If the Oral Tradition can be trusted with preserving the vowels and punctuation of the Bible, it can be trusted with its interpretation as well
I don't think that necessarily follows, ZC. Maybe you can explain why you think it does.
The Torah Tradition not only preserves intact and correctly the vowels and punctuation (else we have nothing but a string of over three hundred thousand consonants) but also the precise rules and regulations for correctly copying out and writing the Biblical text. If the same Tradition doesn't know what the Bible means, then no one does.
And I didn't mean to imply you were an atheist, kosta. I just hope you either are at peace, or else find peace.
What I am saying, ZC, is that knowing orthography is one thing; interpreting words is an altogether different thing. We all read the Bible in English, yet many people interpret it differently. The rabbis appear to have preserved the correct way of identifying the words, but that doesn't mean the correct (theological) interpretation; just gramamtical.
If we drop the vowels in English Bibles, we could run into words with more than one possible meaning. For example "shp" can mean ship, shape, sheep, shop, etc.
Obviously the words preceding and following will determine what "shp" is supposed to be. That's not necessarily the same as correctly interpreting the theology of the text containing 'shp."
I didn't say you implied. I was just only making myself clear to you as regards the "loss of faith." I lost faith in the man-made God and I don't believe that God wrote directly or indirectly. That's all. I feel no enmity towards religion, or the faithful.
As for peace, I have peace just by knowing that the world is the way it is even if I don't understand it. It is not mine to understand lor judge any more than it is for your dog to know that the earth is round and that it is 1 AU distant from the sun. His brain will never comprehend it just as we will never comprehend the purpose of living in an endless space full of rocks traveling around in circles or smashing into each other for as long as time existed for all practical purposes..