Torah meaning

Meaning

Instructions

Dove, Global

Etymology

From the verb ירה (yara), to bring about of a unified effect by means of many little impulses.

From the noun תור (tor), dove, from the verb תור (tur), to explore or survey.

Related names

• Via ירה (yara): Ashtoreth, Gomorrah, Jeremoth, Jeriah, Jeriel, Jerimoth, Jeruel, Jerusalem, Jorah, Jorai, Moreh, Moriah, Tiria, Yiron

• Via תור (tur): Gether, Caphtor, Rimmon-methoar, Taralah, Tarshish, Tartan

The word Torah means Law, but reflects "the way things are" much rather than "the way things are supposed to be". It's what we moderns call Natural Law, and it has nothing to do with anybody's religion. Long before it was realized that the natural world is not governed by wily gods and wayward spirits but rather by the harmonic unity of rules that can be discovered and mastered, the existence of these rules and their unity were discovered in the patterns that crystalized in the stories that humanity told — and specifically, the strange set of archetypes and tropes upon which the global conversation was found to converge. That set grew like a pearl, ever more into focus, until it was found and recognized, and it became cherished and was stored in ever thicker layers of protection.

From all cultures in the world arose highly similar stories, that were naturally honed by the forces of supply and demand. Independently, audiences of the world had asked for certain stories to be repeated and perfected, while others were neglected and forgotten. Like a lens that focused ever more perfect on the very heart of our kind, the stories of the world began to reflect the most fundamental structures of consciousness ("I AM") and of the natural world that flowed from it: what we moderns call Natural Law.

The Torah permeates the whole of existence. It's the core software upon which the whole of reality runs, the operating system of the universe, if you will. It's not simply the first bit of the much bigger Bible, but the very nucleus of all that is, was and ever will be. The sole purpose of the New Testament, the Quran and the Zohar is to encourage people who did not grow up with the Torah — or even who never knew that there is such a thing as Torah, or who knew but didn't realize what a very big deal the Torah is — to return to the Torah. The New Testament, the Quran and the Zohar are commentaries on the Torah, introductions to it for people who need an introduction because they cannot possible begin to imagine what the Torah is and how it ever came to be in the possession of mankind.

The narrative stories of the Pentateuch (i.e. the five books of Moses), therefore, are not so much legendary, folkloristic or even sentimental histories but much rather archetypes of processes through which everything that evolves either will evolve or will be annihilated (read our article on Evolution and the Bible for more on this). Fulfilling the Torah is thus not so much a forced obedience to stipulations but rather a having developed into an entity that corresponds to the way the physical universe works; something that is stable in the physics sense of the word.

Since that stability is a requisite for further growth, that stability must be reached before anything else can come about. In a passage that could easily spawn a few gigabytes worth of commentary, Paul teaches that love fulfills the Torah (Romans 13:8-10) but Jesus makes it clear that the entire law must be fulfilled before the state in which people can actually love their neighbor is achieved (Matthew 5:18). And this still has nothing to do with anybody's religion.

The creation account of Genesis 1 is not so much a primitive myth, but rather the most rudimentary blueprint of how evolution works. It's not linear; it's a fractal. All of Scriptures is a continuation of that fractal — and a fractal is a structure that gets repeated at different levels of complexity, which is how a small book can contain the entire universe (John 21:25).

The story of the Father and the Three Sons for instance (in which one son dies or diminishes and the lowly second son joins the glorified third) is told in its most basic form in the account of Adam and Cain, Abel and Seth, and is repeated in various nuances from Noah and Shem, Ham and Japheth all the way up to Jesus' parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14), the image of Jesus on the cross with his one neighbor rejected and the other one joined with him in Paradise (Luke 23:43), the breach between the lost northern kingdom of Israel and the saved southern Judah which contained the temple of YHWH, and might even establish the rough outline of the New Creation (in which satan is irrelevant and the nations of the earth attach themselves to the elect living in the New Jerusalem; Revelation 21:24).

All these narrative forms (also known as narrative cycles: wheels within wheels within wheels) are obvious continuations, or self-similar iterations (geneticists would speak of homologous structures), of the Second Day of creation, when one watery continuum is breached in two by a third (namely the heavenly firmament). The waters over the firmament are heard from no more, and the waters below the firmament produce dry land, vegetation and life; federated with and governed by lights placed in the dividing firmament (see Genesis 1:1-19 relative to Genesis 15:5, Daniel 12:3, Nehemiah 4:21, Matthew 2:2), whose functions are self-similar to the final generation of Cain (see our article on Jubal).

This image may even apply to the structure of a living cell, in which the cell-body distinguished itself from the world at large, organized around a nucleus that contains the cell's genetic code (see our article on the Household Set), and obviously also applies to the organization of Israel around the tabernacle, which contained the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the two tablets with the Ten Commandments. This tabernacle, in turn, provided the blue print for the Temple and the Temple became the Body of Christ; all formed after fundamental patterns which were shown to Moses (Exodus 25:40, Hebrews 8:5). And that is why the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ follows the human reproductive cycle, and the standard model of elementary particles appears obviously embedded in the structure of the family of Abraham.

The name Torah and the general word torah are usually translated with either law or teaching, and that would work on the proviso that what is taught is actually true (i.e. a reflection or adaptation of "natural" law). And it should be noted that covenant precedes formal law (covenant: Genesis 6:18; deposition of formal law: Exodus 20, but note man's natural knowledge of law: Genesis 26:5, Romans 2:15); meaning that the relationship of God and mankind is not brought about by wisdom (God is not "discovered" or found by looking for him; Luke 17:20), but that wisdom is brought about by the relationship of God and mankind (God is found because he looked for us; 1 John 4:19).

Quite tellingly, the first time that the word תורה (torah) is used is in the statement: "The same law applies to the native [Israelite] as to the foreigner who lives in Israel" (Exodus 12:49). The second time our word appears is in Exodus 24:12, where the Lord instructs Moses to approach him on the mountain in order to receive the famous stone tables that the Lord had prepared for him (Exodus 24:12).

Even though the existence of Torah also resulted in rules and regulations that people needed to learn by heart and carefully observe, Torah itself was regarded as something delectable (Psalm 19:10), desirable (Psalm 119:92) and loveable (Psalm 119:97).

The Hebrew word for Law (Torah) is a derivation of the verb ירה (yara), meaning to throw, cast or shoot:

The letter ת in front of a root has somewhat the same function as an integral sign in front of an equation: it sums up the whole of different variations of the root. But when we do that with the root ירה (yara) in order to create the word תורה (Torah), something that seems like a regular female form of the word תור emerges:

To anyone who is not familiar with these things, seeing a dove descend on someone (Matthew 3:16) is cute at best. For someone who sees the linguistic connection between Law and dove, this is all quite a bit more profound.

Jesus summed up the Law by stating what the "larger and unified objective" of all God's instructions are: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind & You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). These words sum up the true purpose of man.

Also note that the first occurrence of the first letter of our word תורה (torah) is the last letter of the first word of the Bible, namely בראשית (bersheet), meaning "in the beginning" (Genesis 1:1). Fifty letters later (or forty-nine, depending how you count), we find the second letter of our word תורה (torah), namely in the word תהום (tehom), meaning "the deep" (Genesis 1:2). Another fifty letters down, there's the ר in וירא (w'yra'), meaning "and he saw" (Genesis 1:4). Fifty letters after that sits the ה in the word אלהים ('elohim), meaning God.

Torah = In The Beginning The Deep Saw God (see Psalm 42:7).