Why does the Torah tell stories?

Hi,

"When you find stories without mitzvot in the Torah and you think that there was no need to mention the story, or that it is unnecessarily verbose, this is only because you don't see the particular reasons why it is mentioned. 

"For example: The Torah's list of travels appears, on a simple level, to be of no benefit at all. Because of this, the text says, 'And Moshe recorded their events according to their travels, at the word of Gd.' The need for it is very great; all of these miracles are known as true only by those who saw them, but in the future their memory will only be related as a story, and the listener might deny them… 

"Among the greatest miracles of the Torah is the way that Israel stayed in the wilderness for forty years and received manna daily. That wilderness was as recorded in the Torah, 'Not a place of planting, and figs and grapes and pomegranates, and there was no water to drink'… And because Gd knew that one might challenge these miracles in the future as people challenge other stories, and one might think that they stayed in the wilderness near a settled area… or in places where one could plow and plant, or be nourished by some plant there…"

(Rambam, Moreh haNevuchim 3:50)

Have a great day,
Mordechai

The seventy sparks of Torah

Hi,

"It was taught in the yeshiva of Rabbi Yishmael: The Torah says, 'It [Torah] is like a hammer, splitting stone.' Just as a hammer is split into many sparks, so every one of Gd's declarations was split into seventy sparks."

[Note: Rashi and Tosafot disagree as to whether the stone or the hammer splits in this metaphor. I have followed the view of Tosafot here.]

(Talmud, Shabbat 88b)

Have a great day,
Mordechai