Torah has how many books

Several decades later, Josephus, who died in C. Ironically, the first reference to the Pentateuch of Moses is in a letter denying that he wrote it! Another early indication of the five-part division of the Torah is the five-part structure of other biblical works such as Psalms, whose five-part structure is best explained as mimicking the Torah. This five-fold division is especially clear in Psalms, since each of the five sections ends with a liturgical doxology 41, 72, 89, , , with similar formulations of praise for God.

The rabbis of the Roman period interpreted the five-part arrangement as corresponding to that of the Torah, as is evident from Midrash Tehillim, also known, as Midrash Shocher Tov :.

The book of Proverbs can be divided into five parts based on its superscripts. The Mishnaic tractate Avot had five sections in its original core. Cohen, a pulpit rabbi and Bible scholar, finds five-fold elements in additional biblical books. The book of Job has speeches by five persons in addition to God. Thus we see that the Torah was divided into five books already in Second Temple times, and that other books copied this division. But what is the reason for this division?

Some have suggested that the technology available to the ancients made a full-length Torah scroll impossible, with Genesis the longest book of the Torah representative of maximum scroll length. Emanuel Tov writes that the maximum length of scrolls for the period of the Qumran scribes is unclear.

He lists seven scrolls found in the Judean Desert which seem to combine two or more books of the Torah, but admits that the joins between these pairs of books have not been preserved, so the inclusion of two or more books on one scroll is only hypothetical.

Others have suggested that having the Torah on several scrolls was more convenient for reading and reference than assigning it to one long scroll. If scroll length was the rationale for the division, then we would expect that the five units would be of similar length, which is not the case. Such an explanation better accounts for the dissimilar lengths of the books, as well as for other stylistic features of the books that we will explore shortly.

But why this division in particular? An obvious starting point for the division of the Torah into books is the uniqueness of both Genesis and Deuteronomy.

Genesis offers a pre-history of the people of Israel, starting with a universalist outlook, but then narrowly focuses on the family and clan which constitute the ancestors of Israel. Scholars have long emphasized its unique origin and style as compared to the other four books.

Thus, the reasons for the division of Genesis and Deuteronomy from the other books are apparent, but why three books from Exodus to Numbers? Admittedly, their literary integrity should not be overstated as the books have significant thematic overlap.

All three books have cultic themes and laws, and all three books take place, at least partially, in the Sinai Wilderness. Nevertheless, within this literary continuity, demarcations suggest that these three central books constitute three quasi-independent works with introductions and conclusions. The book of Exodus opens with the story of the next generation after the death of Joseph, when Israel grows from a family into a people, and ends with the building of the Tabernacle, ready for the initiation of cultic worship.

The book of Leviticus offers rules for the Sanctuary cult just established. Dennis Olson remarks that,. Leviticus 26 has its own conclusion for the book as a whole:. The narratives in Numbers are assigned to various sites, with Numbers localized in the Wilderness of Sinai, and Numbers through chapter 20 situated in several locations in the Wilderness of Paran, the Wilderness of Zin, and Kadesh, among other sites.

Other thematic divisions are also possible. Thus, we still are left with the question of why this division? Is it possible that the Redactor specifically wanted to have five books? If so, why? While one may argue that formal chapter and verse divisions are both later innovations whether rabbinic or medieval , divisions into sedarim and parashot reflect more ancient ways of differentiating the various subject divisions in the text, and according to both, Leviticus 19 starts a new subsection.

Further, its wide range of laws and echoing of the Decalogue suggests that it was intended to have paramount significance, which is reflected in Leviticus Rabbah , Margoliot ed. Regarding the structure of Leviticus 19, this chapter contains 37 verses, and v. This verse calls upon Israel to achieve holiness through love, that is, performing acts of kindness and generosity.

Cohen suggests that one possible reason for the choice of five is because it represents the fifth letter of the alphabet, heh , which is the number five in gematria, [51] the practice of representing numbers with letters and vice versa. Cohen notes that heh was added or infixed in the names of biblical persons to indicate their new relationship with the biblical God: certainly this is the case regarding Sarah and Abraham. The practice of ascribing a numerical value to letters according to their placement in the alphabet is well-known from later Jewish texts, and many scholars believe it was introduced into Hebrew exegesis from Greek exegesis in the Hellenistic Period.

Israel Knohl builds the case for gematria in the Hebrew Bible. Knohl among others [58] finds the number 26 as providing an organizing principle in several poetic passages in the Bible. More instances of Gematria are not difficult to adduce. For example,. Of course, all of these may be the result of coincidence, but it seems at least possible, if not likely, that the Bible already reflects the use of gematria. Another idea invoked by the number five is the number of fingers on the human hand, the organ that most distinguishes the human species from all other known forms of life.

The hand is the organ of authority, blessing, prayer, ritual, salutation, oath-taking, custody, warfare, and handiworks; these are uniquely human activities. Symbolism involving the human hand is found throughout religious art, from the Hamsa to the Benedictio Latina in Catholic iconography [66] to the mudras symbolic gestures of Buddhist and Hindu art. Here we have the association of five and the hand of God, not to mention the very unusual verb hoya with a double heh. Please support us.

Meet the writers: The Yahwist, the Elohist, priests, and the Deuteronomist. Ultimately the German scholars, led by Julius Wellhausen, came up with "the Documentary Hypothesis," postulating that the Pentateuch was compiled from of four earlier books long lost in time, which were merged by an editor dubbed the Redactor.

The scholars gave each of these four books or writers a name: the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Priestly writers, and the Deuteronomist. The Yahwist was characterized by using the Tetragrammaton "Yahweh" as the name of God. The Elohist writers, who called God "Elohim", were Israelite priests. The Priestly writers were evidently temple priests Judeans serving in Solomon's Temple and their decedents, who dwelled on rite and sacrifice, and evidently engaged in battles over their status as well.

And last but not least, "the Deuteronomist" is called so because he wrote Deuteronomy. Incidentally, the first account of creation was evidently written by a Priestly source, the second by a Yahwist. Scholars bitterly disagree over who wrote what and which texts are truly ancient and which were added later, as certainly much of the biblical sources surely consist of layers of additions and were not completely written by one single person.

The Elohist texts, the oldest in the bible. Israel and Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms whose residents practiced a sort of early Judaism, which was still a far cry from the rigid monotheistic religion we know today. Archaeology tells us that the Kingdom of Israel was the greater regional power, while Judah was a backwater vassal kingdom.

Following Israel's subjection, many of the Israelite elite moved to the Judean capital - Jerusalem. These Israelite refugees brought their sacred texts with them: the Elohist texts, which are probably the oldest in the Torah. These texts were probably written by court scribes in Semairah, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, or by priests in one of the kingdom's important cultic sites such as Shilo.

The Elohist source focuses on locations in the Kingdom of Israel and on the Israelite heroes Moses and Jacob, whom the Israelites saw as their ancestors. It is not known whether the ancient Judeans also thought Moses and Jacob were their forefathers, but after the "Israelization" of Judah, they probably "adopted" their patriarchy too.

With this influx of culture coming in from the Kingdom of Israel, the Judean priestly cast had to come up with their own narrative about Judah with its own mythical leaders and traditions. This is where the Yahwist source comes from, though at least some may have been written by Judean scribes before the destruction of the kingdom of Israel. Whatever the case, it was shortly after this destruction that the two texts, the Yahwist and the Elohist, were merged by scribes into a single book.

The next portion of the Torah to be written is Deuteronomy, and this time we have a lot more information on its author. We even know his name: Shaphan though some think the author was the prophet Jeremiah.

This scribe may have single-handedly changed the entire course of history by leading the king to profoundly change Jewish worship.

While the Yahwist-Elohic scripts take no issue with polytheism and people worshiping God or even several gods in temples and other cultic sites throughout the land, the ideology of Deuteronomy is clearly one God, one temple. Its composition evidently coincides with the unification of the Judaic cult and exclusion of other gods, which happened during the reign of King Josiah starting in BCE.

The account, possibly written by Shaphan himself, goes as follows: "And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. What are the names of the 5 books in the Torah? Is the Torah and the Old Testament the same? Who actually wrote the Torah? What do Jews call the Old Testament? Do Christians believe in the Old Testament?

Do Muslims believe in the Old Testament? Which is older Bible or Quran? Was Allah mentioned in the Bible? What language is Allah? Is God the same for all religions?

Who is the father of all gods? Why is Odin called all father?