'Torah' in the Hebrew Bible : an evolution

Abstract

The aim of this work is to explore the the semantic spectrum of the word תורה in the Hebrew Bible and to trace its evolution throughout the biblical texts. The original aim was actually to explore that evolution and development from the Hebrew Bible through to the Second Temple Jewish literature and down to the writings of the medieval Rabbis; however, as soon as I started working on my first chapter, it became obvious that the original scope was too ambitious for an undergraduate dissertation, and therefore, the investigation was limited to the Hebrew Bible. The chapters have been organized according to the order in which the biblical books in question appear in the Hebrew canon, though not strictly according to the division of that canon into Torah (Pentateuch), Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings). Rather, the Tetrateuch has been examined in the second chapter, separate from the book of Deuteronomy, which was considered together with the books Joshua through Kings in the third chapter owing to the nature of their common editorial background. The remaining Nevi’im are looked at in chapter four, while chapter five deals with the Ketuvim. Within each chapter, I chose to proceed in the examination of each biblical book in the order in which it appears in the Hebrew canon, with the exception of chapter two, where the mainly Priestly books of Leviticus and Numbers were more convenient to be dealt with before everything else, due to the rather easily identifiable nature of their common editorial stratum in comparison to the complexity of identifying the editorial strata to which the rest of the Tetrateuchal references to תורה belong. All the English translations provided for the Hebrew quotations follow the JPS Tanakh translation (1985), except when otherwise stated.