“I"-Voice, Emotion, and Selfhood in Nehemiah

Abstract

Working towards the advancement of character studies in the HB, this essay represents an attempt of internal profiling of the character Nehemiah through his first-person “I”-voice (I-texts in Nehemiah). The role of emotionality serves as a “port of entry” into the genre-analysis of memoir, the function of “apologia,” and the compositional strategy of the book (a combination of Nehemiahic memoir[NM] and inserted narrative accounts [INA]).2 Along this methodological path, I sought to first, uncover new dimensions of the Nehemiahic self; and second, to demonstrate the dynamics of an “imaginative, affective, experiential” reading—which I believe, is not only a chosen reading strategy, but a necessity.