In “The Cosmic Chiasmus” I mention in passing that the Pentateuch, the five Books of Moses, follow the same fivefold typological structure I find on so many other levels of Scripture. The shape’s presence on that macro-level indicates the fractal aspect of the pattern. Here is the little chart I dropped in that piece without further commentary:
Leviticus, in the center, stages a triadic ascent patterned after the tabernacle, which I posted about here on Substack and have outlined on my website. Genesis and Exodus are also outlined on my website (and discussed somewhat in “The Cosmic Chiasmus”). Numbers and Deuteronomy I have solid outlines for, but I haven’t polished them for presentation yet. They’re pentadic after the common form, but I understand Deuteronomy to make extensive use of octaves within the general pentad. Here, at any rate, are my general outlines of the five books:
Leviticus in the center (Book Χ) typologically plays the role of the priestly sacrifice that redeems from the uncleanliness of death, prefiguring Christ thereby. It is positioned in the center of four other books, just as the Levites and the tabernacle are surrounded by four camps of Israel in the wilderness (see Num. 2).
Genesis (Book Α) tells of the creation of the world, laying out the fundamental patterns of a cosmos recapitulated in a creature, the human being, made according to the image of the Creator.
Exodus (Book Β) portrays, by means of the Passover, the differentiation of Israel from slavery to the world — how they are, by covenant, set apart as a holy people unto the Lord.
Numbers (Book Ο) prefigures the life of the Church as it gains a foothold on the Promised Land before the general resurrection, overcoming enemies both within and without as it acquires a life of virtue. The water of separation at center — sanctified by the ashes of a red heifer mixed with wood, hyssop, and scarlet and burnt outside the camp, for use in purifying those made unclean by contact with death — clearly betokens the water of baptism by which the Church enters into Christ the Lord’s life-giving self-sacrifice.
Deuteronomy (Book Ω) narrates the end of wandering before a new generation enters the Promised Land, which, along with Moses’s blessings and curses for those who keep the Lord’s commandments and those who don’t, anticipates in type the final judgment to occur at the end of days and the resurrection of the flesh.
The whole Pentateuch, then, forms a fractal pentadic structure very much like this following illustration of Christ and the Evangelistic tetramorph from an Ethiopian manuscript of the late 17th century:
Christ is in the middle of four living creatures; likewise each living creature has four heads around a center. This is the cosmic chiasmus. The illustration is from a manuscript that contains not just the Gospels but also the Octateuch, a term used for the first eight books of the Old Testament, a regular form in Ethiopic literature.
And Ethiopia’s not alone. The ancient Greek tradition had an Octateuch (ἡ Ὀκτάτευχος) too, commentaries being written on Genesis through Ruth in the fifth and sixth centuries and illuminated manuscripts of these eight books being a popular format in the period after the restoration of icons from the ninth to thirteenth centuries.
The eightfold structure, however, is foreign to the Hebrew Tanakh as it developed, since although Joshua and Judges came to head the books of Prophets after the Torah, Ruth was grouped elsewhere among the Writings. In ancient manuscripts, though, Ruth is grouped with the contemporarily set Judges, so closely in some cases that it is included as part of Judges, being counted as part of Judges for some methods of numbering the books of the Old Testament symbolically. The numerology favored in the Christian reception of Holy Scriptures, however, emphasizes the eightness, and it’s easy to see the appeal of the symbolism.
The Pentateuch, while clearly a unit unto itself, yet in its entirety leads up to an event it does not contain, the inheritance of the Promised Land. Joshua as the sixth book of the Bible, depicting Israel conquering the land of Canaan by the power of God, circumscribes the first five, after the pattern of the Hexaemeron set forth in the first chapter of Genesis. Moses dies and is buried outside the Holy Land, on the near side of the Jordan, but Joshua carries them over and conquers both the South and the North, like Adam being created on the sixth day composed of dust and breath and uniting the two.
Then a six-part completion calls for a sabbath ending, and the “Hexateuch” receives it with Judges. This, the seventh book of the Bible, betokens the sabbath rest as a type of death, a dissolution of order due to disconnect from God. Christ typology abounds throughout the stories, but continually in the most flagrantly corrupt ways. Ehud (seen above), Deborah, Gideon and his sons, Jephthah, Samson — they all follow patterns of the Christ, yet resemble antichrists more often than not. The continual salvation of Israel amidst profound apostasy and chaotic patterns of leadership displays the power of God and the effectiveness of His promise, even in a political condition resembling death.
After death comes resurrection, and after Judges comes Ruth, a story of tremendous power and beauty about the ecstasy of redemption to be found in marital love. Elimelech and his wife Naomi leave Bethlehem in the Holy Land and cross back over the Jordan on account of famine — an image of the fall and expulsion from Paradise. Their sons marry not fellow Judahites, not even fellow Israelites, but Moabites, daughters of the daughter of Lot. Elimelech and his sons die in this foreign land, and Naomi and her two childless daughters-in-law are left alone. When she resolves to return to her people in Judah, one of the young women returns to her former kin, but the other, Ruth, cleaves in love to her mother-in-law. Ruth, a childless Moabite widow, like a soul utterly corrupted by sin, yet vows to worship the God of Naomi and to follow her as one of her own.
Ruth’s faith is rewarded in Bethlehem, as, at the instruction of Naomi, she gives herself body and soul to Boaz, a rich Judahite who sees her gleaning in his fields and offers her protection. They couple at night on the threshing floor during the harvest season. But still, deference is given to a nearer relative of her late husband because the Law is given precedence over passion. This relative declines to redeem her, even as the Law of itself can redeem no one. The lover Boaz, like the Son of Man he typifies, does redeem Ruth, and their union is announced at the gates of their city. She bears Obed, who begets Jesse, whose son David (the eighth) becomes the anointed one. Redemption is best told as a love story — one with pentads and triads and octaves. How is it that a Moabite woman becomes not only a child of Israel, but the mother of salvation? How is it that the Law of Moses is joined to the story of the Christ? How is it that a wretched sinner like me can be made over in the likeness of God and become a mother of His kingdom in this world?
Like Numbers and Deuternomy, my outlines for Joshua, Judges, and Ruth require polishing before I share them, but I feel confident in my understanding of their general plan. Here it is, the triad joining the five Books of Moses to make up the Octateuch: