The Torah (Pentateuch) תורה — חמישה חומשי תורה
The five books received by Moshe at Sinai — the foundation of all later Jewish teaching and law.
The Torah is five books, from the creation of the world to the death of Moshe on the border of the Land: Bereshit, Shmot, Vayikra, Bamidbar, Devarim. Tradition holds that the text was received by Moshe at Sinai and written down by him; the final eight verses describing his death were written, according to one view in the Talmud, by Yehoshua, and according to another by Moshe himself, in tears.
It contains 613 commandments and is built not as a code but as a narrative: law grows out of story and story is repeatedly interrupted by law. The sages say the Torah preceded the world and that God «looked into the Torah and created the world» — a blueprint rather than a description.
A Torah scroll is written by hand on parchment, unvocalised; a single error invalidates it. Public reading, ordered by Ezra, completes the text each year.