Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

And for this particular point of view, which no longer counts on the state or expects salvation from kings, Jesus had a monumental share of the Old Testament behind him: namely, the Torah, the first five books of Moses. The Torah had grown out of the history of the failure of the kingship in Israel and the experience of the catastrophe of exile. In order to give a true evaluation of the significance of the Torah in the context we are talking about here I must broaden the perspective somewhat.

To begin with, the structure of the Hebrew Bible does not follow the model of a continuing “biblical history.” Older readers, remembering the so-called School Bibles or Bible History books of an earlier time, may still be familiar with the image of an ongoing biblical narrative. It began with the creation of the world, continued with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and their children, through Abraham, Moses, the judges, David, Solomon, until finally it reached the Maccabees. This all took place in as homogeneous a narrative as possible incorporating everything to be found in the Old Testament. Prophets such as Amos, Isaiah, or Jeremiah were introduced at appropriate places. Where the Old Testament itself revealed some holes in the story they were filled in, at least as far as possible.

But that picture in no way does justice to the structure of the Hebrew Bible. The real Old Testament does not offer a continuous history of events. Taken as a whole, it is not history at all. Its first and most important part is the “Torah,” followed by the “Nebiim,” the prophets. The books of Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings were also counted among the prophets—because of the fact that the prophets Nathan, Ahijah, Micah ben Imlah, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, and Huldah play an important part in them.¹⁵ Finally, the third block is made up of the “Kethubim,” the “writings.” The reason for mentioning all this is that the Torah, in Jewish understanding—an understanding that was being shaped already in Old Testament times—is the foundation, the basis of all Sacred Scripture. The “prophets” and the “writings” are by no means sections with equal weight; they exist with reference to the Torah and are understood to be a kind of commentary on the Torah. The fact that this is really so is indicated by the synagogal liturgy, in which the Torah is always recited first and as the reading that determines all the rest.

The Torah in its present form originated, at the earliest, toward the end of the Babylonian exile, but more probably soon after the end of the exile. It was intended to secure Israel’s identity and rescue it from a total rupture of continuity. This is true, of course, only of the Torah “in its present form,” for many texts of the Torah are older than that. It contains songs, narratives, and collections of laws that belong to older strands of tradition. But in the context of our question we are not concerned about those ancient traditions that were worked into the Torah; we are considering the overall composition, that is, the final form we know today. The Sitz im Leben of the Torah as a whole composition is the crisis, indeed catastrophe, of the exile. And the Torah is not simply a collection of laws; rather, its law collections are framed by and interwoven with stories.

An important question for us is: when does the story end, the one that constitutes the frame for Israel’s history and repeatedly interrupts it? The answer is amazing.¹⁶ The frame of the story is not extended to the entry into the Promised Land under Joshua, much less to David’s kingship, and certainly not as far as the Maccabees. Rather, the Torah ends with the death of Moses (Deut 34). He sees the land of promise from a distance, but he is not allowed to enter it. And with him Israel also stands on the borders of the land, but it may not enter. When the annual recitation of the Torah reaches this point it stops and begins again from the beginning.

Christians for the most part do not perceive this break in the text because they have a wrong idea about the Hebrew Bible. They still have something like the “Bible history” of the old school Bibles in their heads, and those simply continued the story without interruption after the death of Moses.

Of course, we have to ask why the basic text for Israel’s identity ends with the death of Moses. Why doesn’t it end after the people have entered the Promised Land? Or with the building of Solomon’s temple? Or with the reforms under King Josiah? Why is Israel’s history interrupted? Why does Israel’s fundamental text accept an open ending? A border situation? An unfinished narrative?