariah 9–14 as entering
the Book of the Twelve independently of Zechariah 1–8. But the foregoing
raises questions about the stages leading up to this, for Boda makes the
case that before the full redaction of the Book of the Twelve, the book of
Zechariah had formed the centerpiece of a corpus spanning Haggai–
Malachi (pp. 30–31). There is no reason to doubt this, as rhetorical and
linguistic features in Zechariah 1–8 carry clear connections to Haggai, and
the formulaic and thematic foci of Zechariah 9–14 have points of contact
with Malachi.27
There is some ancient evidence for the existence of a Haggai–Malachi
corpus as well. Notable are the references to Haggai and Zechariah in Ezra
5:1 and 6:14, part of the block of material deriving from the late Persian
period that already presupposes a close relationship between the two
prophets and, presumably, their oracles.28 Malachi is not mentioned, but
we may conclude that these references would have had the content of
Malachi in mind, as the book of Malachi may have been drawn from a
trove of oracles that were worked into Zechariah 9–14 (a point to which
we will return below).29 Rabbinic sources also make repeated mention of
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi as a sort of prophetic triumvirate con-
nected to the putative “Great Assembly” (a rabbinic cypher for the scribal
groups that created, among other works, the Book of the Twelve). 30 The

26. On redactional collection as a transformative process, see M. Leuchter, The Levites and
the Boundaries, pp. 206–207.
27. See J. D. Nogalski, Redactional Processes, pp. 188–189, though Nogalski views Zechariah
9–14 as secondarily added to an existing Zechariah 1–8/Malachi sequence.
28. H. G. M. Williamson identified Ezra 1–6 as a very late entry into the Ezra-Nehemiah corpus
(“The Composition of Ezra i–vi,” JTS 34 [1983]: 1–30), and dated it to the early Hellenistic period.
This dating was based on his view that these chapters were later than secondary materials added to the
primary layer of the Chronicler’s work (in his view, a late-Persian composition). Subsequent research,
however, has offered alternatives to this aspect of Williamson’s study, and a late Persian-period dating
of Ezra 1–6 enjoys fairly wide acceptance by researchers into the book, though subsequent shaping in
the Hellenistic era certainly remains likely.
29. On the common origins of Zechariah 9–14 and Malachi, see K. van der Toorn, Scribal
Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 252–
253, though van der Toorn dates the formation of the book of Malachi as a distinct book and its
connection to other prophetic texts to a much later era.
30. B. Bava Bathra 14b; b. Yoma 9b; b. Megilla 3a; b. Sanhedrin 11a; b. Sota 48b; b. Sanhedrin
94a.

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rabbinic sources cannot, of course, be taken at face value, but they pre-
serve a memory that the construction of the Book of the Twelve was in
some way contingent upon a pre-existing relationship between Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malachi.
Multiple questions arise, however, from Boda’s proposal of a once-
independent Haggai–Malachi corpus. How would the book of Zechariah
have been read within such a corpus? After all, if the redaction of
Zechariah 1–8 and 9–14 into a single scroll transformed the meaning of
each respective component, the redaction of the full book of Zechariah
into a larger scroll would likewise transform its own meaning. Would this
present the Zechariah material as contingent upon Haggai’s oracles? An
exegetical qualification of them? Would this carry implications for how
fairly brief prophetic works could only be understood in the context of
larger works that expounded upon their meaning? And if the Malachi
oracles were indeed once part of the material in Zechariah 9–14, did the
partitioning of their contents into a “book” of Malachi place limits on how
Zechariah could function on its own as a discrete prophetic work? If, by
contrast, once-independent Malachi oracles were secondarily shaped to
resonate at the same rhetorical frequency as Zechariah 9–14, was this a
demonstration of the Zechariah tradition’s influence on other prophetic
traditions?
These questions lay at the heart of the text-building process within the
book of Zechariah itself, traceable back to its earliest components (fol-
lowing Tiemeyer’s analysis), and we may surmise that the scribes who
placed the book of Zechariah within the Haggai–Malachi corpus meant
for these questions to emerge when their work was studied. But these are
also the very questions that attend the study of the Book of the Twelve,
which transformed its prophetic contents into a work of wisdom litera-
ture.31 In this light, it is not difficult to see how the Haggai–Malachi cor-
pus was a key precursor to the Book of the Twelve, and it is also not
difficult to agree with Boda’s proposal that this corpus was formed in
close temporal proximity to the formation of the book of Zechariah itself,
that is, about 445–433 BCE. But the argument that the Book of the Twelve
was constructed in this same period (p. 31) is complicated by a few im-
portant issues. The Book of the Twelve appears to have formed at a time
when prevailing concepts of imperial stability were being seriously ques-
tioned, which makes more sense against the background of the tail end of

31. M. Leuchter, The Levites and the Boundaries, pp. 245–247.

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the Persian period rather than its zenith in the mid-to-late fifth century
BCE. Its contents provide an alternative to the ritual function that pro-
phetic texts served in the Jerusalem temple, an institution that depended
on Persian imperial patronage that was compromised or overturned by the
mid- to late-fourth century BCE.32
The Book of the Twelve also appears to respond forcefully to the
Pentateuch’s presentation of Moses, providing an argument that Mosaic
prophecy surely did persist beyond Moses’ death, despite the claim of
Deut 34:10–12 that no prophets like Moses rose after him.33 The Book of
the Twelve uses the trope of Moses in a counter-strategic manner that re-
habilitates prophecy beyond the Pentateuch and elevates it to a Mosaic
level. Moses appears at the beginning, in the middle, and finally at the end
of the Book of the Twelve (Hos 12:14; Mic 6:4; Mal 3:22) as a witness to
the ongoing vitality of prophecy well beyond the parameters of the
Pentateuch and the reach of the Aaronides who claimed it as their charter.
That the redactors of the Book of the Twelve were probably Levite scribes
makes this all the more important, for the work then constitutes another
chapter in the long history of Levite critiques of the cultic norms of their
day (in this case, a cult regulated by Aaronide priests).34 I am inclined to
see the rhetorical posture of the Book of the Twelve not as a direct literary
response to the Pentateuch but, rather, to the Aaronide culture that grew
around it in the decades that followed its construction, whose stability was
open to question as the Persian period drew to a close.
We may thus agree with Boda’s argument that the redaction of the
book of Zechariah and the subsequent redaction of Haggai–Malachi
served as essential antecedents for the redactors of the Book of the

32. On the dating of the redaction of the Book of the Twelve to this period, see J. D. Nogalski,
Redactional Processes, pp. 279–280.
33. Scholars debate the original provenance of Deut 34:10–12, with some arguing for its
origins with the Pentateuch’s Elohist narrative source (see, among others, J. R. Stackert, A Prophet Like
Moses [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], pp. 117–122), while others see it arising from the hand
of the Pentateuch’s final redactors. Whatever its origin, it is clearly deployed as part of a redactional/
rhetorical strategy empowering the Aaronide priests (who constructed the Pentateuch) to be the living
arbiters of Moses’ teachings, making all other prophetic works merely supporting documents.
34. In addition to my own arguments for the Levite redaction of the Book of the Twelve
(M. Leuchter, The Levites and the Boundaries, pp. 241–247), see J. D. Nogalski (“One Book and
Twelve Books: The Nature of the Redactional Work and the Implications of Cultic Source Material in
the Book of the Twelve,” in Two Sides of A Coin [ed. T. C. Römer; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2010],
pp. 40–46), who notes the insertion of cultic blocks throughout the work that stem from Levite
redactional shaping. I do not see the same type of earlier, monarchic-era rivalries between Levites and
Aaronides persisting into the Persian period, but it seems unlikely that the Levites were entirely satisfied
with occupying a second-order position in the Jerusalem temple cult. Passages such as 2 Chr 29:34
point to at least some level of resentment or discontent emanating from within their ranks.

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Twelve, but not in close temporal proximity to the latter’s creation. The
Haggai–Malachi corpus fits the conditions of the mid- to late-fifth century
BCE whereas the rhetorical profile of the Book of the Twelve is more
appropriately located in the latter half of the fourth century. Establishing
the temporal distance between the creation of these corpora does not really
detract from Boda’s overall proposal, and in some ways, it reinforces
Boda’s argument that these works are deeply learned, highly sophisticated
scribal works. The several decades following the redaction of the Haggai–
Malachi corpus enabled the latter to be networked into a curricular tradi-
tion of reading and teaching prophetic literature.35 This tradition surely
governed the scribes who eventually set about redacting the Book of the
Twelve as a charter for such a concept of prophecy, using the Haggai–
Malachi corpus as a major stepping stone.
It has long been a foregone conclusion that the exilic period was a time
of unprecedented disruption, but the sense of crisis and insecurity clearly
persisted well into the Persian period efforts to rebuild Jewish communi-
ties in the homeland.36 Tiemeyer and Boda have each provided invaluable
insights into the book of Zechariah as a witness to these forces, especially
by situating these tensions and dynamics among a more limited circle of
authors working within a more narrow window of time. This better fits
what we know of the period, with a golah community restored to a land
that most of them had never personally known, burdened by a legacy of
great recent trauma, attempting to reconcile their identities within an em-
pire that literally wrote its mythological identity in stone (the Behistun
Inscription) despite constant threats that attempted to erode its founda-
tions. These factors readily explain the diversity of fears, hopes, affirma-
tions, challenges, and questions in the book that would surface among a
limited circle of authors (the prophet Zechariah himself and scribes
working shortly after his day). Tiemeyer and Boda each give us a more
resonant understanding of the thought-universe of Jews during this period
and a more productive model for understanding how texts were built in
response to genuine experiences.

35. On the scribal curriculum of this era, see K. van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, pp. 244–246
(though I differ with van der Toorn on this constituting a close antecedent to canonization).
36. See especially F. R. Ames, “Forced Migration and the Visions of Zechariah 1–8,” in The
Prophets Speak on Forced Migration (ed. M. J. Boda et al.; Atlanta: SBL, 2015), pp. 147–159, on the
persistence of cultural trauma and memory.

409