Torah basics and authorship pages

 

THIS IS SO BASIC.  YOU HAVE TO KNOW THIS STUFF.

 

Knowing the Five Books Of The Torah is essential jewish knowledge. It don’t get more basic than this.

	The Book’s name in Ivrit.	How you pronounce that	What that means	Name of that book in English	What that means
1	בְּרֵאשִׁית	Be’rey’sheet	In/at the beginning	Genesis	Creation
2	שְׁמוֹת	She’mot	Names	Exodus	Exiting
3	וַיִּקְרָא	Va’yi’kra	And He called	Leviticus	Of the Levities
4	בְּמִדְבַּר	Ba’mid’bar	In the wilderness (and not in the desert- that would be Ba’negev)	Numbers	Go on, take a guess.  You can do it!
5	דְּבָרִים	De’va’rim	Statements/ Words/Things	Deutero-nomy	Second Teaching

 

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Who Wrote the Torah? -- The Most Common Approaches and Their Adherents.

Category/Approach	Theory	Ultra O	Modern O	Conservative	Reform	Academics
Divine: God alone gave the Torah to Humanity
Verbal Revelation Lamm, Berkovits	“Torah Mi-Sinai” Exact text of Torah from God only via Moses at Mt. Sinai. The Torah Sheh Ba’al Peh was included as well.	JJ	J	L	L	NNN
Divine  Revelation	“Torah Min Ha’shamayim” All the Torah is from God,  Torah Sheh Ba’al Peh as well, in one way or another, not all via Moses.	K	JJ	L	L	NNN
Divine and Human:  God partnered with Humans
Restoration of Revelation Halivni (also Roth)	“The Court of Ezra”:  Multiple schools and conduits recorded and expanded God’s revelation in different ways, as God intended for them to do. From these sources the original revelation was restored by Ezra’ court.	L	J	Mostly K But some JJ	K	NNNN
Divinely Inspired: The conduit for Torah is Humanity.
Continuous Revelation Bosker, Gordis	“Torat Nevi’im”  Jews recorded of a set of revelations from God over time; that revelation continues today.	L	L	JJ	J	L
Progressive Revelation	“Ruach Ha’kodesh ” The Torah is Divine inspiration of human words. Over time, we better understand what God wills.	L	L	J	JJ	L
Human Authors: The Torah is a purely human creation
Humanist Kaplan	“No Revelation”: The Torah is important for us because it is the Jewish people’s history, customs, and wisdom.	NNN	L	K Recon: JJ	J	L
Academic I	Documentary Hypothesis- groups with agendas (priests, royalty, and two others) each wrote one of four fictional sources, a special editor later edited them into one work (“JPED”)	NNN	K	JJ	J	L or JJ
Academic II, III Yoreh	Other Hypotheses:  Supplemental H says E came first and the others built upon it, Fragmentary H says there are many sources.	NNN	K	JJ	J	L or JJ
KEY: J-  This is the right way to see it. JJ- Oh boy, is this great!  K- We don’t like it much, and it’s probably wrong, we just can’t  prove it. L- No intelligent person would ever believe this.   NNN- This idea is the worst idea ever in the history of everything ever.  NNNN- Actually, this is even worse!  We won’t even admit this exists.                                                                                       ©2022, M. Hirsch.