Contribution to Identity of the Book of Numbers

Abstract

If you consider that "numbers" are not by chance the only or the best way to identify this book of the Pentateuch, you might ask, with equal right, if the title that the same Greek-Latin tradition attributes to the third book, Leviticus, would not correspond to the fourth. As I have noted, the Levites appear only once (Lv 25:32-34) in the mentioned book and in a rather marginal way. On the other hand, Just open Numbers to find yourself from the beginning and practically to the end with precisely this category of people. One could properly say that "Numbers" would be better called "Leviticus" than the book that currently (and universally, with the exception above indicated) bears that name.
In what follows in this note I intend to list and briefly comment on the passages referring to the Levites in the book of Numbers, passages which, it can rightly be said, contribute to their identity as much or more than the numerical lists, not without recognizing of course that more than a passage devoted to the Levites contains precisely one such list.