Torah or Torah?

Is torah the Torah?

The Torah traditionally refers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible that were written by Moses; namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These Five Books of Moses are also known as the Pentateuch.

Joshua 1:8
This book of the law (Heb “torah“) shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

I believe that this was how the writings of Moses – proceeding from the revelations at Mount Sinai until the time of his death – became codified as the Torah, and how the Torah had shaped the mental frameworks and cultural traditions of the Jews from then on.

Even though the Five Books of Moses were codified as the Torah by Jewish tradition, I believe that the word “torah” used by Moses in his writings was not intended by Moses for codification as the Torah.

Let us look at the word “torah” when it was first used by Moses in his writings.

Genesis 26:4-5
“I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws (Heb “torah“).”

The first mention of the word “torah” was in Genesis 26 when God blessed Isaac because Abraham, the father of Isaac, obeyed God and kept His charge, commandments, statutes, and laws (“torah”).

If “torah” was indeed the Torah – the set of five books that were progressively revealed to Moses and written by Moses more than 500 years after Abraham – and Moses indeed wrote that Abraham had obeyed this Torah, then it would mean that Moses retrospectively applied the requirements of the entire Pentateuch, whether in the letters of the Word or spirit of the Word, onto Abraham. To do so would imply that all the charges, commandments, statutes, and laws of the Pentateuch were first revealed to Abraham, enacted through the mediation of Abraham, and observed from the days of Abraham, before God rehashed them through Moses at Mount Sinai and from Mount Sinai onwards. This would be exegetically erroneous and historically inaccurate.

Let us look at another scripture.

John 10:34-36 (The Complete Jewish Bible, CJB)
Yeshua answered them, “Isn’t it written in your Torah, ‘I have said, “You people are Elohim’ “? If he called ‘elohim’ the people to whom the word of Elohim was addressed (and the Tanakh cannot be broken), then are you telling the one whom the Father set apart as holy and sent into the world, ‘You are committing blasphemy,’ just because I said, ‘I am a son of Elohim’?

Was Jesus quoting from the Torah (the Pentateuch), or was Jesus quoting from Psalms, a poetic book of the Ketuvim in the Tanakh?

Psalm 82:6 (CJB)
“My decree is: ‘You are elohim [gods, judges], sons of the Most High all of you.

Jesus quoted a “torah” from Psalms, not from the Torah. Thus, the word “torah” does not mean the Torah, and should not be transliterated or understood as the Torah (like in the CJB). So, “torah” is a lot more than the Torah, for it includes not only the Torah, but it also includes the Tanakh and the teachings of the New Testament.

As such, the word “torah” should not be interpreted as the Torah (or Pentateuch). Rather, “torah” should be interpreted and defined according to its etymological origin as judicially binding rules, instructions, guidelines, terms, and conditions in relation to the performance of an enacted covenant between God and His people in the relevant time and space. So, “torah” are the component laws that regulate promises and covenants, not a codex of five Mosaic books.

Romans 3:27-28
Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law (Gr “nomos“)? Of works? No, but by a law (Gr “nomos“) of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law (Gr “nomos“).

It is in this etymological origin that the word “torah” can be harmonised and used interchangeably with its Greek counterpart “nomos” in the New Testament. To say that “torah” refers to the Pentateuch is akin to saying that “nomos” refers to Paul’s epistles.

So, there is Torah and there is torah. The word “torah” used in Old Testament scriptures do not refer to the Pentateuch, but the general rules, instructions, guidelines, terms, and conditions in relation to the performance of an enacted covenant between God and His people in the relevant time and space. Do not read Torah into “torah”, as there is no primacy of the Torah in “torah”. Thus, “torah” is not limited to what were written in the first five books of the Bible, but also includes the “torah” in the rest of the Old Testament. It even includes “nomos” in the New Testament, as all truth must be harmonised. As such, we must not overlay the Torah onto the word “torah” in biblical exegesis, for to do so would promote critical error into one’s theology, especially when one reads “nomos” as “torah” in the Hebrew or Aramaic translation of the New Testament. This is one of the reasons why Jewish Christians in the first century church were seeking to impose Jewish traditions from the Torah onto Gentile Christians, to such extent that Apostle Paul had to bring the issue to the apostles in Jerusalem for resolution (Acts 15).

Therefore, whether it is from the lens of the Torah or our cultural persuasions, let us be careful not to over-extend our cultural traditions and confirmation biases into biblical interpretations, for to do so would corrupt the knowledge of the truth that is able to set us free into the Spirit of truth.

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