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  • From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] oral law
  • Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:21:20 -0500

Dear Yitzhak


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.


The claim that there is no oral law is just as external to the Torah/Bible
as the claim that there is.


HH: But if there is an oral law, the written law ought to notify us of that fact. That really is a crucial point. How could God expect people to submit to an oral law that he does not even indicate has any existence? Perhaps the point we need to emphasize is that God was the sovereign of Israel and ideally was always directing the leadership. Yet we see that this did not always happen. Since the leadership was supposed to come from God working through his servants, we don't have to hypothesize the existence of an oral law to guide future details in all the applications and interpretations of the law given once for all. God was still there. Now some may be saying that this phenomenon continues through the history of Israel right through the Talmud. No doubt that is possible. But as we see from history, that may not be the case. So any particular statement by anybody that is not in Scripture itself is open to scrutiny.

More to the point, and without identifying
the oral law as the Mishna/Talmud, it is very likely that there is an oral
law, simply because any code of law that is written is written in a certain
context, and further generations must interpret that law to allow new
situations to be addressed.


HH: But this does not require an oral law passed down from Moses. The new generations can interpret the written law that Moses gave and apply it to their new situation.

While something may have seemed clear
to the author of the law, it may not be so clear to its practitioners several
generations hence.


HH: But this does not call for an oral law from Moses. It only calls for a cultural heritage that remembers, if remembering is needed. Whatever the point was that is not so clear, if Moses did not write it into the law, it is evidently something left to the discretion of the people or to the direct divine guidance that was available.

All of this creates the background whereby any code
of law that is written down, has along with it, associated understandings
that are not written down, and also must be interpreted continuously in
further generations.


HH: I am aware of the tradition of constitutional law in the U.S. with precedents based on later Supreme Court decisions, which often take guidance from lower court decisions. But these subsequent precedents and legal cases do not flow out of the Constititional framers in any direct way. There was no oral Constitutional law given by the framers. There was only the Constitution. We have written records of the thoughts of the framers in many particulars, but the Constitution is a sufficient document in itself.

However, Shoshanna's interpretation of Rashi and Midrash as part of this
oral law is not shared by all Jews. It is an extreme interpretation that
essentially says that Rashi or the Rabbis of the Midrash whom he often
quotes was not a great scholar but simply a scribe who wrote something
handed down to him from the days of Moses. While that may describe
much of his work (much of Rashi is effectively quotes from the Midrash),
he was also a great scholar and a true understanding of Rashi can only
be achieved by seeing all his quoted sources (which are many!) and
identifying which parts he chose to quote, which he chose not to quote,
what he chose to add of his own, and answering why he chose to do what
he did.


Hh: Yes, he was a person with a viewpoint, jsut as the rest of us are people with viewpoints.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard





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