Pentateuch

The name **Pentateuch**, also known as the **Torah** and the **Law of Moses** (or the **Law** for short), refers to the set of the first five books of the Bible and the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

## In Judaism

The Jews call the Pentateuch תורה, Torah, which means "law", "teaching", "education". Sometimes the noun is preceded by the definite article: Hattoràh, "the law ". Torah is the oldest name used to refer to the first five books of the Bible

The Jews consider the Torah the heart of Scripture and the revelation of God to his people .

With the same term, Torah, Judaism also means the Law understood in a general sense. More precisely we use the words Torah shebiktav ("The law that is written") to indicate the five books of the Pentateuch or the set of twenty-four Books of what Judaism considers the Old Testament ( Tanakh ), while the expression Torah shebehalpeh (" oral torah ") indicates the whole ensemble of oral codified subsequently traditions .

The study of the Torah, as a compendium of divine instructions given to the Jew, is one of the main precepts of Judaism.

For Judaism the Torah was dictated directly by YHWH to Moses and was written down before the death of Moses himself.

## The five books

The five books that make up the Pentateuch are the following:

* Genesis, abbreviated as Gn or Gen ; in Hebrew בראשית, Bereshit ("In the beginning")
* Exodus, abbreviated Es ; in Hebrew שמות, Shemot ("Names")
* Leviticus, abbreviated Lev or Lv ; in Hebrew ויקרא, Vayikra ("And he called")
* Numbers, abbreviated Num or Nm ; in Hebrew במדבר, Bamidbar ("In the desert")
* Deuteronomy, abbreviated Deut or Dt ; in Hebrew דברים, Devarim ("Words", "Speeches")

The Hebrew names for these books are the opening words of the first verse of the respective books.

## Birth environment

Over the last few centuries it has been asked what were the underlying motivations that gave rise to the Pentateuch:

* Some scholars think that it was formed as a juridical text submitted to the approval of the central government of the Persian empire, to which the Jewish community was subjected; the Pentateuch would thus have found its origin through an "imperial authorization". The Persians , in reality, left a certain margin of political, cultural, religious and economic autonomy to the subjugated peoples, in exchange for the respect of the central authority and the payment of taxes .
* Others believe, instead, that the Pentateuch arose as an internal document to the post-exile Jewish community, which in this way tried to define its own identity. According to this hypothesis, the Pentateuch was intended to indicate the conditions of belonging to the Jewish community: ties of blood, descent from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; moreover, the Pentateuch had the function of defining the rights, duties that belonged to the members of that community.
* Some other scholars tend to accept and unite these two explanations together.

## The pre-hexyl material

In any case, in the Pentateuch the existence of materials prior to the Babylonian exile is undeniable, even if it is discussed whether they could already be part, in that older age, of wide-ranging literary works.

Pre-exilic materials are undoubtedly found in the history of the origins, in the patriarchal tales, in the narratives of the exodus and the journey in the desert.

The so-called code of the alliance ( Ex 20,22-23,33 ), of pre-exilic origin, contains materials found in the Eastern legislative codes of the II millennium BC .

All this previous literary patrimony was however used in more recent times to compose an organic work that was to constitute the religious and ethnic foundation of the Jewish people that had survived, after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, at its political sunset .

## Notes

1. ↑ For the Jews , Sacred Scripture is obviously limited to our Old Testament.