spin

Ooops, I didn't mean to start a new thread on the topic of oral torah, but now that I have, I'm editing to add some background...

There is a modern Jewish idea called "oral torah" which is being used in a current thread. It has two interpretations, 1) the collected commentary of the rabbis on the written Torah, and 2) the theory that before there was a written torah there was an oral torah. The latter is a type of fundamental acceptance of the words of the (written) Torah and retrojection of those words into the oral form which "preceded" it.

In the thread "Christianity and Judaism", Seeker is using the idea of oral torah as being significant in analysing the background to xianity. It might be interesting for Seeker to supply the source of her knowledge of oral torah, when the concept of oral torah was demonstrably seen to be in use, and how it relates historically to the Hebrew bible.


spin

redzrx

The written (again jewish prespective) and oral torah were given to moses on the mountain(10 commandments ,thunder lightning graven images )


The jewish prespective is(now they wrote the old part) is that you cannot understand the OT without the Oral torah to help explain it. It was called oral becaused it was passed down via rabbis and prophets.. later (I believe it was the 5 or 6 century AD.. but I could be wrong) it was written down as a document.

Hope that helps.

Mario

Epinoia

So if I'm understanding this right, oral Torah is reflected 1) in the Talmud(s) and (2) in the written Torah that was based upon the OT?

spin

Let's get this straight: the "old testament" is an abusive name of the Hebrew bible as it was misappropriated by xians to justify their creative prophecies for their messiah and, at the same time, making it "old" is a polemic favouring the "new" over the old at the expense of masquerading the Hebrew bible as a second class xian book. The old testament as xians would have it is fundamentally the Hebrew bible, stolen and packaged as xian, under the excuse that their messiah had come to fulfil the law and that his followers had become the rightful heirs of Judaism.


spin

spin

This view of the oral torah may be the modern Jewish view, but it is a relatively late one in biblical standards. The temple did not support such a view.

My problem has always been for those people who believe the notion of oral torah that there is no historically sustainable basis to it. In fact there may have been an oral tradition at any time in Jewish history, but we only have written texts to go by, so one can never know at any given time what the oral torah consisted of. This rendeers oral torah in a historical context where it cannot be supported of no (historical) value whatsoever.


spin

redzrx

with this I Agree with you.

seeker

You may be right but a Jew might argue that there are references throughout the Torah to an Oral Torah. Consider: Exodus 22:16 "And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. [17] If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins. (KJV) Where are the instructions of this dowry? How much is it? It's not in the written Torah anywhere, because it's part of the oral law.

Deuteronomy 12:21 "If the place which the LORD thy G-d hath chosen to put his name there be too far from thee, then thou shalt kill of thy herd and of thy flock, which the LORD hath given thee, as I have commanded thee, and thou shalt eat in thy gates whatsoever thy soul lusteth after." (KJV)
In this verse, people are told to slaughter animals as we had been commanded to do so. However, you don't find the instructions for kosher slaughter written anywhere. Hence, this is an example of the oral law, dating back to Sinai.

Nehemiah 8:8 "So they read in the book in the law of G-d distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." (KJV)The Oral Torah is the sense that causes one to understand the reading.

Deuteronomy 6:4 ". [8] And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. [9] And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates." (KJV) Verse eight above is the commandment of tefillin. Without the oral law, this verse is up to more speculation and interpretation than one could ever hope to wade through. Tefillin is called "phylacteries" in the New Testament. Verse nine is about the mezuzot that adorn the doorposts and gates of Jewish homes. The oral law teaches how the tefillin and mezuzot are made properly. Without the oral law, these verses would be hopelessly misinterpreted in a thousand different ways.

Given the above I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there may have been some form of authority the priesthood could point to as giving them the knowledge to settle disputes. The Torah itself isn't specific on a lot of things so it's easy to see how a priest could simply add "as God commanded" to the end of a decision and grant himself instant authority. Obviously the Torah was written to allow this.

spin

What makes you think the "dowry for virgins" is an oral source?? Just because we don't have it? Perhaps the annals of the kings of Judah is also an oral source?

The fact that God had ordered that "thou shalt kill of thy herd and of thy flock" is what "I have commanded thee".

Because of illiteracy, the written Torah was read out for people to hear, and in reading sense was given to it. This is an ex temper understanding provided. This is no way implies some parallel source of information.

You'll note that there is no item to fit the binding them as a sign on the hand. You'll notice that tefillin were found at Qumran and not one of them was the same, ie they were still in development at the beginning of the era. In fact what appears to have happened is that these items are a very late 2nd temple development, still in development at Qumran.

You'll note it is the priests, who were the Sadducees, who supported only the written Torah. (The Pharisees mainly were from the Levites and the artisan classes and therefore excluded from the running of the temple religion, so they worked at a community level.) Priests naturally referred to a written source, though naturally one could imagine that they would explain the text, once again in an ex temper manner. Of course people used the written Torah. This doesn't support the notion of an oral torah.


spin

seeker

In reference to this dispute, Lawrence H. Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, writes:

". . . Any light that might be cast on the history of the Pharisees and their teachings in the pre-destruction period would be critically important. With new evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls it is now possible to demonstrate that for much of the Hasmonean period Pharisaic views were indeed dominant in the Jerusalem Temple . . . " (pp. 30-31, Bible Review, June 1992, "New Light on the Pharisees: Insight from the Dead Sea Scrolls")

The Sadducees held the High Priesthood and a majority of the Sanhedrin but Herod was on good terms with the Pharisees. One of the first things Herod did upon becoming king in 37 B.C. was to order the execution of forty-five Sadducean members of the Sanhedrin for their support of his rival for the kingship, Antigonus; in addition, he confiscated their property to pay Marc Antony, the Roman who had appointed him king. He also turned the Sanhedrin into a religious court only, taking away its power in secular matters. I Josephus, Antiquiteis of the Jews, he records Herod's rewarding of two Pharisees, Pollio and his disciple Sameas, who had encouraged the Jews to accept Herod because they felt the rule by a foreigner resulted from divine judgement and the people should willingly bear it.

Also keep in mind that historically the Pharisees were the ones who claimed tradition. The Sadduces came from the hellenized Jewish aristocracy and really only came to power in John Hyrcanus court. According to Josephus' classic history, The Antiquities of the Jews, John Hyrcanus was originally a disciple and supporter of the Pharisees. However, a Pharisee named Eleazer opposed Hyrcanus serving as high priest because of doubts about his genealogy. Eleazer alleged that his mother had been raped during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, calling Hyrcanus' lineage into question. When Hyrcanus proved that this story was a lie, a Pharisaic court recommended a lenient punishment of lashes for the slanderer. This angered Hyrcanus, who, with the encouragement of a Sadducean friend, quit the popular Pharisees and became a Sadducee. He even went so far as to abolish the Pharisaic practices that had been enacted into law and punish those who observed them. The hellenistic Sadducees consequently amassed considerable power during his reign.

The Sadducees power began decreasing during the reign of Salome. It was during that time that Pharisees began getting appointments to the Sanhedrin and they were actually considered the power behind the throne. The role of the Pharisees was always greater with the common man. All of which goes to say that the Pharisees ideology was the dominant paradigm in that period when Jesus was supposed to have been and they promoted an oral tradition.

spin

Yeah, Schiffman has this thing for the Pharisees, I know. The scrolls do not support his claims. They are in fact generally very temple-centered. He merely interprets references to Ephraim as being a veiled reference to the Pharisees -- it's a near anagram. He has little better than that, so we can scratch that.

This doesn't explain the fact that Herod got his high priests first from Babylon and then a family of Sadducees who had returned from Egypt. Herod attempted to maintain a good rapport with most religious groups he could and was a strong spokesman for the Jews in the diaspora.

This is mainly anti-Sadducee propaganda. They were after all the losers in history, so you could say anything bad about them and no-one was there to complain.

Who exactly were the people who died in the temple performing their duties during the siege in 63 BCE? The priestly supporters of the Jewish king Aristobulus II, ie Sadducees. They were not particularly more hellenized than anyone else. They were devout temple-centered Jews, despite the bad press.

And John Hyrcanus played politics.

They had a strong indian summer under Aristobulus II, before most of them were killed. This is the real eclipse of the Sadducees.

Shelamzion just happened to be the sister of Shimeon ben Shetah, one hell of a vociferous Pharisee. When her husband died she took over power. Pharisaism rampant is not too strange then. It got put an end to with Aristobulus, only to be allowed to slowly come back after the Sadducees got done badly in 63 BCE.


spin