The Torah

     The Torah is the body of moral, and ceremonial institutions, laws, and decisions comprised in four of the books of the Pentateuch, [First 5 books of your bible] and ascribed by Christian and Hebrew tradition to Moses.  As early as the Davidic era, the name "torah" was popularly used to designate this compilation, which, however, might not then have embraced all that it now contains.


After the captivity in Babylon, the term became synonymous with the Pentateuch, and has been known as this ever since. Side by side with these meanings are others less comprehensive and more ancient. On the lips of the priests and prophets, torah sometimes referred to the moral and religious prescriptions of the Law alone, or again, to the ceremonial part of it, whether in theory or practice; in short, to any direction written or oral, given in Yahweh's name by one enjoying an official capacity.


Quite naturally, when the period of formal codification set in, (formulation etc) each new code was styled a torah, and these separate toroth (plural) were the stepping-stones to, and afterwards the constituent parts of, the "Torah" or Corpus, which has always been identified with the name of Moses.

The Origin of the Torah


The Torah, as a whole, was neither miraculously communicated from heaven, nor was it laboriously thought out and put together by Moses independently of external influences.  It was the primitive condition of Hebrew society that dictated Israel’s first laws, by leading to the establishment of family and tribal customs. Yet it would be wrong to maintain with too much assurance that the same or a similar collection of laws would have resulted spontaneously and independently from the same natural conditions in any other period or clime.


There had been precedents of just such customs and practices as Israel adopted, among other races with which the founders of Israel’s laws had come in contact, and it seems an irresistible conclusion that, since Israel borrowed its language from its neighbours and could be so easily won over to heathen rites as to defy the vigilance of judges, priests, and prophets, it could not but be influenced by the social and political life of the neighbouring peoples.


No matter how much, or how little can be explained in this way, room must always be left for direct, external, and Divine intervention, i.e. for an historic revelation made by God of Himself to the chosen people, in such a way as to guarantee them a special Providence and direction in working out their high destiny.