needs to be balanced by many other parts of the Old Testament which resolutely adopt a more open stance towards both the Gentile nations and the other groups of descendants from pre-exilic Israel which had not shared in the Babylonian exile. For the moment, however, it will suffice for our purposes to acknowledge that there is also a positive side to such lists as those in Ezra 2 and Neh. 7, namely the claim that physically speaking the new community is but the old reconstituted. Where this could