Wednesday Bible Study: The Book of Numbness

The (lame) joke in the title of this post is that much of the Book of Numbers is exceedingly tedious. It is called Numbers because it begins with a census, but most of the content consists of weird stories, largely about God torturing and murdering Israelites -- in fact twice he vows to exterminate them but gets talked out of it. Along the way we kill off some leading characters. Mixed in is more, largely repetitive, law and ritual. Numbers also contains the only reference anywhere in the Bible to abortion. (We ' ll get to it in just a couple of weeks, it ' s in chapter 5.) Obviously Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Robert Jeffress haven ' t read it because it ' s all for abortion, in fact it ' s how-to instructions, though only under specific circumstances.For scholarship junkies, this is thought to be based on the source document called J, like Genesis and Exodus. Again, it was compiled and edited by the priests at the beginning of the Second Temple period, and in that sense is of a piece with Leviticus -- it ' s purpose is to underpin the restoration/reformation movement under King Josiah. So remember that these events purportedly happened nearly 2,000 years before this was published. There is really nothing to say about Chapter 1 except first, that it is not clear to me why people would be interested in the names of what purport to be their very distant ancestors, or the exact numbers of military aged men in their tribes at this time. No further use is made of this information, whi...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs