Timeline: Chronological Table

[First posted in 2013.  This is from our valuable resource: Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz.  

The Chronological Table is provided in connection with the ‘Sedras’ and their ‘Haftorahs’.  For those who are not familiar with those two terms, the term ‘Sedrah’ is a common term for the Weekly Torah portion (sidra or sedra) in Judaism.  Every Shabbat, the reading is scheduled for the Torah portion and followed by the ‘haforah’:

 

THE HAFTORAH

 

The Haftorah (the Eb. term is haptarah, ‘conclusion’) is the Lesson from the Prophets recited immediately after the Reading of the Law.  Long before the destruction of the Second Temple, the custom had grown up of concluding the Reading of the Torah on Sabbaths, Fasts and Festivals with a selection from the ‘Earlier Prophets’ (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) or from the ‘Later Prophets’ (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve Prophets).  We possess no historical data concerning the institution of these Lessons.  A medieval author on the Liturgy states that a little more than two thousand years ago 9168 B.C.E.), Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria and Palestine, forbade the reading of the Torah under penalty of death.  The Scribes, thereupon, substituted a chapter of the Prophets cognate to the portion of the Law that ought to have been read.  But whatever be the exact origin of the Haftorah, there is always some similarity between the Sedrah and the Prophetic selections. Even when the latter does not contain an explicit reference to the events of the Sedrah, it reinforces the teaching of the weekly Reading upon the mind of the worshiper by a Prophetic message of consolation and hope.

 

In the commentary from Pentateuch and Haftorahs featured in the three books: Waiqrah, Bemidbar and Dabariym (Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), we did not include the haftorah reading; only the Torah reading and accompanying background text.—-Admin1.]

 

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