Judaism

Distillation of Judaism (Tanakh) — Decision Record

This README fixes which texts and which translation are distilled, and who reviewed the choices.

Tradition

• Slug: judaism-tanakh
• Tradition / family: Judaism — distilled from the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), the shared scriptural foundation of all Jewish movements (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist).
• Primary frame in one sentence: a covenantal monotheism in which one God, creator of all, calls a people (and through them humanity) into a relationship of justice, lovingkindness, and holiness lived out in the concrete commandments of a shared life.

A critical caveat: the Tanakh is inseparable from its interpretive tradition

Judaism is not a "Bible-only" religion. Rabbinic Judaism understands itself as holding two Torahs: the Written Torah (Tanakh) and the Oral Torah — the Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, and the ongoing halakhic tradition that interprets and applies the text. Most lived Jewish practice (how Shabbat is kept, what the Shema obligates, how a court rules) is determined by the interpretive layer, not by a "plain reading" of the verse.

• What this distillation does: extract principles from the Tanakh text itself (the Written Torah), with verbatim verse anchors.
• What it explicitly does NOT do: speak for the Talmud/halakhah. Where the lived meaning of a verse is set by rabbinic interpretation (e.g., "an eye for an eye" read by the Talmud as monetary compensation), this is flagged as an interpretive-layer note, not silently folded in.
• Implication for the Atlas: the Talmud is a distinct (and enormous) potential source. This stack distills only the Written Torah and notes the Oral Torah as a deferred interpretive layer (a Stage-B candidate of its own).

Canon selection (what is included, and why)

The Tanakh is an acronym — TaNaKh — for its three divisions:

Division	Hebrew	Books	Included?
Torah (Teaching/Law)	תּוֹרָה	Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (5)	yes
Nevi'im (Prophets)	נְבִיאִים	Former: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings · Latter: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve (8)	yes
Ketuvim (Writings)	כְּתוּבִים	Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Five Scrolls (Song, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther), Daniel, Ezra–Nehemiah, Chronicles (11)	yes

• Whole-canon commitment: yes — all three divisions, all 24 books, covered at book/division-level granularity in this pass.
• Why book-level (not per-chapter like the bounded Dhammapada): the Tanakh is ~23,000 verses across 24 books. Granularity is matched to canon size: bounded texts get per-chapter extraction; giant canons get per-book / per-division extraction covering the whole canon, with per-verse depth deferred. This pass produces ~11 book-level files, each principle-bearing with verbatim verse anchors; per-verse exhaustive distillation is flagged for future expansion.

Translation policy

• Named translation: The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation (the "JPS 1917" Tanakh), Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917. Public domain.
• Why this translation: it is the standard public-domain Jewish English translation (a KJV-era diction but rendered from the Masoretic text by Jewish scholars, preserving Jewish book order and the divine name as "the LORD" / "GOD"). Using a Jewish translation rather than the KJV avoids importing Christian framing into a Jewish text.
• Access: fetched as raw verse-level plaintext via the Sefaria API (version The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation (JPS 1917)), per Methodology v2 Learning 1 (raw text, not WebFetch). Example endpoint: https://www.sefaria.org/api/texts/Genesis.1?ven=The%20Holy%20Scriptures%3A%20A%20New%20Translation%20%28JPS%201917%29. Sefaria attributes this version to the Open Siddur Project public-domain edition.
• Verse citation form: Gen 1:1, Deut 6:4, Mic 6:8, Ps 23:1, Isa 58:6 (book abbreviation + chapter:verse).
• Caveat — archaic diction & flattening: 1917 KJV-style English (thou, LORD, mercy) flattens distinct Hebrew terms — e.g., hesed is rendered "mercy," "lovingkindness," and "kindness"; tzedek/tzedaqah and mishpat both appear as "righteousness"/"justice." Where the English collapses a load-bearing distinction, the Hebrew is noted.
• Quote accuracy: char-for-char verified against JPS 1917 via Sefaria API. See quote-audit-judaism-tanakh.md — PASS (93/93 anchors after 20 fixes; 8 paraphrase glosses flagged).

Reviewer / standpoint

• Within-tradition reviewer: none secured.
• Therefore: this output is "one structured reading, not authoritative" — and emphatically so for Judaism, where authoritative meaning is a rabbinic, communal, halakhic act, not a distiller's reading of an English verse. The reviewer gap is flagged.

Structure for this tradition

• Atomic unit ("books/"): a book or book-group within a canonical division; verses cited as Gen 1:1.
• Internal convergence layer?: not produced in this pass. The three divisions could be treated as quasi-independent sources in a future expansion (in a layers/ folder), as could the Written-vs-Oral Torah split.
• Sensitivity boundaries: (a) the Talmud/halakhah interpretive layer is deferred, not spoken for; (b) the divine name is written "the LORD" / "GOD" per the translation, not vocalized; (c) supersessionist Christian readings of the Tanakh are explicitly avoided — this is the Jewish Bible read on its own terms.

Files

File	Status
Methodology	done
Index and traceability (all 24 books mapped across 11 files)	done
Book-level extractions	done — verbatim verse anchors; per-verse depth is future expansion
Core principles	done — 15 core principles
Structural analysis	done
Rooted compass	done

This pass: book-level extractions + core principles complete. Per-verse depth and Oral-Torah/Talmud interpretive layer: not started.