This paper examines how the Hebrew Bible texts contained and transmitted memories of collective deaths from infectious diseases through text criticism and historical criticism. It will compare and analyze the three texts from the perspective of mutual texts that are connected to each other in the overall composition, including the situation, terminology, structure, and content. The texts may have been written at different times, but as a tool and means of “cultural memory” that conveys various memories of mass deaths from infectious diseases, they are believed to have been related to, talked to, and influenced by societal and historical situations.
A cross-examination study of the epidemic and the resulting collective death in the Bible reveals that the ancient Israelite community accepted the epidemic as God’s punishment and understood it to be based on God’s wrath from religious crimes challenging God’s authority. Numbers 16 is a challenge to the authority of YHWH God, who established them as leaders by complaining about the authority of leaders in the Israelite community. Numbers 25 is about the worship of a gentile god, expressed in sexual relationship with the daughters of the Moabites and the Midianite woman. David’s census in 2 Samuel 24 can be seen as a challenge to YHWH’s royal authority.
Therefore, it is recorded that the solution was possible through religious acts of the priest or ritual acts of religious and political leaders, such as the establishment of the king’s altar. In other words, in the wilderness, the epidemic stops when Aaron the priest burns an incense burner containing the altar fire and takes it among the people to atone (Num 16 : 46-48), and the epidemic stops when Phinehas, the son of Aaron, kills those who serve the Gentiles (Num 25 : 7-8). Here, Phinehas’s behavior can be seen as having religious and ritual meaning as a sense of atonement to clean up the sins of the entire Israelites rather than an individual heroic act. In the time of David, according to the prophecy of Gad the seer, David built an altar to YHWH on the threshing floor of Arauna, the Jebusite, and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, ending the epidemic (2 Sam 24 : 18-25).
In conclusion, these three texts of the Hebrew Bible show the interventional role by religious and political leaders and the responsibility and function of treating and saving people from disease, death, and fear. The old tradition was reinterpreted according to the editor’s era. The cultural memory of ‘mass death’ caused by infectious diseases in the wilderness and its religious interpretation were transformed and modified differently depending on the times and cultures, affecting the identity of the community. The mass death experienced in history means the beginning of a new life at the same time as the end of the previous life of the Israelite community and, in particular, it can be said to be an opportunity to start a new relationship with God.