ABSTRACT
The study of the Torah or Pentateuch is a biblical commandment. In Deut. vi the father is enjoined to teach his children all the commandments, statutes and ordinances; and teaching comprises both what the text says and what it means. Interpretation is known by the term derash. Its justification is derived from the verse in Deut. xiii: ‘thou shalt inquire, and make search and ask diligently…’ Rules of interpretation were developed to enable the rabbis to establish laws and regulations to meet the needs of the day. Minute investigation of the biblical text was called for, and far-fetched interpretation was sometimes needed to derive such laws from the Bible. But this method succeeded in preserving the Bible as the Word of the living God and as the perpetual foundation of Judaism. In this way, there arose gradually a ‘fence round the Torah’, considered necessary in response to the commandment to Israel to be ‘a holy nation unto the Lord’. Holiness is understood in its basic meaning of separateness; unless Israel is separate it cannot attain holiness. The fence developed into the oral Torah, eventually codified in the Talmud. The written Torah comprises not only the Pentateuch but all the Canon of Old Testament Scripture. Adherence to the whole Torah as Halakhah, the way to God, secured Jewish survival. Yet there was modification, adaptation, change and even abrogation in a continuous attempt to preserve the biblical heritage. Flexibility was essential, and it could only be maintained by ever fresh study and reinterpretation. The bulk of post-biblical Hebrew and Jewish literature is in fact interpretation of the Bible. Leo Baeck expressed this truism thus: ‘It is a principle in Judaism that truth has to be discovered in, and through, the Bible. The book of “revelation” must again and again be revealed by the teacher. For every sentence and story in this book not only tells something, it also means something. It does not merely describe what has been and now ceased to be. It manifests something permanent that attains actuality again and again.’
