Carol and I walked into our first Hebrew Roots teaching meeting at the Noah’s Ark Christian Bookstore in Temecula, CA. Chauncey Navarro mentioned that his teaching for the evening would be “A Call to Arms” from a Hebrew viewpoint.
We had no expectations, but both of us felt the Lord wanted us to attend the meeting. So, we were eager to learn.
In the first ten minutes, Chauncey used the words: Torah, Pentateuch, Tanakh, and Talmud.
Now, if he would have stopped and asked, “Can anyone tell us what these three terms mean,” I would have slid down in my chair, hoping to hide behind the person in front of me. I had never fully understood these terms.
It turns out the meanings are —
Torah is a Hebrew word that roughly refers to the first five books of Moses, which includes B’resheet (Genisis), Sh’mot (Exodus), Vayikra (Leviticus), B’midbar (Numbers), and D’varim (Deuteronomy). The word Torah is usually translated into the English word Law in most of our English translations, but it more nearly means instructions or directions.
Pentateuch is the Greek translation of the first five books of the Old Testament, and thus our modern Christian translation. Pentateuch means five (penta-) books (-teuchos).
Tanakh is an acronym for Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim, which mean Law, Prophets, and Writings, respectively. It is the whole Hebrew Bible.
Talmud roughly means the Oral Torah or the rabbinic commentary on how to apply the written texts of the Torah.
Chauncey wove his teaching through the books of Revelation, Daniel, Romans, Ephesians, Isaiah, and others, connecting the Old Testament and the New Testament into one seamless teaching. To him, the New Testament is an addendum to the Old Testament.
Okay, but what did I think when the teaching was over?
I went home and rewrote one of my eBooks, which is published on Amazon. There is no doubt that his teaching opened my eyes to new revelations that I had not seen in my thirty years of studying the Bible.
Carol and I finished the week by attending a Feast of Trumpets celebration near Lake Arrowhead, California.
(Continued in Part 3…and if you are interested, the full series to date can be seen here.)
Larry Who 