The Torah
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
The
Torah has both an oral and written tradition. The Oral Torah preceded
the Written Torah when the Jewish people gathered at Mount Sinai 3,300
years ago. At this time God communicated the 613 commandments, along
with a detailed, practical explanation of how to fulfill them. The
teachings were entirely oral. Forty years later, before Moses’ death
and the Jewish people’s entering the Land of Israel, Moses wrote the
scroll of the written Torah, known as the Five Books of Moses, and
delivered it to the Jewish people.
The word “Torah”
now refers to the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers and Deuteronomy. The word “torah” can also refer to the Jewish
bible, the body of scripture known to non-Jews as the Old Testament and
to Jews as the Tanakh or Written Torah. It is not the entire Old
Testament of the Christian Bible, however. In the widest sense it
refers to the whole body of Jewish law and teachings. To the Jews there
is no “Old Testament.” The books of the New Testament are not a part of
Jewish scripture. The so-called Old Testament is known to us as Written
Torah or the Tanakh. The Hebrew names of the first five books of the
Torah (The Law) are:
- Bereishith (In the beginning...) (Genesis)
- Shemoth (The names...) (Exodus)
- Vayiqra (And He called...) (Leviticus)
- Bamidbar (In the wilderness...) (Numbers)
- Devarim (The words...) (Deuteronomy)
Torah
in the Old Testament was understood as the will of God for His people.
The significance of encountering in history the one and only true God
is emphasized. It was a way of communicating the means by which the
Jewish community defined itself as God’s people. The Torah was grounded in Yahweh himself and his self-revelation in history. The Torah was
the incarnation of a transcendent reality, the “flesh and blood,” a
sign of their encounter with the God and liberator in the exodus. The
Israelites and Jews saw torah as the governing influence of God in their lives.