Re: “You’re obviously not comfortable with knowledge confined to the original and authentic text that is inaccessible in translation . . .”
You are correct. I am not comfortable with reading some meaning into the Scriptures with claims of “secret knowledge” or numerology or meanimgs that are “inaccessible in translation” whether the source is Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or anyone else. When one does so, one can run the danger of being presumptuous with G_d’s word - of claiming a message from Him that He did not give. Maybe you are “comfortable with that, but I am not.
Re: “BTW, the ‘Urim and Tummim was also similar to (lehavdil ‘elef ‘alfei ‘alafim havdalot!) “divination,” but G-d commanded it nevertheless.”
But there’s the difference - G_d commanded it in the case of the Urim and Thummim.
Re: “Are you aware that the original Biblical text has no vowels or punctuation but that these come from oral tradition?
Yes.
Re: “Are you aware that before the printing press Torah Scrolls and other Biblical books had to be written by hand in accordance with ancient rules that are nowhere to be found in the Bible itself?
Yes. And I have the utmost respect for the scribes and priests that were meticulously careful in their copying of the text, from counting the number of letters, even notating repeated words that were clearly a copyist error (but notating as such) to make sure the copy was exact. If a mistake was found they started over. This is why the Dead Sea scrolls show no real differences between the Isaiah copy found in the Dead Sea caves and the much later copies of the 12th century. This is also why liberal or atheist claims that the Biblical texts we have today are unreliable or much different than the original is untenable.
Re: “By your logic, the very transmission of the Biblical text is invalid since it involves rules not written in the Bible.”
Good copying protocols in order to carefully preserve G_d’s written Word is not the same thing as ascribing “meaning to sizes, shapes, crowns, or to derive that the names of letters are loaded with infinite meaning”. When G_d told Moses to write down His Laws, I am assuming that He wanted Moses to do so accurately and carefully, even if He didn’t tell Moses what process to use.
Re: “In other words, you’re a Protestant. You could have just said so.”
Ah, but not Lutheran, Calvinist, Pentacostal, Holiness, Non-denominational, etc. You sound like a Jewish mystic or an extreme Pentacostal, but what does that matter?
In conclusion, did you find any examples of the prophets reading meaning into the “sizes, shapes, crowns, and names of the letters”?
We're not talking about "copying protocols." We're talking about rules and regulations for transcribing the Torah that include what it may be written on, what kind of ink may be used, AND the sizes and shapes of the letters. If a letter is written larger or smaller than usual, if it has a certain number of crowns, it is because that is precisely the way G-d wanted it written and to remove a single crown or to fail to transcribe the letter at the right size completely negates the whole thing. It isn't a kosher Sefer Torah unless it is written 100% in conjunction with all of G-d's (oral) laws for doing so.
Again, I can understand why you as a Protestant object to this. To you the Bible was written only for "salvation" and thus can have no hidden meanings whatsoever. Its meaning must be simple, clear, and practically self-evident. As a Protestant once put it "Scripture hath only one sense, and that is the plain sense." What your beliefs will not let you do is to recognize that the Torah wasn't given to the whole world to teach them about "salvation" but to Israel to observe and keep and to study at ever higher levels. And because the Torah (and not J*sus) is the "logos," it contains the entire creation in miniature. It preceded the creation and was the model for creation.
If you reject the hidden meanings of the letters, then I suppose you also reject the idea that Mordekhai and 'Ester could have possibly written about the executions of the ten Nazi war criminals 2300 years ahead of time?