Before Chapter and Verse: Reading the Woven Torah

"What a stimulating and impressive work! Stimulating in the ideas and insights that it advances, and impressive in the thoughtfulness around their explication."

Rabbi Dr. David E. S. Stein, Bible scholar and editor.

The Torah (Five Books of Moses), as well as the rest of the Bible,

was not composed in chapters and verses. It was divided into

chapters only in the thirteenth century CE. It took another two

centuries before numbered verses were used. How then was it

composed? Is there any logic to the way its stories and laws were

assembled? Do its five books have clearly demarcated divisions?

Can the identification of such divisions lead to deeper

understandings? These are among the questions that formed the

basis of an extensive research project.

Before Chapter and Verse, the fruit of that research, presents a

surprising discovery. To read the Torah as it was written, the text

must be arranged in columns and rows, as tables, or more properly,

weaves. Each of the eighty-six literary units that comprise the Torah

was constructed as a warp and woof, with the stone tablets of the

Decalogue providing the prototype. In turn, these units were woven

together in the structures that form the five books. The weaving

analogy applies to both the micro level of the unit and the macro

level of the books.

Before Chapter and Verse provides you with the tools to read the

Torah as it was woven. It includes an English translation of the

Torah's eighty-six units, presented according to their literary

structures, as well as maps showing the structure of each book.