From:  (Nigel B. Mitchell)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Jewish thought
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 00:16:47 GMT

On 20 Sep 1998 22:40:15 GMT, s32170 (Rod
Jackson) wrote:

>Does anyone know if it was unusual for a jew to call Psalms or Isaiah 'the
>law'?

It would be interesting to know your reasons for asking this
question.

The Hebrew word for the first five books of the Bible, "Torah",
is usually translated as "Law" in English. This is unfortunate,
because "Teaching" would be a more accurate translation.

The Hebrew bible is arranged in a different order to Christian
Bibles (and there is diversity amongst Christian Bibles as well).
The Jewish word for the scriptures is *Tanakh*, which is an
anagram of the words "Torah" (Teaching/Law), "Ne'biim"
(Prophets), and "Khetubiim" (writings).
Torah = the first five books
Ne'biim = the prophetical and historical books
Khetubiim = the poetic and philosophical books.

At the time of Jesus there was strong consensus about the
scriptural standing of the Torah and the Ne'biim, hence the
phrase "Law and the prophets". The debates about the scriptural
status and final list of the Khetubiim was yet to take place (the
books which make up the apocrypha are included in this category).

So the answer to your question is no. Jews have never referred to
any part of their scripture as "The Law" - as we would commonly
use that word in the English language.

At the time of Jesus, Isaiah would have been regarded as a
prophetic book, unquestionably scriptural. At the same time the
book of Psalms would have been regarded as amongst the
"Writings", and also considered authoritative scripture by most
people.

I hope these comments help to answer your question.

Cheers

N+

Nigel B. Mitchell

Related Articles:

• THE NEW EVANGELICALS: HOW CHRISTIANS ARE RETHINKING ABORTION AND GAY MARRIAGE
• Theologians, like parents, are invited to be humble as well as (frequently) ignorant…
• The Jesus Driven Life
• INCARNATION
• Virgin Birth: ‘God degraded Mary?’

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.