How The Torah Concordance Works
(The Chronological Torah Concordance)

The Torah contains a complex set of instructions and teachings. They were given through messengers, to certain individuals, and specifically to the nation of Israel. Additionally, many of them are repeated in various places throughout the Torah.

Therefore, in order for The Torah Concordance to be useful in finding and studying the instructions, a system was developed for organization and identification. There are two basic categories of the instructions of the Torah: those that were enjoined for all generations, and those that were not. The Torah Concordance identifies these two categories as the Systematic Order and the Exclusive Order, respectively.

Constructing these lists was a painstaking and demanding project. In order to make the job less burdensome, we started by listing all instructions given in the Torah—beginning with Genesis 1:1 and ending with Deuteronomy 34:12—in the order they occur, one after the other, verse by verse (even if it was repeated). This initial list was numbered and called the Chronological Order, using a letter “c” following the entry number to distinguish it from the organized orders: Systematic and Exclusive. The Chronological Order was merely used as a background list for comparison. Having the instructions listed out this way made it much easier to gather all instructions concerning “loving your neighbor,” for instance, into one place.

In the first printing of The Torah Concordance, the Chronological Order was included at the back of the book. However, for various reasons we decided to remove it. One of the main reasons was that it was misleading; the size of the book gave the impression that the Torah contains far more instructions than it actually does. Additionally, the only real purpose of the Chronological Order was to be able to locate the place (or places) of a particular instruction, but that also can be done almost as as easily by looking up the references in the Bible.

Nonetheless, since the Chronological Order was useful in creating the organized catalogs in The Torah Concordance, it stands to reason that it may hold some usefulness for users. Therefore, it is offered here as a free PDF document under the following title: The Chronological Torah Concordance. One advantage of having this PDF is the capability of doing searches. Since the “c” identified numbers were retained in The Torah Concordance, it may be useful as a companion to the book by searching the “c” numbers.

Click the link below to download the PDF file of The Chronological Torah Concordance.