The Old Testament is called by the Jews the Tanakh, an acronym formed by combining the initials of the three sections by which the Jews divide the text: the Torah, or Law ( the Pentateuch ), the Nevi ' im, or Prophets, and the Ketuvim, or Writings or Hagiographa ( with vowels added, as Hebrew is written with a consonantal script, TaNaKh ).

The order of the books of the Torah or Pentateuch are universal through all denominations of Judaism and Christianity.

It was in this period that the Pentateuch ( or Torah, to give the Hebrew name ) was composed, by detaching the book of Deuteronomy from the Deuteronomistic history and adding it to the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers.

The Torah ( Jewish Law ), also known as the Pentateuch ( the first five books of the Christian Old Testament ), lays down the death penalty for murder, kidnapping, magic, violation of the Sabbath, blasphemy, and a wide range of sexual crimes, although evidence suggests that actual executions were rare.

The Book of Deuteronomy ( from Greek Δευτερονόμιον, Deuteronomion, " second law ";, Devarim, " words ") is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah / Pentateuch.

The Book of Exodus or, simply, Exodus ( from Greek ἔξοδος, Exodos, meaning " going out ";, Šemot, " Names "), is the second book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the five books of the Torah ( the Pentateuch ).

The basis of Jewish law and tradition ( halakha ) is the Torah ( also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses ).

The Book of Leviticus ( from Greek Λευιτικός, Leuitikos, meaning " relating to the Levites ";, Vayiqra, " And He called ") is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah ( or Pentateuch ).

By Late Antiquity, the tradition of Moses being the source of the law in the Pentateuch also gave rise to the tradition of Mosaic authorship, the interpretation of the entire Torah as the work of Moses.

According to the documentary hypothesis, the first five books of the Bible ( Pentateuch / Torah ), including Genesis, were collated during the 5th century BC from four main sources, which themselves date from no earlier than the 10th century BC.

Orthodox Judaism holds that the words of the Torah, including both the Written Law ( Pentateuch ) and those parts of the Oral Law which are halacha leMoshe m ' Sinai, were dictated by God to Moses essentially as they exist today.

The words of the Torah ( Pentateuch ) were spoken to Moses by God ; the laws contained in this Written Torah, the Mitzvot, were given along with detailed explanations in the oral tradition as to how to apply and interpret them.

Biblical scholars note the early organization into five collections, paralleling the Torah or Pentateuch ( the first 5 books of the Bible ).

As a part of the morning or afternoon prayer services on certain days of the week or holidays, a section of the Pentateuch is read from a Torah scroll.

While Christianity includes the five books of Moses ( the Pentateuch ) among their sacred texts, in its Old Testament, Islam believes that only the original Torah was sent by the One true God.

Muslims regard the Quran as the main miracle of Muhammad, the proof of his prophethood and the culmination of a series of divine messages that started with the messages revealed to Adam, regarded in Islam as the first prophet, and continued with the Suhuf Ibrahim ( Scrolls of Abraham ), the Tawrat ( Torah or Pentateuch ) of Moses, the Zabur ( Tehillim or Book of Psalms ) of David, and the Injil ( Gospel ) of Jesus.

Samaritans adhere to a version of the Torah, known as the Samaritan Pentateuch, which differs in some respects from the Masoretic text, sometimes in important ways, and less so from the Septuagint.

In Rabbinic Judaism, the Torah comprises both the written Torah ( Pentateuch ) and a tradition of oral law, much of it codified in later sacred writings.

The word is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the three traditional subdivisions of the Tanakh: The Torah (" Teaching ", also known as the Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch ), the Nevi ' im (" Prophets ") and the Ketuvim (" Writings ").

Florence, 1750 ); to Menahem Lonzano, who composed a treatise on the Masorah of the Pentateuch entitled " Or Torah "; and in particular to Jedidiah Norzi, whose " Minḥat Shai " contains valuable Masoretic notes based on a careful study of manuscripts.

The Samaritan Pentateuch, sometimes called Samaritan Torah, ( Hebrew: תורה שומרונית torah shomroniyt ), is a version of the Hebrew language Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, traditionally written in the Samaritan alphabet and used by the Samaritans.

The Book of Numbers ( from Greek Ἀριθμοί, Arithmoi ;, Bəmidbar, " In the desert ") is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah.

Christians accept the Written Torah and other books of the Hebrew Bible as Scripture, although they generally give readings from the Koine Greek Septuagint translation instead of the Biblical Hebrew / Biblical Aramaic Masoretic Text.

The Torah has little to say on the subject of survival after death, but by the time of the rabbis two ideas had made inroads among the Jews: one, which is probably derived from Greek thought, is that of the immortal soul which returns to its creator after death ; the other, which is thought to be of Persian origin, is that of resurrection of the dead.

This and some other examples of apparent comparison between Greek myths and the " key characters " in the Old Testament / Torah have led recent biblical scholars to suggest a Hellenistic influence in the composition of the earlier portions of the Hebrew Bible.

The Vatican Persian cock denoting a sacred and religious vessel acknowledged by and from the Vatican, " a girt one of the loins " of Proverbs 30: 31, the Hebrew zarzir, Arabic sarsar, Greek alektor, French coq, Persian bird, Persian cock or the acknowledged rooster from the Hebrew Torah, the Christian Old Testament, the Holy Scriptures of Job, Isaiah and of the Apostles John, Luke, Matthew and Mark, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ may still further be viewed through " A Dictionary of the Bible " which tells us that " Pindar ( ca.

These titles refer to a legendary story, according to which seventy or seventy-two Jewish scholars were asked by the Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus to translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into Greek, for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria.

The date of the 3rd century BCE, given in the legend, is confirmed ( for the Torah translation ) by a number of factors, including the Greek being representative of early Koine, citations beginning as early as the 2nd century BCE, and early manuscripts datable to the 2nd century.

The term " Torah Judaism " is a reaction to the perceived inappropriateness in the meaning of " Orthodox " ( from Greek, ' correct opinion '), as well as a conscious intent to label non-Orthodox Jewish movements as being divorced from the Torah.

Tefillin ( Askhenazic: ; Israeli Hebrew:, ) also called phylacteries ( from Ancient Greek phylacterion, form of phylássein, φυλάσσειν meaning " to guard, protect ") are a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers.

According to Joseph P. Schultz, modern scholarship " considers the Maccabean revolt less as an uprising against foreign oppression than as a civil war between the orthodox and reformist parties in the Jewish camp ", while John J. Collins writes that while the civil war between Jewish leaders led to the king's new policies, it is wrong to see the revolt as simply a conflict between Hellenism and Judaism, since " The revolt was not provoked by the introduction of Greek customs ( typified by the building of a gymnasium ) but by the persecution of people who observed the Torah by having their children circumcised and refusing to eat pork.

Today it exists in several traditions, including the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint 47 books ( a Greek translation widely used in the period from the 3rd century BCE to roughly the 5th century CE, and still regarded as authoritative by the Orthodox Christian churches ), the Samaritan Torah, the Westminster containing the modern 39 books, and others.

A similar genealogy is given in the Book of Exodus, where it is added that among Kohath's sons was one — Amram — who married a woman named Jochebed, who was closely related to his father, and they were the biological parents of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam ; though some Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Torah state that Jochebed was Amram's father's cousin, the masoretic text states that she was his father's sister, and the Septuagint mentions that she was one of his father's sisters.

* Ptolemy II Philadelphus ordered 72 Jewish elders to translate the Torah into Greek ; the result was the Septuagint ( from the Latin for " seventy ")

Seventy two sages were placed in solitary confinement and ordered to translate the Torah into Greek.

As such, these would not be accessed by individuals studying the Torah in Greek ( or any other language ) alone.

The Law of Moses ( Hebrew Torah Moshe ת ֹּ ור ַ ת מ ֹ ש ֶׁ ה, Septuagint Greek nomos Moyse νόμος Μωυσῆ ) is a term first found in Joshua 8: 31-32 where Joshua writes the words of " the Law of Moses " on the altar at Mount Ebal.

The usage of the Hebrew term Torah ( which was translated into Greek as " nomos " or " Law ") as equivalent to the English term " Pentateuch " ( from Latinised Greek ), meaning the " Five Books of Moses " of the Hebrew Bible, is clearly documented only from the 2nd Century BCE, In modern Hebrew the term Torah ( typically translated into English as " instruction ") refers to both the first section of the Tanakh and to the " Law of Moses " itself, the actual regulations and commandments found among the 2nd to 5th books of the Hebrew Bible.

Rabbinic Judaism ( which derives from the Pharisees ) has always held that the books of the Torah ( called the written law ) have always been transmitted in parallel with an oral tradition.

According to the Oral tradition, the prose in the Torah is not always in chronological order.

The Torah in the Qur ' an is always mentioned with respect in Islam.

For instance, it serves as a major source in the Torah commentary of Shlomo Yitzhaki, " Rashi ", and therefor has always been the standard fare for Ashkenaz's ( French, central European, and German ) Jews.

The conferring of Jewish status through matrilineality is not stated explicitly in the Torah, though Jewish oral tradition maintains this was always the rule, and adduces indirect textual evidence.

He was married to a Protestant Christian woman and, despite his Hungarian background, he felt affiliated to German culture, writing in an autobiographical sketch, " When I reached the age of fifteen, I left the Jewish way of life and the study of the Torah ... Judaism remained a mere memory and since then I have always felt as a German and as a German only.

Some Jews among the Dor Daim and Talmidhe haRambam understand both the Mishneh Torah and the Talmudic source texts concerning bowing in the Shemoneh Esreh to be teaching that one must always bow down upon his knees, not only during the High Holy Days, but throughout the year.

Traditional rabbinic Judaism, however, has always been of the opinion that belief in immortality of at least most souls, and punishment and reward after death, was a consistent belief back through the giving of the Torah at Mt.

The Mishneh Torah had always been a leading authority in the Baladi ( local, traditionalist ) Yemenite community-as a matter of local custom.

Since Hebrew is the original language of the Hebrew Bible ( known as the Torah and Tanakh ), it is therefore a language that has always been central to Judaism and valued by the Jewish people for over three thousand years and later by Christian scholars as well.

So, too, we are to be careful not to introduce into the sphere of the Torah foreign ideas … Rather, we should always be mindful of the superiority of the Torah, which differs from all other scientific knowledge through its Divine origin … Sages do not demand of us to completely ignore all the scientific knowledge … rather that a person familiar with these other realms of knowledge, but … only from the Torah's perspective … and they warn us that neglecting this perspective will jeopardize our intellectual life.

* Yoel Sirkis " The purpose of The Blessed One was always that one should be involved in Torah in order to bond our souls in the essence and spirituality and holiness of the source of the giver of the Torah ... And if one is involved in Torah study with this intention, one becomes a Merkavah and Heichal for the Shekhinah may he be blessed, so that the Shekhinah is literally within them, because they are a Heichal to God and within them literally the Shekhinah establishes its dwelling place.

" He was always saying that continuing Jewish life and denying Hitler a posthumous victory was the 614th law ," referring to the 613 mitzvot given to the Jews in the Torah.

There are always at least three olim ( people called to read the Torah ):

A synagogue always contains an ark, called aron ha-kodesh by Ashkenazim and hekhal by Sephardim, where the Torah scrolls are kept.

Although a literal approach is not always used when interpreting the Torah, there is a split over which parts are literal.

Lachs disagrees with this, arguing that while sitting was a standard teaching position in the later half of the first century, in the early part of the century the tradition was to always stand while teaching to the Torah.

According to his driver, Asa Wittow, he always sat with a Torah book in front of him, even at a wedding, and propped a Mishnah Berurah on the shelf above his kitchen sink while he washed dishes.