Generally referred to by both Jews and Christians as “The
Five Books of Moses,” the first five books of the Bible—what Jews call “Torah"—is traditionally understood as having been transmitted
to Moses by God during the revelation at Mt. Sinai. The traditional Jewish
approach to the authorship of the Torah is summed up in the words of
Deuteronomy, words that Jews recite each time the Torah is read in the
synagogue. At the conclusion of the Torah reading, a person is given the honor
or lifting the scroll, exposing a few columns of its text to the congregation,
while the congregation rises and chants these words from Deuteronomy: ve-zot ha-Torah asher sam Moshe lifnei b’nai
Ysirael al pi Adonai be-yad Moshe, “this is the Torah that Moses placed
before the people of Israel from the mouth of the Lord by the hand of Moses.”
This expression raisies many questions. Can we be sure that
the Torah that is mentioned in this passage corresponds to the scroll that we
lift in the modern synagogue? How do we know for sure? The text that Moses is
said to have received from God on Mt. Sinai is given a number of titles: The
Book of the Covenant, The two Tablets of Stone, The Two Tablets of the
Testimony, The Ten Utterances (commandments). Indeed, it is only in Deuteronomy
that the term Torah is applied to a text that Moses received from God.
