Torah [Heb.,=teachings or learning], Hebrew name for the five books of Moses—the Law of Moses or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The Torah is believed by Orthodox Jews to have been handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai and transmitted by him to the Jews. It laid down the fundamental laws of moral and physical conduct. The Torah begins with a description of the origin of the universe and ends on the word Israel, after the story of the death of Moses, just before the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. In a wider sense the Torah includes all teachings of Judaism, the entire Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.

or Pentateuch

In Judaism, the divine revelations to Israel; specifically, the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. By tradition their authorship has been ascribed to Moses, but biblical scholarship has shown that they were written and compiled at a much later date, probably in the 9th–5th century BC, though drawing on much older traditions. The Scroll of the Torah (Sefer Torah) is kept in the Synagogue Ark. The term Torah (but not Pentateuch) is often applied to the whole Hebrew Scripture (i.e., the later books of the Old Testament), or, even more generally, to that and other Jewish sacred literature and oral tradition.

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