There are now vowels (or punctuation) in the TaNa"KH. It is nothing but a string of consonants. The vowels and punctuation (without which the text would be indecipherable) are part of the Oral Tradition.
The Torah instructs Israel to slaughter animals "as I have commanded" but doesn't contain the laws referred to.
The Torah commands that certain sacrifices be "heaved" and others be "waved" but doesn't explain what how these rituals are to be carried out.
The laws for the calculation of the new moon and the intercalation of leap years are only hinted at in the barest way. None of them are included in the TaNa"KH. Even the Qara'im (who claim to go by the Bible alone) have to depend on an ancient unwritten tradition to do these things.
The laws for correctly writing down a kosher copy of the Torah so that it will be correct and fitting for use in the public readings are not given in the Torah.
All these things, without which the Jewish religion could not have survived after one year, are found only in the Oral Tradition. Those Protestant chr*stians who depend on the Jewish Oral Tradition for their Bibles and their calendars but who dismiss the Oral Tradition are being illogical and hypocritical to boot.
Protestantism's argument with Catholic and Orthodox chr*stianity has nothing to do with Judaism. The "sola scriptura" argument is out of place here.
The transliteration I typed was to make for handier pronunciation on a public forum. If you prefer I use the more typical spelling, no problem.
For the record, I do not dispute the rationale for the Talmud or its value as a source of commentary. I use it as a resource and cite it from time to time. However, I do not take its findings as "Oral Law" (particularly as regards the agricultural laws), as do some of the Orthodox. So when you stated your comments as fact and not as findings, I didn't have a problem with that as long as you cited the source. Given that you didn't, I qualified the opinion both to let you know the I hold that tradition in lesser regard than the Torah and for the benefit of the forum. You have your opinions based upon your sources, and I have mine based upon my sources. That's just how things are.
All these things, without which the Jewish religion could not have survived after one year, are found only in the Oral Tradition.
So it is said. :-) OTOH, it is written that the Jewish nation would have survived just fine had they obeyed the Torah. In my opinion, this is particularly true with the statutes in Behar Sinai in that they did not keep Shemitta for centuries (never mind Yoveil). Both are directly associated with national survival by the chiastic inclusion containing Behar Sinai and B'chukotai, but more than that, the mechanics of those consequences are explainable by the everyday plain meaning metrics of economics, military logistics, and ecology if (and only if) Exodus 23:11 is kept as originally specified, namely, "release and abandon" not "rest and lie fallow."
Unfortunately, when Judah came back from Bavel there was no chance the Sabbath year would ever be observed as originally specified simply because Judah's Persian, Greek, and then Roman suzerains would never have tolerated preparations for guerrilla war every seven years!!! (Such as stocking a year's worth of food in the wild against siege, etc... I know, you have no idea what I'm talking about; that's why you might-should read the book) As a result of that oppressive circumstance, the rabbis ended up enforcing a circumscribed form of Shemitta as "rest and lie fallow" in the Second Temple Period that was lacking the key strategic and logistical attributes of Ex. 23:11 as "release and abandon" by which it could have worked as promised. Understandably, they omitted any reference to the original specification in the Talmud and unless you have read Tractate Sheviis it you couldn't have known that. That they understood the verse as "release and abandon" is confirmed by the Septuagint Greek.
My take is that had they written it down, the rabbis would have been arrested and possibly executed and we thence wouldn't have a Torah today. Hence, they (or "we," seeing as I have Jewish lineage) didn't keep their national independence as specified therein.
So, when the fall of Israel is attributed by the Oral Tradition to "idolatry" when a simpler more obvious explanation is available, it is hard to offer it the authority so often claimed and the prophets warned against such:
It is equally problematic to attribute the survival of the religion to the Oral Tradition in the time between the crossing of the Jordan and the Bar Kokhba Revolt when it is written that the nation had yet to cover the Lord's written essentials. When those rules can be shown by everyday metrics to have precisely the predicted and realized outcomes when obeyed or flouted, well, the need for attribution to mystical explanations start to appear suspect.
So while I would agree with you that thereafter the Talmud has played a central role in maintaining the Jewish religion's integrity to this day, I have seen indications in the Septuagint that conflict with the claim that any more than a few fragments of the Oral Tradition extend beyond the return much less to the Exodus. And no, the reason I am citing the Septuagint has nothing to do with my religious affiliations, but more to do with its many useful parallels with and distinctions from the Masoretic text. Moreover, because the circumstances of exile precluded adherence to much of the Torah, the habit of intrinsic interpretation became so inculcated into the Talmud that it drove more obvious and relevant understandings outside the scope of consideration, which is a methodology that is IMO fraught with many a peril.