page_title: Bible
section_title: Torah
hierarchical_section_title: Bible / Hebrew Bible / Torah
caption_attribution_description: English: This was probably a doorway inscription (Mezuza); Hebrew in archaic Samaritan text, 9 lines. The British Museum says that the portion of the Bible mentioned is "Deut. VI.4, XXIII.15, XXVIII:6". In late 19th century, it was thought this was "Deut. VI.7". Circa 13th century CE. From Nablus, West Bank, modern-day Palestinian Territories. It is currently housed in the British Museum in London.
context_page_description: The Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures sacred to Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Rastafari and others. They generally consider the Bible to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans. The Bible appears in the form of an anthology, a compilation of texts of a variety of forms that are all linked by the belief that they collectively contain the word of God. These texts include theologically-focused historical accounts, hymns, parables, didactic letters, erotica, sermons, poetry, and prophecies.
  Those books included in the Bible by a tradition or group are called canonical, indicating that the tradition/group views the collection as the true representation of God's word and will. A number of Biblical canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents from denomination to denomination. The Hebrew Bible overlaps with the Greek Septuagint and the Christian Old Testament. The Christian New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek.
context_section_description: The Torah (תּוֹרָה) is also known as the "Five Books of Moses" or the Pentateuch, meaning "five scroll-cases".
  Traditionally these books were considered to have been written almost entirely by Moses himself.
  In the 19th century, Julius Wellhausen and other scholars proposed that the Torah had been compiled from earlier written documents dating from the 9th to the 5th century BCE, the "documentary hypothesis". Scholars Hermann Gunkel and Martin Noth, building on the form criticism of Gerhard von Rad, refined this hypothesis, while other scholars have proposed other ways that the Torah might have developed over the centuries.
  The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books:
  Genesis, Beresheeth (בראשית)
  Exodus, Shemot (שמות)
  Leviticus, Vayikra (ויקרא)
  Numbers, Bamidbar (במדבר)
  Deuteronomy, Devarim (דברים)
  The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel) and Jacob's children, the "Children of Israel", especially Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of Ur, eventually to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at biblical Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses.
  The commandments in the Torah provide the basis for Jewish religious law. Tradition states that there are 613 commandments (taryag mitzvot).
caption: Samaritan Inscription containing portion of the Bible in nine lines of Hebrew text, currently housed in the British Museum
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