 Olyan believes that Ezra's expulsion of the gentiles could also be linked with the idea that outside lineage would initially pollute the priestly bloodline, acting as an apparatus to destroy "right" ritual practice.Another scholar, Paul Heger, takes a different stance on the expulsion of the Gentiles in Ezra–Nehemiah.According to Heger, Ezra's motive for expelling Gentile women and their offspring was because at the time leaders believed that the identity of the Israelites did not depend of the ethnicity of their mothers, but depended on the seed of their fathers.