Community Origins: Torah

Reading: Deut 4:32-40, Ps 119.

Narrative Torah as Israel's Original Story
Origins frame the ethos of nations, families, and persons.
The Pentateuch narrates Israel's unique origin (following the heavens, the earth, humanity, and Abraham).
Each stage in Israel's origin is theologically loaded:

Gen 1-2: by God's utter sovereignty.
Gen 2-3: by humanity's constitutive relationships with God, one another, and all creation.
Gen 3: by our sinful rebellion and its consequences.
Gen 4-11: by the catastrophic course of primordial human history (generations interlaced with violence, superhuman power, flood, disrespect, conspiracy, confusion).
Gen 12-32, 35: by God's election of unworthy, conniving, failure-prone, yet responsive Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Gen 33-34, 36: by Israel's difficult relations with neighbor nations.
Gen 37-50: by the family's internal struggles, displayed in the Joseph cycle.
Gen 37-Ex 1: by God's sustaining and maturing the family in Egypt.
Ex 1-18: by God's liberating Israel from Egypt.
Ex 19-31, Deut 4-30: by God's covenant with Israel following its exodus.
Ex 32-34, Deut 31-32: by the foreshadowing of Israel's apostasy, ruin, and restoration in the face of God's blessings.
Ex 35-40/Lev: by the contextual meaning of the institutions of priesthood, ark, and tabernacle.
Num/Deut 1: by God's sustaining, judging, forgiving, and maturing Israel in the wilderness.
Deut 2-3, 33-34, Josh: by God's gift of the land's conquest, for the sake of the patriarchs.

What are the Torah's consistent themes?

(David J.A. Clines: 'the theme of the Pentateuch' focuses on the partial fulfillment of God's promises to the patriarchs of descendants, covenant, and land.)
God is purposeful, powerful, personal, and good: in contrast to human beings and the gods.
God is providential: God provides Israel to the world, and God provides for Israel in the world.
God's people are inglorious: failing, worldly, conflicted, yet through God's patience acclimating partially to new covenantal life.

These stories are Israel's heart and soul.

And the church's (1 Cor 10:11)!

Israel's first task: Remember them (Deut 4:9-11, 4:23-24, Jewish Torah practice)

... in word and deed ("God remembered," Ex 2:24).
Jesus does (Deut 8 in Luke 4:1-4).
So do his disciples (so "echoes" and presuppositions of Old Testament traditions throughout the New Testament).

Instruction ('torah'): House Rules
Relationships imply rules; rules reflect and structure relationships.

Therefore the Pentateuch's narrative and legal material hang together.
Narrative Torah is 'gospel' that forges Israel in its specific relationships with God;
legal Torah is 'law' that respects, exposes, and structures those relationships.
Thus exploring their details furnishes insights of lasting value (Matt 13:51-52).

Numbers 10:11-36:13 interlaces the two in an illuminating way:

Rules follow failure, yet (at least in the meantime) fail to prevent further failure.

("The law was added because of transgressions," Gal 3:19).
Then what good are they? Paul views the Mosaic regulations as Israel's childhood custodian (Gal 3:21-26).

A persistent issue: What role(s) do the covenantal Torah regulations play in lives of faith?
The OT already suggests some fluidity and flexibility according to Israel's circumstances:

The Torah frames them historically (Deut 5:6);
Psalms treasure but do not depend on them;
the histories affirm them but acknowledge their severe limits;
the prophets foresee restoration and change rather than abolition;
Jewish messianic expectation awaits renewed justice and purified worship.