Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-sjtt6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-21T12:45:49.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

TWO - Weaving by Design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2009

Adriane Leveen
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Get access

Summary

The complex reflections on tradition and memory embedded in the narrative of Numbers are made possible by the book's long and interesting compositional history. Numbers comprises a collection of materials dating from fairly early in Israel's history to post-exilic times and includes a noteworthy variety of genres: ancient poetry, narratives of complaint and rebellion, a legendary tale involving a talking ass, law and ritual, two censuses, a travelogue, and an archival list. These different materials, by their careful placement within the larger narrative, create an inner-biblical dialogue that allows different aspects of tradition and memory to be illustrated, considered, rejected, and/or promoted. Those differences are precisely the point, for the final version of Numbers is forged out of a chorus of different voices in interaction, advancing an argument that manages nonetheless to unify the book through a vision of the wilderness period in its entirety. My rereading of Numbers traces competing versions of what took place in the wilderness after the people Israel left Egypt and the uneasy fusion of those discrete materials into a final form.

Several methodological assumptions shape this way of reading. I assume that only some of the multiple traditions found in Numbers neatly fall into sources as identified by the documentary hypothesis, namely, priestly versus nonpriestly sources. Others clearly lie outside the scholarly categories generated by that hypothesis.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Weaving by Design
  • Adriane Leveen, Stanford University, California
  • Book: Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers
  • Online publication: 21 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511499128.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Weaving by Design
  • Adriane Leveen, Stanford University, California
  • Book: Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers
  • Online publication: 21 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511499128.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Weaving by Design
  • Adriane Leveen, Stanford University, California
  • Book: Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers
  • Online publication: 21 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511499128.002
Available formats
×