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The word “Pentateuch,” from the Greek for “five (penta) books (teuchos),” has entered English by way of Latin as the designation for the first group of books in the Bible, comprising Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Unlike other canonical divisions, where there is significant debate within and between different religious traditions, all Jewish and Christian traditions view these five books in this order as a single unit opening the Bible. The unanimity of tradition and the initial placement of these five books reflect their significance within both Judaism and
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Torah is often understood as “law,” and this is one of its frequent meanings in the Bible, as in Ex 12.49: “There shall be one law [Heb “torah”] for the native and for the alien who resides among you.”
Yet “law” is not the only possible translation of torah, and the Pentateuch is not a book of law. Torah also means “instruction” or “teaching,” as in Prov 1.8: “Hear, my child, your father’s istruction, and do not reject your mother’s teaching (torah).” Teaching is not confined to law; narratives or stories are as effective a medium of instruction.
The term torat moshe and its variants, in several late biblical books such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, refers to the Pentateuch more or less as it now exists, but it is not found in the Pentateuch. In fact, the Torah never explicitly suggests that it was compiled by Moses himself. (The phrase “the Torah” in passages such as Deut 4.44, “This is the law [torah] that Moses set before the Israelites,” never refers to the complete Pentateuch.) The tradition that Moses wrote the entire Torah is likely based on the passages that suggest that Moses stayed on Mount Sinai (or Horeb) for forty
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The view that the Torah should be understood as the divine word mediated by Moses was the standard view of synagogue and church through the Renaissance. This view is explicitly contradicted by the Torah’s narrative, as was sometimes (though rarely) recognized in the Middle Ages.
Slowly, with the rise of rationalism, particularly as associated with figures such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza (1632–1677), the view that the Torah was a unified whole, written by Moses, began to be questioned. (For additional information on this development, see the essays on “The Interpretation of the Bible,” pp. 2254–2280.) This culminated in the development of the Documentary Hypothesis in the nineteenth century, according to which the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) is composed of four main sources or documents that were edited or redacted together: J, E, P, and
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J uses the name “Yahweh” (German Jahwe, hence “J”), translated in the NRSV as “Lord,” though it is really a personal name, whose exact meaning is unknown, from the root “to be”;
E prefers to call the deity “Elohim” (translated “God”), an epithet that also serves as the generic term for God or gods in the Bible;
P, which also uses “Elohim” (among other names, such as el shaddai [NRSV “God Almighty”], but not “Lord”) is an abbre...
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D refers to Deut...
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Other scholars have abandoned a documentary model, which sees the Torah as comprised of four distinct, largely complete blocks (J, E, D and P), and have returned to a model that was more popular in the nineteenth century—a supplementary model— where the Torah grew over a long period of time as a result of a large number of supplements to a base text. Others combine documentary and supplementary approaches.
Most scholars who continue to work with a documentary model no longer see each source as the work of a single author writing at one particular time but recognize that each is the product of a single group or “school” over a long time.
Some scholars posited that the Torah was compiled by Ezra on the basis of a request by the Persian authorities—this is called “the royal authorization hypothesis”—but this goes beyond the evidence available. Most scholars posit an editor or series of editors or redactors, conventionally called R, who combined the various sources, perhaps in several stages, over a long time.
It is sufficient to notice that in contrast to modern editing, which is typically interested in developing a single viewpoint, the redaction of the Torah, like the editing of other ancient works, was not interested in creating a purely consistent, singular perspective but incorporated a variety of voices and perspectives and wished to preserve them despite their repetitions and contradictions.
No other work of comparable length or inclusiveness, in terms of the time span covered and the sources systematically incorporated, was produced in the ancient Near East.
Do we concentrate on interpreting the individual sources, on hearing the voices of the constituent parts of the text before redaction took place? Or do we focus on the final product, an approach that has been called holistic reading?
“Genesis” = “Genealogical Origin”
❧ 2 Parts:
1. Primeval History (Focuses On All Humanity)
A. Creation of cosmos & stories of 1st humans
B. Flood & dispersal of post-flood humanity
2. Ancestral History (Focuses On Israelites)
A. Gift of divine promise to Abraham & designation of Isaac as heir of promise
B. Divergent destinies of descendants of Ishmael & Isaac
C. Divergent destinies of descendants of Esau & Jacob/Israel
Jewish tradition calls the first book of the Bible after its first word, Bereshit, which can be translated as “in the beginning” or “when first.” It was common in the ancient world to name a book after its first word(s); for example, the Mesopotamian epic that narrates the world’s creation, Enuma Elish, gets its name from its first words, which mean “When on high.” Bereshit also highlights the character of the book as the beginning of the Bible.
Christian tradition takes its name for the first book of the Bible, “Genesis,” from the ancient Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint. Genesis in Greek means “origin” or “birth,” and it appears throughout the Greek translation of book, starting with two labels that refer to a “book of origin/birth” (2.4; 5.1).
Though Genesis contains some of the most powerful narratives in the Bible, these stories occur within a genealogical structure, starting with 2.4 and ending with 37.2. Within this framework, the book may be understood as an expanded genealogy of the “children of Israel” who will be the focus of attention in the book of Exodus and subsequent books.
Every ordering of the Bible places Genesis first, and as such it sets the stage for what follows. Jews have long revered Genesis as the first book in the Torah, the most authoritative part of the Hebrew Bible. Christians have paid particular attention to Genesis because of its focus on God’s work with humanity prior to the giving of the law. When Islam arose, it too featured a prominent focus on traditions from Genesis, such as the stories of Adam and Eve, Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac, and Joseph. As a result, three major religious traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—all lay claim to
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In the ancient Near East, most literary compositions, including Genesis, were anonymous. Only during the Greco‐Roman period do we start to see statements in early Jewish texts that Moses wrote Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. By this time Judaism had been influenced by Greek culture, where author attributions were important and the writings attributed to Homer enjoyed the highest prestige.
Two hundred and fifty years of historical scholarship on Genesis have established that Genesis was written over many centuries, using oral and written traditions.
Most scholars agree that the texts now found in Genesis began to be written down sometime after the establishment of the monarchy in Israel in the tenth century bce or later.
Yahwistic source (“J” for German “Jahwist”)
Elohistic source (“E”)
Many important parts of Genesis, however, were not written until after the monarchy had fallen in 586 bce and Judean leaders were living in exile in Babylon.
Genesis is comprised of two main sections: the primeval history in chs 1:1–11:26 and the ancestral history in chs 11:27–50:26.
The primeval history has two major sections that parallel each other: (1) the creation of the cosmos and stories of the first humans (1.1–6.4); and (2) the flood and dispersal of post‐flood humanity (6.5–11.9). It features universal traditions similar to myths in other cultures, particularly in the ancient Near East and Greece.
The ancestral history picks up where the primeval history left off and tells the story of God’s choice of Abraham and the transmission of the promise (12.1–3) through Isaac and Jacob (whose name is changed to Israel in 32.28; 35.10), down to Jacob’s twelve sons, the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel.
different parts of Genesis are brought together through the framework of toledot (“generations” or “descendants”) headings (originally from the Priestly source), each of which guides the reader to the major focus of the section that follows it
In the modern era, Genesis has been an important battleground as communities have worked to live out ancient faiths in a modern world. For example, much discussion of Genesis, at least among Christians in the West, has focused on whether the stories of Genesis are historically true.
Astronomers, biologists, and other scientists have offered accounts of the origins of the cosmos and humanity different from those in Gen 1–2. Some believers, however, insist on the importance of affirming the historical accuracy of every part of Genesis as literal truth, and have come to see such belief as a defining characteristic of what it means to be truly faithful. This definition is relatively new: the historicity of Genesis was not a significant concern prior to the rise of modern science and the historical method; in fact, in premodern times, the stories of Genesis were often read
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Genesis 1 = macro creation event
God said, “Let us make humankinda in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,a and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27So God created humankindb in his image, in the image of God he created them;c male and female he created them.
God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
Genesis 2 = micro creation event
the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,a and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
❧ Body = “formed man from the dust of the ground”
❧ Soul = “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”
the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
19By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Memento mori 💀
“Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 7If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
“I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. 22As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
I will require a reckoning for human life. 6Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.
20Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.
The English name “Exodus,” which derives from a Latinized abbreviation of the Greek title exodos aigyptou (“exit from Egypt”), highlights the storyline of the first third of the book. In keeping with the ancient practice of naming books after their opening words, the main Hebrew title is Shemot (“names”), taken from the book’s beginning (“These are the names”).
The second book of the Bible in all canonical traditions, Exodus is not an independent work but rather is an integral part of the Torah, or Pentateuch. Its opening verses connect it to Gen 46.8–27; and it closes with the completion of the tabernacle, the wilderness shrine that prefigures the Temple as a dwelling for the divine presence. Details of worship at that shrine dominate the next book, Leviticus; and Numbers and Deuteronomy continue the journey narrative.
the calamities—called “ten plagues” in postbiblical tradition but not in the Bible—against the Egyptians
The diverse materials in Exodus are situated within a story line describing the departure of a group of oppressed people from Egypt to a sacred mountain in Sinai where they enter into a covenant with the God they believed rescued them; then, at that God’s direction, they construct a portable shrine for their deity before continuing their journey.
The events themselves, which involve the escape of a component of Pharaoh’s workforce, the disruption of Egyptian agriculture, and the loss of many Egyptian lives, are not mentioned in Egyptian sources (although the Egyptians would not necessarily record such events).
the basic story line about the departure from Egypt fits broad evidence from Egyptian and other sources.
