Number Seventy

The Tikkunei Zohar, a kabbalistic work composed in 14^th-century Spain, offers seventy interpretations of the Torah’s first word, bereshit. This article traces how: The understanding of the Torah as multivocal culminated in its formulation, “the Torah has seventy faces,” in the 12^th-century Numbers Rabbah (Part 1). The Tikkunei Zohar saw this as a key theological principle and applied it programmatically (Part 2). R. Nathan Spira and Ramchal interpreted other words of Torah, and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov wrote his famous stories to prepare readers for the Torah’s seventy meanings (Part 3).

Biblical authors employed the number 7 in numerous ways to express the ideas of completion, perfection, and holiness and to highlight keywords or elements within a text.

The Torah’s adaptation of a polytheistic ancient West-Semitic custom of sacrificing to seventy gods.

The Book of Exodus begins with an accounting of the members of Jacob's family who went with him to Egypt. Our Torah, the Masoretic Text, lists 70 people. Dead Sea Scroll manuscript 4QEx^b, however, records 75 people. How do we account for this and other differences between the texts?

Genealogical lists are often overlooked, and yet they represent a distinct biblical literary genre with ideological content. What messages are these lists meant to convey?