The Book of Numbers is an enigmatic Old Testament text, as it challenges traditional notions of theological interpretation. In this volume, Josef Forsling offers a fresh approach to the study of this Biblical book. Bringing a narrative perspective in dialogue with historical research to his study, he analyzes Numbers as a narrative anthology composed of laws, rules, poems, and prophecy. Considering its setting in the desert and the plot of the 40-year wandering, he highlights its themes and motifs regarding generational change, sin, disobedience, maturity, and blessing. Forsling also examines the characters of Numbers and explores its theology of purity and holiness via insights from recent research on emotions. Importantly, his volume also provides an overview of the reception history of Numbers. Written in a non-technical and accessible style, The Theology of Numbers serves as an ideal introduction to one of the most important challenging books of the Hebrew Bible.

The Decalogue, commonly known as the Ten Commandments, is usually analysed as a text. Within the Hebrew Bible, however, it is depicted as a monument– an artifact embedded in rituals that a community uses to define itself. Indeed, the phraseology, visual representations, and ritual practices of contemporary monuments used to describe the Ten Commandments imbue them with authority. In this volume, Timothy Hogue, presents a new translation, commentary, and literary analysis of the Decalogue through a comparative study of the commandments with inscribed monuments in the ancient Levant. Drawing on archaeological and art historical studies of monumentality, he grounds the Decalogue's composition and redaction in the material culture and political history of ancient Israel and ancient West Asia. Presenting a new inner-biblical reception history of the text, Hogue's book also provides a new model for dating biblical texts that is based on archaeological and historical evidence, rather than purely literary critical methods.