Similarities with the Five Books of Moses and Other Ancient Beliefs

Through my weekly Torah study over many years with my Jewish brethren and others utilizing The Torah A Modern Commentary (Edited by W. Gunther Plaut Union of American Hebrew Congregations New York 1981) I was inspired to write this book based on Plaut’s commentaries and gleanings throughout the Five Books of Moses. Plaut’s General Introduction to the Torah xxii thru xxiv concluded the following: The Torah is written in different literary styles with discrepancies in certain accounts and figures. The Documentary Hypothesis says there are four major sources of the book (J, E, P, and D). The combination of these four sources resulted in the creation of a single book, the Torah and was considered a sacred text canonized about 400 BCE. J is the author who used the divine name YHWH and probably lived in the Southern Kingdom sometime after the death of King Solomon (931 BCE); he was responsible for most of Genesis. E uses the divine name Elohim and authored the binding of Isaac (Gen 22) and other Genesis passages as well as much of Exodus and Numbers; he most likely was a northern contemporary of J. D is the author of Deuteronomy claimed to be the book discovered by King Josiah in 621 BCE. P is the author of the first chapter of Genesis, the book of Leviticus and other sections interested in genealogies and priesthood. P is considered the latest part of the Torah composed during or after the Babylonian exile (597-516 BCE). Some theorized that P was the framework into which J/E and D were fitted in the fifth century BCE while others theorize it was the earliest not the latest book to be incorporated. There appeared translations over the centuries in Aramaic (Targum), Greek (Septuagint), Latin (Vulgate), Syriac (Peshitta), and today in just about every written language. In addition to Plaut’s commentaries he also provides gleanings from world literature having a bearing on the text. In the Five Books of Moses (Torah) the gleanings are generally divided into legal (halachic) and non-legal (Haggadic) excerpts. Since there are only three Commandments (Mitzvot) in the Book of Genesis (out of a total of 613) only the practice of circumcision is compared with other ancient civilizations. The other four Books of Moses have been divided numerically into 34 categories in Moses Maimonides’ (Rambam) Mishnah Torah with each one followed by their total number of Torah Mitzvot. Rambam’s categories have been listed in ascending order from those with the least number of Commandments to those with the greatest number of commandments. The Commandments are listed in each book by line and verse followed by similar practices in other ancient Middle Eastern civilizations: Egyptian, Greek, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Amorites, Ammonites, Moabites, Mesopotamia and the city-state of Babylon. Babylonia founded 4,000 years ago as a small port town on the Euphrates River was a state in ancient Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is a region of southwest Asia in the Tigris and Euphrates river system that hosted the beginnings of human civilization. It is part of the Fertile Crescent, an area also known as “Cradle of Civilization” for the number of innovations that arose from the early societies in the area. It was in what is today large portions of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Kuwait from the Mediterranean Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south.