Jewish tradition has a roughly four thousand year history. The essential figure in this story is Abraham, not because he was the founder but because he was the first "Hebrew" to hear from God. The majority of the information we have about Abraham in the Bible is found in Genesis 11–25. Tradition holds that God instructed Abraham to leave his native Mesopotamia (early modern Iraq). The patriarch was to go whither God led him, fully trusting in God. Abraham and his son Isaac established the monotheistic tradition throughout their trip from Mesopotamia to Egypt and back to what is now southern Israel. The twelve sons who would give their names to the original twelve tribes were born to Abraham's great-grandson Jacob.
Their tales are told in Genesis' second half. But another significant turning point is the emergence of Moses, beginning with the tale of his adoption by Pharaoh. Moses was born most likely in the last quarter of the second millennium BCE (about 1300 BCE). He is the only individual whose story spans the entirety of the Jewish scriptures, from the beginning of Exodus to the end of Deuteronomy. Moses' story is one of the development of a religious community, from his initial revelation at the Burning Bush to his final guidance of the people called Israel (the unique name that God gave to the patriarch Jacob) to the banks of the Jordan.
What are Judaism’s principal sacred writings?
The Hebrew Bible is a compilation of about 29 shorter works that were written and edited over a period of almost a thousand years and were arranged into three main literary/theological categories. The Torah, the Pentateuch, or the Five Books of Moses are some of the names for the founding texts. They are Deuteronomy, Numbers, Leviticus, and Genesis. The Prophets, a separate category, is further subdivided into "former" and "later" prophets. The historical texts Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings are considered to be the Former Prophets. The three main prophetic works, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, as well as the so-called Twelve Minor Prophets, Hosea (or Osee), Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, are considered to be among the Latter Prophets.
Last but not least, a group of works commonly referred to as the Writings contains a rich assortment of literature on wisdom and prophecy as well as historical materials. The book of Daniel is the only prophetic literature in this context. Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and the Five Scrolls are among a group of texts on wisdom that have been historically assigned to David and his son Solomon (or megillot). These include Esther, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Ezra, Nehemiah, and I and II Chronicles round out the group of writings as four significant historical books. Taken collectively these sacred writings \sgo by the acronym Tanakh, which is made up of the initial letters of the terms Torah, \sNevi’im (Prophets), and Khetuvim (Writings) (Writings).
What is the meaning of Torah?
The term "torah," which means "teaching" or "education," is a Hebrew word. Torah refers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis to Deuteronomy. Tradition holds that Moses wrote the entirety of the Torah himself under the inspiration of God. By associating the first sacred texts with the person most associated with the divine revelation that established the faith community known as Judaism, this ancient attribution has the advantage of giving the earliest sacred texts the most authority possible. The traditional attribution's historical improbability has been shown conclusively by modern scholarship. Torah refers to the revealed or divine Law all that God asks of Jews in its broadest sense.
In the late sixth century BCE, Ezra had to deal with a challenge: many Jews had lost their knowledge of Hebrew. He was leading a group of Jews back to Israel from exile in Babylon. Ezra hired academics who could interpret the Torah into Aramaic as it was being read aloud to the people in order to teach them the Torah. That paraphrase or translation served as a sort of commentary on the sacred text. The "oral" Torah phenomena started at this point. Its development was supervised by schools of specialized scholars beginning in the fifth century BCE. Oral tradition was passed from one generation to the next until it grew so large that it needed to be recorded in writing to be maintained.
Knowledge is power...
