In this book, Jaeyoung Jeon traces the development of the pentateuchal wilderness story in Exodus and Numbers from its pre-monarchic origin to the formation of the final form. He argues that old memories of YHWH from the southern desert area and the move of the Transjordanian settlers to the west were merged with the memory of Egyptian oppression and that they formed together an early tradition of exodus-wilderness in the Northern Kingdom. Although the tradition further developed in Judah after the fall of Israel, the author argues that the major parts of the narrative story were creatively reinterpreted, reformulated, and composed during the Persian period in the socio-historical contexts of the return from the exile and restoration. He suggests that diverse scribal circles representing different social, political, and religious positions in Yehud and the diaspora participated in its literary formation, resulting in the wilderness narrative as a collection of scribal debates.

Born 1972; 2004 MA from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rothberg International School; 2012 PhD from Tel Aviv University; since 2013 SNSF Senior Researcher at the Université de Lausanne.