Bible Review

One exception, Job, lives for 140 years, but his story may come from outside Israel. On the lineage of Job’s story, see Robert Gordis, The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1965), pp. 65–67.

Annemarie Schimmel, “Numbers,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1986), vol. 11, p. 18.

Marvin H. Pope, “Number,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. George A Buttrick (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962–76), vol. p. 563.

For the theory that the number of tribes in Israel is modeled on the Greek amphictyony, see Martin Noth, The History of Israel (New York: Harper, 1958), pp. 85–97, and a critique in Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Israel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979), pp. 352–357.

An outstanding example is Philo, On the Creation, which finds a world of allegory in the numbers of Genesis.

H.J. Sorenson, “Numbers and Number Symbolism in the Bible” in New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967–1974), vol. 10, p. 569.