Verified answer

The Torah was given in two parts --

1) the written Torah - this is also referred to as "The Five Books of Moses" (the first five books of the Jewish and Christian Bibles)

2) the "oral Torah" -- this is when Moses sat with the Jews of his time and he explained in detail all of the laws that are briefly summarized in the written Torah, as well as the practical details that need to be shown and taught physicaly.

This was then taught from one generation to the next and continues to be taught today in the Jewish schools and religious Jewish homes.

"the Talmud" is the first set of study aids for the oral Torah that was published in a massive, 500 year effort by all of the academies of the Jewish nation.

Today, there are many further aids -- but it is impossible to truely contain the whole thing in writing -- and therefore it still must be passed directly from teacher to student.

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NOTE

"The Ten Commandments" is a misnomer. It is better to call them "the Ten Phrases" or "Ten Utterances" --

There are in fact 613 laws in the Torah.

"The Ten" are the words said directly by God to the Jewish nation - they are a quick summary that contains within it the germ of the entire system of 613.

However --

the people could not deal with the intensity of the experience of direct revelation, and therefore asked Moses to receive the details.

"Tanakh" is the term for the Jewish Bible.

It is an acrostic of Torah Navi Ketuvim - the three categories of books in the Jewish Bible.

The Torah is Jewish and usually refers to the first five books in the Tanakh

Part of the Jewish scriptures. It consists of the first five books of the Tanakh written in Hebrew. The names of each of these books in Hebrew are: Bereshit ( Genesis), Shemot (Exodus), Vayikra (Leviticus), Bamidbar (Numbers) and Devarim (Deuteronomy).