Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers [Paperback]

This book examines politics, collective memory, and transmission of tradition in the book of Numbers.The book examines how the priestly editors of the book of Numbers created a narrative of the forty-year journey through the wilderness to achieve their agenda. The book also focuses on politics, collective memory, and transmission of tradition.The book examines how the priestly editors of the book of Numbers created a narrative of the forty-year journey through the wilderness to achieve their agenda. The book also focuses on politics, collective memory, and transmission of tradition.The book examines the ways in which 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. The book also focuses on the tragic dimension of the long journey and the transmission of tradition, memory, and values that occurs in such an atmosphere of crisis.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.Review of the hardback: 'A new voice from the Wilderness! By focusing on the theme of memory in the book of Numbers, Adriane Leveen has found an important key to a biblical book that gets less attention than Genesis or Exodus but is every bit as fascinating. Scholarly readers will find in this book a sophisticated attempt to apply the concept of collective memory to a biblical text, an approach that yields many insights into biblical literature and ritual. General readers, drawn into the text by Leveen's lively, literate and accessible writing, will find it an illuminating guide through the book of Numbers. Both kinds oflž