‘But Yehoshuah knew the numbers’: Reading Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers as Biblical Adaptation

Abstract

This article considers Joshua Cohen’s 2015 Book of Numbers as an adaptation of the biblical Numbers. Drawing on personal interviews and Cohen’s novel, I trace how Cohen uses the structures and themes of the biblical Numbers to write about the contemporary technological world. By recasting the biblical source into a technological form, Cohen suggests that the digital world offers a kind of freedom, a Promised Land; yet, the freedom of the internet and new technologies is ultimately enslaving, resulting in an alienation of the self. Still, the 2015 Book of Numbers has a hopeful outlook, anticipating the survival of the ‘younger generation’.