The Torah as a great literary achievement

In the seventh and eighth chapters of the book of Nehemiah, Ezra the scribe and priest gathered the people of Israel. Standing on a platform he read aloud the text that we call the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. As he did this, Levites passed among the rows of people explaining what Ezra was reading. This is the first instance within the Bible of interpretation, and it began a history which continues. It also marked the first time this collection was called the Books of Moses, which was a tag line for centuries in English Bibles.

The books that make up the Torah are diverse in content and background. Very few people today who study these writings think of them as a whole text written by Moses. The Torah text is a composite, made up of many strands and assembled after centuries by a writer-editor. The use of such sources is borne out by name in the books of Chronicles and Kings. In the Torah some core sources are long documents. At the core of the books of Leviticus and the book of Deuteronomy are two such long documents. The discovery of the core of Deuteronomy (chapters 12-26) occurred during the reign of Josiah (ca. 621 BCE). These had to be expanded and collated.

Now here is one of many instances of the cleverness of the writer-editor of the Torah: the oldest narratives in the Old Testament are short stories embedded at Deuteronomy 6 and 26. In these the narrative runs from the freeing of the Hebrew captives from Egypt to the entry into the promised land; scholars call this the Settlement Tradition. Joshua 24 and Exodus 15 fit into this narrative as well. A second ancient narrative involves Moses receiving the commandments and gathering the people at the mountain in the wilderness. This is called the Sinai Tradition. These two traditions were separate sources, each of which came from a portion of the twelve-tribe confederation that united as the nation of Israel. It was the task of an editor to join these together, and this was done in an incredibly clever fashion by inserting the Sinai tradition into the narrative of the Settlement tradition in the book of Exodus.

Similarly, if you read carefully through Genesis one and Genesis two, you notice that two separate traditions of creation have been merged into a singular text. Genesis one clearly bears the marks of ritual recitation, as if it were used in a worship service, which is probably was. Those who belong to churches or synagogues with formal worship patterns will recognize the repetitive nature of the text. Genesis two, on the other hand, has a different narrative framework that emphasizes the creation of humanity.

My point, and I needed to do some literary analysis to make it, is that we are looking here at an incredible and beautiful literary achievement. Greek writers like Homer and historians like Herodotus and Thucydides have nothing on the Priestly Writer, as he is known, who took documents and bits of disparate material and forged them into a singular narrative.

To call them the “Five Books of Moses,” as older English translations did, may be a stretch, but there is a truth to the title. That overarching title indicates that these five books, while a composite, were assembled into a unity by a person of incredible literary skill. Even if you are not a believer you can learn to appreciate such literary creativity. And if you are, this critical approach can only enhance your understanding of the history of belief.

Fr Gabriel Rochelle serves St Anthony of the Desert Orthodox Mission and teaches courses in the Bible as Literature at NMSU. Email him at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: The Torah as a great literary achievement