Pentateuch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pentateuch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The Pentateuch, also known as the Five Books of Moses, is the first part of the Hebrew Bible, comprising Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In Judaism, it is called the "Torah", and is the first part of the Tanakh, while in Christianity, it is the first part of the Old Testament.

The form of Torah is that of a narrative, from the beginning of God's creating the world, through the beginnings of the people of Israel, their descent into Egypt, the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and ends with the death of Moses, just before the people of Israel cross to the promised land of Canaan. Interspersed in the narrative are the specific teachings (religious obligations and civil laws) given explicitly (i.e. Ten Commandments) or implicitly embedded in the narrative (as in Exodus 12 and 13 laws of the celebration of Pesach (passover)).

This combination is noteworthy, making Torah not just a narrative document like Homer's Odyssey, nor solely a legal document like the United States Constitution. This complexity of Torah is related to the complexity of the Jewish tradition, it cannot be understood solely within the Western concept of a religion. At the same time, the fact that the teachings are embedded in story, influences the flexible attitude that Jews take towards their code of life.

The narrative is in Biblical Hebrew prose. Interspersed are poetic fragments, from a single sentence (Genesis 1:27 creation of mankind) to expansive (Deuteronomy 32:1–43 Moses' song to the people). The poetic forms are flexible. In general a series of two or more phrases parallel each other at least in meaning ("Listen, skies, so I may speak/and let the earth hear what my mouth says" Deuteronomy 32:1 Richard Elliot Friedman tr.) but they may also share the same number of stresses or even syllables. They may also parallel each other with alliteration. There are no strict meters and phrases almost never rhyme in the sense of western poetry.

The stories in the narrative are linked together by a system of resonating word roots that can often only be appreciated in the original Hebrew. For example, within a story, (Genesis 2:25) after Eve's creation: "And the two of them were naked, the human and his woman and they were not embarrassed" (Hebrew word for naked is 'arum'). The very next line in Genesis 3:1 is: "And the snake was slier than any animal of the field" (Hebrew word for sly: 'arum).

An example linking different stories: The story of Joseph; his being favored by his father Jacob, tattling on his brothers, being sold into slavery, finally achieving success in Egypt. (Genesis 37–50) seems to be interrupted by an unrelated story about Judah and Tamar (38:1–30). Yet, both stories are linked together by the key word "to recognize". These linkages play a role in the traditional interpretation of Torah.

According to the Oral tradition, the prose in the Torah is not always in chronological order. Sometimes it is ordered by concept according to the rule: "There is not 'earlier' and 'later' in the Torah" (אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה, Ein mukdam u'meuchar baTorah). Some scholars understand confusions in chronology as a sign that the current text of the Torah was redacted from earlier sources.