Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

-------Original Message-------
 
From: Harold Holmyard
Date: 06/23/06 08:38:24
 
 
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].  Or is
everything that comes from God equally authoritative?  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.
 
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.  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.
 
Kevin Riley