Torah

Written Torah and Oral Torah

This progressive expansion of the term Torah is reflected in the ways in which the categories of Written Torah and Oral Torah are defined and distinguished. The Written Torah is a fixed, bounded corpus of texts, whether understood in its narrow sense as the Pentateuch or in its broader sense as the entire Hebrew Bible. The Oral Torah, on the other hand, is a fluid, open-ended category, which in its broadest sense includes not only the halakic (legal) and haggadic (nonlegal) teachings contained in the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash but also potentially all of the teachings and practices that are authorized by the rabbinic sages in each generation as part of the oral tradition. The distinction between the Written Torah and Oral Torah is traditionally held to derive from the original revelation at Mount Sinai, in which God gave to the prophet Moses two Torahs: (1) a written text, consisting of the Pentateuch, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim, and (2) an oral tradition of interpretation that was destined to be preserved in the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash as well as in the teachings of subsequent generations of rabbis.

The canonical authority of the Torah is linked in particular to the Pentateuch, which is ascribed a special status as divine revelation in that its every word is traditionally believed to have been directly dictated by God to Moses, who acted as a scribe and recorded the words of God verbatim in the Sefer Torah. The authority of all subsequent texts and teachings is legitimated by establishing a connection between those texts or teachings and the Sefer Torah, by granting them a subsidiary status as part of the Written Torah, in the case of the books of the Nevi'im and Ketuvim; allotting them a designated place as part of the Oral Torah, in the case of the teachings of the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash; linking them to the revelation at Mount Sinai as part of the open-ended category of Oral Torah; or otherwise aligning them with the model of the Sefer Torah. Through such strategies, the Torah was transformed from a limited, bounded text—the Sefer Torah—into a limitless, encompassing symbol that represents the entire system of rabbinic Judaism.

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