The Weekly Torah Portion:
Marty Roberts Presents Interesting Insights
From the Weekly Sabbath Torah Reading

Originally written in Hebrew, the Torah was translated into Greek sometime between the second century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. This translation was called the “Septuagint,” which means “seventy” in Greek. A number of different traditions have developed to explain the origin of this name. There is a rabbinic saying that the Torah has seventy faces. The number seventy—both in the Torah and in later rabbinic thought—represents totality. In saying that the Torah has seventy faces, we mean that no matter how much we study it, we will always find something new to learn.

Each Greek name—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—describes the main emphasis of each book:

Genesis (Bereshit) covers the creation of the world and the human race, and the early beginnings of the Jewish people.

Exodus (Shemot) follows the Children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and into their early travels in the desert.

Leviticus (Vayikra)—meaning the “Levitical book”—is a collection of laws and rituals overseen by the Levites, who were to be priests in the Temple that would later be built in Jerusalem.

Numbers (Bamidbar) continues the story of the journey of the Israelites and, in the first few chapters, focuses on the census of the Israelites taken in the desert.

Deuteronomy (Devarim) is so named because many of the laws given in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers are stated a second time (“deutero” in Greek means second).

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