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Torah תורה
The written Torah — the root document of the entire mesorah. Every later work in this atlas is, in the tradition's own self-description, an unpacking of this text and of the oral explanation received with it. Tradition holds Moshe wrote it at divine dictation; academic scholarship treats it as a composite work. The atlas records both without merging.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- תורה
- Also known as
- Chumash, Pentateuch, Five Books of Moshe
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- given at Sinai 2448 AM; complete at Moshe's death 2488 AM (1273 BCE by traditional reckoning)
- Academic
- composite; source documents dated c. 10th–6th c. BCE, compilation by the Persian period
- Duration
- ≈40 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Language
- Biblical Hebrew
- Redaction
- Traditionally written by Moshe (Moshe) at divine dictation, complete by his death in 2488 AM; the final eight verses debated (Bava Batra 15a).
- Structure
- Five books: Bereshit, Shemot, Vayikra, Bamidbar, Devarim; divided for reading into 54 parashot.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moshe wrote "this Torah" to its very end and gave it to the kohanim and elders — the Torah's own account of its writing.
Confidence is for what the biblical text states. |
biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| "Moshe wrote his own book, the portion of Bilam, and Iyov" — the baraita of Bava Batra assigning authorship of the biblical books. The final eight verses (from "and Moshe died there") are a stated machloket: R' Yehudah (some say R' Nechemiah) holds "up to here Moshe wrote; from here on Yehoshua wrote"; R' Shimon objects that a Torah scroll cannot lack even one letter, so for these verses "the Holy One dictated and Moshe wrote in tears" (משה כותב בדמע).
The machloket is left standing; the Gemara notes a practical echo — per Rav, the eight verses are read by a single reader.
|
rabbinic tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| How the Torah itself was given to writing is a machloket of amoraim: R' Yochanan in the name of R' Bena'ah — "the Torah was given scroll by scroll" (תורה מגילה מגילה ניתנה), written in installments as the events unfolded; Reish Lakish — "the Torah was given sealed" (תורה חתומה ניתנה), written complete at the end.
Machloket flagged; both positions verified against the Gemara's wording. Either way the written Torah is complete by Moshe's death, so the entity's dates are unaffected.
|
rabbinic tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| Academic scholarship holds the Torah to be a composite of several sources or strata (the documentary hypothesis and its successors), written between the monarchic and Persian periods and compiled into its present form by the Persian period at the latest. This is stated as the scholarly position alongside the traditional claim; the atlas does not merge the two.
Confidence is for this being the mainstream academic position; the internal details (number and dating of sources) remain actively debated among scholars. Map position follows traditional chronology.
|
reconstruction | ★★★★☆ |
|