The narratological purpose of Aramaic prose in Ezra 4.8 - 6.18

Regnant documentary theories do not account for the large amount of Aramaic narrative framing seen in Ezra 4-6. The discourse employed by this narrator shows him to be a Samarian in orientation. The implied author constructs this narrative perspective as a poetic device through which the reader/listener learns that the foes of his time-Samarian and Persian-are not as formidable as he may have thought them to be, and that the God of Israel works in ways that he may not have appreciated without this external testimony.