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Torah

תורה

Anonymous / tradition · composed c. 9th-5th century BC · Jerusalem (Israel) · scripture

One God, bound to a people by covenant and law, acts through history rather than nature.

The five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy, traditionally ascribed in full to Moses but read by critical scholarship since the 19th century as a composite text woven from multiple originally independent sources. The classical documentary hypothesis, associated with Julius Wellhausen, distinguished four main strands: a Yahwist (J) and Elohist (E) narrative tradition, a Priestly source (P) concerned with genealogy, ritual, and law, and the largely separate legal core of Deuteronomy (D). Later scholarship has revised the model's details and timing considerably, and no single account of the sources' number, date, or combination commands full consensus, but the underlying premise, that the Torah is an edited composite rather than a single author's work, is now close to universal among critical scholars. Most place the combination of sources, and something close to the text's final form, during or shortly after the Babylonian exile in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, though individual traditions within it are plausibly far older.

Narratively, the five books move from cosmic creation and a primeval history of flood and dispersion, through the patriarchal sagas of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their migration into and out of Egypt, to the Exodus from slavery under Pharaoh, the giving of covenant and law at Mount Sinai, and roughly forty years of wilderness wandering, law-giving, and internal conflict before Israel reaches the threshold of the promised land without yet entering it. Genesis is largely narrative; Exodus, Leviticus, and much of Numbers are dominated by cultic and legal material, priestly instructions for sacrifice, purity, and the sanctuary; Deuteronomy recasts the law a second time as a farewell address by Moses, in a distinct legal and rhetorical style scholars treat as its own source layer.

The Torah's lasting innovation is theological rather than narrative: it binds a single, exclusive God to one people through covenant and written law, rather than through the myth and nature-cult common to its Near Eastern neighbors, fusing ethical monotheism to legal code so that Israel's national history becomes, in effect, the working-out of that covenant's terms. This fusion made the Torah the foundational text of Judaism, and, transmitted and reinterpreted in turn, the shared textual root beneath Christianity and Islam.

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  • The Twelve (Minor Prophets) · composed and compiled c. 750-400 BC, from Hosea and Amos at the earliest to Malachi and Jonah among the latest
  • Deuteronomistic History (Joshua-Kings) · compiled and redacted c. 650-550 BC (a first, Josianic-era edition; a second, exilic edition)
  • Jeremiah · oracles delivered c. 627-580s BC; prose sermons and final redaction continuing into the early Persian period, c. 500 BC
  • Ezekiel · c. 593-570 BC, composed among the Judean exiles in Babylonia
  • Ezra-Nehemiah · c. 400-300 BC, incorporating earlier first-person memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah
  • Chronicles · c. 350-250 BC, late Persian to early Hellenistic period
  • 1 Enoch · a composite text assembled from sections composed c. 3rd century BC to the turn of the era; the latest section, the Similitudes (chs 37-71), may run as late as the 1st century AD and is conspicuously absent from Qumran
  • Septuagint · translated c. 280-100 BC; the Pentateuch first, traditionally dated c. 250 BC, with the remaining books following over the 2nd-1st century BC
  • Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) · Hebrew original composed c. 180s BC in Jerusalem; translated into Greek by the author's grandson c. 132 BC in Egypt
  • Jubilees · c. 160-140 BC
  • Community Rule · the community's rule took shape c. 150-100 BC; the earliest surviving copy is paleographically dated to c. 100 BC
  • Temple Scroll · c. 150-100 BC
  • Damascus Document · c. 150-100 BC; first known from medieval Cairo Genizah copies before Qumran fragments confirmed its ancient date
  • Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs · a Jewish core probably composed c. 150-100 BC; the surviving Greek text shows later Christian interpolation, which complicates precise dating
  • 1 Maccabees · composed c. 100 BC, soon after the events it narrates (175-134 BC)
  • Testament of Moses · c. AD 1-30; its prediction of an "insolent king" reigning 34 years is widely read as pointing to Herod the Great, suggesting composition shortly after his death
  • On the Creation of the World · c. AD 10-40
  • The Undisputed Pauline Epistles · c. AD 50-58, across Paul's missionary career; Romans, the flagship letter, was written from Corinth
  • Hebrews · c. AD 60-90; precise date and place of composition are disputed
  • Mishnah · compiled across the tannaitic period, c. AD 70-220, redacted into final form c. AD 200-220 by Judah ha-Nasi
  • Apocalypse of Abraham · c. AD 70-150
  • Gospel of Matthew · c. AD 80-90
  • Gospel of John · c. AD 90-100
  • Didache · c. AD 90-120; its opening ethical section, the "Two Ways," likely draws on older Jewish catechetical material
  • Jewish Antiquities · completed c. AD 93-94
  • 4 Ezra · c. AD 100-120, written in reaction to the Temple's destruction in AD 70 despite its fictional setting after the earlier, 6th-century BC destruction
  • Targum Onkelos · c. AD 100-400
  • Genesis Rabbah · c. AD 400-450
  • De Civitate Dei (The City of God) · AD 413-426

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