The Levites' prayer

Back in 2018 - best I can read - Hava Shalom-Guy (delightful name btw) argued for redactional work upon Nehemiah 9:13-14. But who redacted what?

Some points to be injected here: Nehemiah is late. It seems an expansion of a protoEzra. I do think the book, second-volume rather, was accepted by 4Q365's Temple-Scroll community; although by itself, Nehemiah hasn't turned up in those Q caves, 4th or otherwise. Gili Kugler had argued that Nehemiah 9 reads as truly ancient, Transitional if not Classical Biblical Hebrew: “Present Affliation Affects the Representation of the Past: An Alternative Dating of the Levitical Prayer in Nehemiah 9”, VT 63 (2013), 605-26.

Shalom-Guy more assumes Sara Japhet, “What May Be Learned from Ezra-Nehemiah about the Composition of the Pentateuch” ed. Jan C. Gertz, Bernard M. Levinson, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Konrad Schmid The Formation of the Pentateuch: Bridging the Academic Cultures of Europe, Israel, and North America (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). Japhet had sketched that Nehemiah assumes a Pentateuch much like Jews know it today: Creation first, and other affinities including Deuteronomy's ban on intermarriage. So why wouldn't Nehemiah assume that this Pentateuch was, in fact, Moses' Torah?

Because Moses' Torah wasn't yet Moses' Torah. Such was 1 Enoch's answer - up to the Animal Apocalypse. Nehemiah's very existence until 4Q365 seems questionable. Although the Temple Scroll is very-much aware of a Torah to Moses which - to that author - includes Jubilees; Jubilees itself is a self-aware Mosaic lex tertia, if that's a term. All this allowed I suspect that Shalom-Guy is right: somebody altered a prayer now in Nehemiah. So: who might do that?

Nehemiah starts out his book with a prayer which v. 7 notes the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. 9:14b simply refers to that. Nobody is saying that Nehemiah's first chapter is interpolated.

So: Nehemiah must be the interpolator into the Levitic prayer now 9:14 in his book. Shalom-Guy has argued this point “The Confessional Prayer in Nehemiah 9: 6–37: A Literary–Historical Consideration”, Shnaton 24 (2016), 103–27 in... Hebrew (abstract pdf). She seems to be arguing it harder in Undercurrents in Restoration Literature, that the prayer is Abrahamic (so includes the Samaritans!) so not Nehemiahvic.