Torah and yad, exhibits in Big Synagogue Museum, Wlodawa, Poland. Wikimedia
Is the Torah a Pentateuch or Hexateuch?
Does the Torah end with Deuteronomy or Joshua? The answer depends on whether we view the Torah as a law collection or as a narrative about a promise fulfilled.
Published: December 10, 2013
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
Many of the issues discussed in the devar Torah are found in Thomas B. Dozeman et al., eds. Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch: Identifying Literary Works in Genesis through Kings (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011); see also Thomas Römer and Marc Zvi Brettler, “Deuteronomy 34 and the Case for a Persian Hexateuch,” Journal of Biblical Literature 119 (2000), 401-419.
[2] ואעשך לגוי גדול…
[3] לזרעך אתן את הארץ הזאת…
[4] Translations follow the New Jewish Publication Society Tanakh.
[5] אנכי ארד עמך מצרימה ואנכי אעלך גם עלה…
[6] An inclusio or inclusion, also called an envelope structure, is when a story or poem begins and ends in the same fashion. See for example the use of כל הארץ (“all the land”) to demarcate the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9, or the repeated verse that frames Psalm 8.
[7] The beginning of this speech is recollected in the Haggadah.
[8] See, for example, the crossing of the Jordan in Joshua 3, which is depicted as a “do-over” of the crossing of the Reed Sea in Exodus. Joshua 5 is especially replete with such references to earlier material in Genesis-Deuteronomy: the Israelites are circumcised (vv. 2-9), fulfilling Genesis 17; in v. 10, “Encamped at Gilgal, in the steppes of Jericho, the Israelites offered the passover sacrifice on the fourteenth day of the month, toward evening (ויחנו בני ישראל בגלגל ויעשו את הפסח בארבעה עשר יום לחדש בערב בערבות יריחו:),” exactly fulfills Lev. 23:5, “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, there shall be a passover offering to the LORD (בחדש הראשון בארבעה עשר לחדש בין הערבים פסח לי-הוה)”; and Joshua is confronted with a marvelous revelation (vv. 13-15), echoing Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3), and like the former, is told “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy (של נעלך מעל רגלך כי המקום אשר אתה עמד עליו קדש הוא)” (v. 15), almost an exact quotation of Exodus 3:5.
[9] Samuel and Kings are one book in Jewish tradition; in Christian traditions they are two books, having been divided into two in the Septuagint, the ancient [Jewish] Greek translation of the Bible.
[10] The translation follows The Loeb Classics, cited in James VanderKam and Peter Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity (NY: HarperOne, 2002), 166. See also pp. 166-167 for their discussion of the possible ways that the twenty-two book canon of Josephus is related to the rabbis’ twenty-four book canon.
[11] See Marc Zvi Brettler, “Torah,” in The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 1-2.
[12] This point was also noted by Richard Elliott Friedman in his devar Torah on Parashat Ha’azinu, also for TheTorah.com,Does the Torah End with the End?
