Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers

This book examines politics, collective memory, and transmission of tradition in the book of Numbers.

Adriane Leveen (Author)

9780521878692, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 October 2007

256 pages
23.4 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.55 kg

Review of the hardback: '… Leveen's work deserves praise … because it engages one's critical faculties throughout … [She] captures well contemporary changes in ways of reading biblical literature and skilfully applies them in enhancing our understanding of a truly remarkable body of material, the book of Numbers.' The Journal of AJS Review

In Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers, Adriane Leveen offers a rereading of the fourth book of Moses. Leveen examines how the editors of Numbers created a narrative of the forty-year journey through the wilderness to control understanding of the past and influence attitudes in the future. The book explores politics, collective memory and the strategies used by its priestly editors to convince the children of Israel to accept priestly rule. Leveen considers the dynamics of the transmission of tradition, memory and values in an atmosphere of crisis as a generation witnessed its parents die in the wilderness yet chose to live in the promised land in fulfilment of God's vision.

1. Desert bound
2. Weaving by design
3. Priestly purposes
4. Variations on a theme: shaping memory in the wilderness
5. Crisis and commemoration: the use of ritual objects
6. Falling in the wilderness: politics of death and burial
7. Inheriting the land.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG]