Confusion between "Torah" and "Bible" is common, and it comes from the fact that the word Torah has more than one meaning. This page separates them cleanly.
Torah meaning 1: the Five Books of Moses
In its narrowest and most common sense, the Torah (תּוֹרָה, "teaching" or "law") is the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Jews call these the Chumash ("five"). They contain the creation, the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, the covenant at Sinai, the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic law.
Torah meaning 2: the whole of Jewish teaching
In a broader sense — especially in rabbinic Judaism — "Torah" means the entire body of God's teaching: the written Torah (the five books, and by extension the whole Tanakh) plus the oral Torah, the interpretive tradition recorded in the Talmud and later works. When a Jew says "Torah" in everyday speech, this broader sense is often meant.
How does the Torah relate to the Bible?
| Torah (narrow sense) | Bible — Old Testament | Bible — complete | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contents | Genesis – Deuteronomy (5 books) | The Torah plus the Prophets and Writings (39 books) | Old Testament + New Testament (66 books) |
| Religion | Judaism (and shared with Christianity) | Judaism (as Tanakh) and Christianity | Christianity |
| Status of the five books | The core revelation, read in full in synagogue each year | The first part of the canon | The first part of the Christian canon |
So the Torah is part of the Bible — the first five books of the Old Testament in the Christian ordering, and the first of the three divisions of the Tanakh in the Jewish ordering. Every word of the Torah is in both.
What Christians call "the Law"
The New Testament frequently cites "the Law" (Greek nomos) meaning the Torah — for instance "the law and the prophets" as shorthand for the whole Old Testament. Paul's extensive arguments about "the law" are arguments about the Torah.
The Qur'an knows the Torah too, as the Tawrat given to Moses — one of the named scriptures of Islam.
Read the Torah
The Five Books of Moses are free to read online in both translations used above — the Tanakh's JPS 1917 and the Bible's King James Version.