Is There a Pattern to the Five Books of Moses?
Popularizes and extends Y. Honigwachs's theory of 'Shared Principles' - five paired themes drawn from aligning the two tablets of the Ten Commandments - arguing that these principles explain the sequence of the Five Books of Moses, the internal division of each Book into five parts, and even the subdivision of parts into five sections, offering a structural answer to critics who see the Torah's organization as arbitrary evidence of composite, non-Divine authorship.
Appleson popularizes Y. Honigwachs’s theory of five “Shared Principles,” derived by pairing each commandment on the first tablet of the Decalogue with its counterpart on the second (e.g., belief in God paired with the ban on murder), and shows how these principles align in sequence with the overall themes of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. He argues the pattern recurs fractally: each Book can be divided into five parts, and at least some parts into five further sections, each keyed to the same five principles - illustrated in detail through the division of Genesis and Exodus. Appleson argues that the existence of such a structural pattern challenges the assumption, common in biblical criticism, that the Torah’s apparent disorganization is evidence of composite authorship by different hands at different times.
Robert R. Appleson, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association in Chicago, Illinois.
Cite this article
Robert R. Appleson. "Is There a Pattern to the Five Books of Moses?." Jewish Bible Quarterly 36, no. 1 (January – March 2008): 39–48.
Robert R. Appleson. "Is There a Pattern to the Five Books of Moses?." Jewish Bible Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1, 2008, pp. 39–48.