Sanballat open letter behind Nehemiah 6

This article describes an entity that is not directly attested as an extant recoverable letter; it is inferred from source-citation traces and should not be read as ordinary documentation of a surviving opposition document.

Epistemic status

Draft article. Nehemiah 6 directly reports an open letter and its accusation content, but the letter is not independently extant.

Summary

Nehemiah 6 says Sanballat sent a servant with an open letter and introduces accusation content as written in it. Inferpedia treats this as an opposition-correspondence source surface.

What is being inferred

The inferred entity is the open letter attributed to Sanballat's fifth approach in Nehemiah 6.

What is attested

The text attests the open letter, its delivery by a servant, and reported written accusation content.

Why infer this entity

The passage gives physical characterization, delivery context, and written-content formula.

Evidence ledger

• E1, Nehemiah 6:5: primary trace for the open letter.
• E2, Nehemiah 6:6: primary trace for written content.
• E3, Nehemiah 6:6-7: primary trace for accusation content.

Counterarguments

The open letter may be a narrative device within Nehemiah's opposition story rather than a recoverable document.

Confidence scores

Direct attestation: 60. Existence warrant: 80. Specificity: 72. Reconstruction dependence: 78. Counterevidence: 20.

What would change the score

Specialist discussion of Nehemiah memoir sources, Persian-period accusation letters, or external administrative parallels would change the score.