We must read Scripture from the foundation – from Torah – upward. Let’s think about Scripture as if it were a house. How would we go about building a two-story house? Would a builder start at the first level? The second level? The roof? No! They are going to begin by laying the foundation. Only from there can they build the rest of the house. That is how we must consider Scripture, from the foundation upward.
The Scriptures include the Torah, the Writings, and the Prophets (together, these are called the “Tanakh”, or Hebrew Scriptures). Upon these, rest the Apostolic Writings of the Besorot (Gospels), Acts, the Epistles and the Apocalypse of John (Revelation). These Scriptural elements all build upon one another, just like a multi-storied house. As a matter of fact, the Tanakh was the Bible that Yeshua and all the Apostles read, taught from and understood as foundational to their message.
In Judaism, we celebrate the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai annually. Have you ever thought about how fundamental, how foundational, this Sinai event was for all humanity? Let’s put this event into contemporary words: at Sinai, the Creator of Everything stepped into His creation, before the entire nation of Israel, and said something like “Hey, I’m G-d. Look around, I made all this – and by the way I’m the one that got you out of slavery. It’s really nice to meet you all.” This was THE pivotal event in human history.
In this moment, G-d introduced Himself, not just to one solitary person, but He introduced Himself to an entire nation – publicly! This introduction to Hashem was seared into the collective consciousness of the Jewish nation and it was not dependent upon only one person to remember the experience. In addition, from this ancient event we get all of Torah. Had this public event not happened, Genesis to Deuteronomy (B’reisheet to D’varim) would not have been recorded. That’s right, without Sinai we would not have stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, etc. G-d’s introduction at Sinai, and His subsequent instruction, underlines Torah as the foundational revelation upon which all later revelation must be built and with which it must agree.
Building from that foundational revelation of Torah, let’s look at our seven supernal truths about the Scriptures.