[b-hebrew] daughters jacob never spoke of
Harold Holmyard
hholmyard at ont.com
Thu Jun 22 22:26:31 EDT 2006
Dear Kevin,
>The idea that there is an oral law equally as authoritative as the
>written law is highly dubious to me. You say that this prevents
>mistranslation, but it allows the importation of every kind of merely
>human idea and even perversion of God's word. God warns against adding
>to his word, and a proposed "oral law" does just that. It presents
>something as having the same authority as the written word, from what
>you say, and thereby adds to God's word.
>
>Yours,
>Harold Holmyard
>
>It does raise the question though of whether God's written communication is
>greater in authority than his verbal communication [or vice versa].
>
HH: Not really. If God wants something to be a permanent rule of life
for His people, he has a prophet write it down. That's all.
> Or is
>everything that comes from God equally authoritative?
>
HH: Basically yes.
> I know we can't
>discuss those things on this list, but the questions do arise from reading
>the text of the Hebrew scriptures where other information not written in it
>seems to be assumed as knowledge available to the reader.
>
HH: Not so much that it interferes with anything, and nothing essential.
>
>
>BTW, restricting God's word solely to the written text doesn't seem to have
>protected it from a great variety of interpretations, and even on a very
>liberal and accommodating reading of those interpretations they can't all be
>right.
>
HH: But at least we know what word we're dealing with.
> Getting back to the topic of the Hebrew text, it seems that
>authority is signalled by "God has said", never by "God has [caused to be]
>written". I like to hear what the oral Torah and commentators from today
>and the past have said, even if I wouldn't consider any written or oral text
>as infallible and inerrant.
>
>
HH: But God says it in written form, and "written" is used to mark
authority: "it is written."
Yours,
Harold
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