Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

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