The Book Of Numbers A Critique Of Genesis

In this work Calum Carmichael—a legal scholar who applies a literary approach to the study of the Bible—shows how each law and each narrative in Numbers, the least researched book in the Pentateuch, responds to problems arising in narrative incidents in Genesis. The book continues Carmichael’s process of demonstrating how every law in the Pentateuch is a response to a problem arising in a biblical narrative, not to an inferred societal situation.

In this work Calum Carmichael—a legal scholar who applies a literary approach to the study of the Bible—shows how each law and each narrative in Numbers, the least researched book in the Pentateuch, responds to problems arising in narrative incidents in Genesis. The book continues Carmichael’s process of demonstrating how every law in the Pentateuch is a response to a problem arising in a biblical narrative, not to an inferred societal situation.

This book follows a reader’s logic of association through a series of overlapping constructs in biblical prescription of things prized and lofty—holy hair, unblemished beasts, sacred edibles, wholesome wombs, pristine precincts, esteemed ethnicities and, as unlikely as it seems, dismembered members. Thoroughly intersectional in disposition, Bernon Lee uncovers not just the precariousness of the contrived dichotomies through the identity-building sacred texts, but also the complexities and contentions of a would-be decolonizing hermeneutic bristling with its own tensions and temptations. This volume is an intertextual odyssey through law and ritual from impassioned positions fraught with ambivalence, reticence, and anxiety.

Are the rituals in the Hebrew Bible of great antiquity, practiced unchanged from earliest times, or are they the products of later innovators? The canonical text is clear: ritual innovation is repudiated as when Jeroboam I of Israel inaugurate a novel cult at Bethel and Dan. Most rituals are traced back to Moses. From Julius Wellhausen to Jacob Milgrom, this issue has divided critical scholarship. With the rich documentation from the late Second Temple period, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is apparent that rituals were changed. Were such rituals practiced, or were they forms of textual imagination? How do rituals change and how are such changes authorized? Do textual innovation and ritual innovation relate? What light might ritual changes between the Hebrew Bible and late Second Temple texts shed on the history of ritual in the Hebrew Bible? The essays in this volume engage the various issues that arise when rituals are considered as practices that may be invented and subject to change. A number of essays examine how biblical texts show evidence of changing ritual practices, some use textual change to discuss related changes in ritual practice, while others discuss evidence for ritual change from material culture.

In ‘He is a Glutton and a Drunkard’: Deviant Consumption in the Hebrew Bible Rebekah Welton uses interdisciplinary approaches to explore the social and ritual roles of food and alcohol in Late Bronze Age to Persian-period Syro-Palestine (1550 BCE–400 BCE). This contextual backdrop throws into relief episodes of consumption deemed to be excessive or deviant by biblical writers. Welton emphasises the social networks of the household in which food was entangled, arguing that household animals and ritual foodstuffs were social agents, challenging traditional understandings of sacrifice. For the first time, the accusation of being a ‘glutton and a drunkard’ (Deut 21:18-21) is convincingly re-interpreted in its alimentary and socio-ritual contexts.

"Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah" is one of the best-known hymns in the world. Yet the book of numbers, whose story that hymn summarizes, is seldom read. Why? "Its very title puts the modern reader off," writes Gordon Wenham. "In ancient time numbers were seen as mysterious and symbolic, a key to reality and the mind of God himself. Today they are associated with computers and the depersonalization that threatens our society." In his effort to bridge the great gulf between the book and our age, Wenham first explains the background of Numbers, discussing its structure, sources, date and authorship as well as its theology and Christian use. A passage-by-passage analysis follows, which draws useful insights on Old Testament ritual from modern social anthropology. The original, unrevised text of this volume has been completely retypeset and printed in a larger, more attractive format with the new cover design for the series.

Ronald S. Hendel offers a careful and thorough re examination of the text of Genesis 1 11. He takes a strongly positive position on the value of the Septuagint as a reliable translation of its Hebrew parent text. This position is contrary to that taken in most existing studies of the text of Genesis, including some in standard editions and reference works. Nevertheless, Hendel shows, there is an accumulating mass of evidence indicating that his position is correct. Hendel begins with a discussion of theory and method, and points out the lessons to be learned from the new biblical manuscripts discovered at Qumran. He goes on to argue for the preparation of eclectic critical editions of books of the Hebrew Bible a task long pursued in Classical, New Testament, and Septuagint studies, but still highly controversial with respect to the Hebrew scriptures. The critical edition of Genesis 1 11 which follows is Hendel's first step toward such a comprehensive task.

This book brings to light how the genealogies in the Bible are a developing genre, flexible in both patterns and deviations, allowing the inclusion of otherwise absent family members like mothers and daughters.