“A.) Is there an existential difference between that Jewish Oral Tradition handed down over the centuries (or even millenia from the time of Moses until that Oral Tradition was codified) and Roman Catholic Oral Tradition passed on from Bishop to Bishop until it was later codified?”
I did not know there was a Roman Catholic oral tradition. Which Bishop did it start with and when?
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/812102/jewish/What-is-the-Oral-Torah.htm
The Torah has two parts: The “Torah Shebichtav” (Written Law), which is composed of the twenty-four books of the Tanach, and the “Torah Sheba’al Peh” (Oral Law).
God told Moses1 that he will give him “the Torah and the commandments.” Why did God add the word “commandments?” Are there any commandments which are not included in the Torah? This verse (amongst others) is a clear inference to the existence of the Oral Torah.
The Oral Torah was transmitted from father to son and from teacher to disciple
Originally the Oral Law was not transcribed. Instead it was transmitted from father to son and from teacher to disciple (thus the name “Oral” Law). Approximately 1800 years ago, Rabbi Judah the Prince concluded that because of all the travails of Exile, the Oral Law would be forgotten if it would not be recorded on paper. He, therefore, assembled the scholars of his generation and compiled the Mishnah, a (shorthanded) collection of all the oral teachings that preceded him. Since then, the Oral Law has ceased to be “oral” and as time passed more and more of the previously oral tradition was recorded.
The Oral Law consists of three components:
1. Laws Given to Moses at Sinai (Halachah L’Moshe M’Sinai):
When Moses went up to heaven to receive the Torah, God gave him the Written Torah together with many instructions. These instructions are called “Halachah L’Moshe M’Sinai” (the Law that was given to Moses on Sinai). Maimonides writes that it is impossible for there to be an argument or disagreement concerning a Halachah L’Moshe M’Sinai, for the Jews who heard the instructions from Moses implemented them into their daily lives and passed it on to their children, who passed it on to their children, etc.
“How do we know that that Oral Tradition which emerged after John’s death has any veracity or authority at all? If we say “We know that it is truthful and authoritative because it was passed from Bishop to Bishop and because it was passed from Bishop to Bishop we know that it is true,” isn’t that circualr reasoning?”
Indeed, that would seem to be the case to me. Of course, Catholics may say that the Holy Spirit guides their magisterium, much like the Holy Spirit guided the apostles. However, I don’t think that is such an easy matter to establish.
“If so, doesn’t that hold true for Jewish Oral Tradition that is outside of the canon (Torah) or the canon (Genesis to Malachi) - whichever one of the two one accepts as being authoritative?”
Similar to the apostles being around to vouchsafe the New Testament, the Jews had prophets who could attest to the verity of their scriptures. At some point, the prophets departed from Israel, so I think at that point, any of their additional traditions become unreliable.
They’re similar in nature, definitely. In terms of codifying Jewish scripture, for one thing, it was already codified in Jewish law and doesn’t need a new revision.
However, the rabbinical tradition did allow for adaptation as long as it did not violate the foundations. Christianity comes out of a mixture of the rabbinical and hieratical traditions. That is, Jews do not accept Jesus as the Messiah, but Catholics do, so no matter how great are the similarities between Jews and Catholics, the starting point is important.
Because Catholics believe that all doctrine is based on the foundational doctrine under their feet and expressed through layers of interpretation and reinterpretation, I’d say they’re quite similar but simply starting from a different point.
Yah'shua rebuked the Pharisees when they impugned His Written Word with their Oral Tradition.shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
This thread sounds like an invitation to a Jewish vs. Catholic vs. Protestant food fight. I’m going to stay out of it.
I’m Noachide, but the old Episcopal cannon had a concept called REST; Reason, Experience, Scripture, Tradition. It never drew any complaints from me.
Misunderstandings about the Canon must be answered before these questions can be. At the time of Christ, there was no single canon. There was the Law, held by all Jews, including Sadducees and (laxly) Samaritans as divinely inspired. There were the Prophets, held by Pharisees as the Word of God, but not by Sadducees. There were the Writings, held as inspirational, but not in the same standard as the Prophets. (By this tripartate division, David and Solomon were considered Prophets, so Samuel and Psalms were considered among the books of the Prophets.)
Certain of the Writings were published along with the Prophets and the Law in the Septuagint. Unlike the Palestinian Jews, the Dispersed Jews became Christians in large numbers. Thus, the Septuagint became a canon unto itself, simply because it was published as a book.
It’s not that Catholics “added” books to the Canon; it’s that Catholics never infallibly defined a canon until the Council of Trent. The modern debate about the canon revolves around what may be used to establish doctrine. Absent the doctrine of Sola Scriptura among Catholics, there was no need to define such a canon.
“The Bible” simply consisted of those books used during mass, which in turn. Several Church Fathers routinely referred to what Protestants call “apocrypha” as scripture, including to settle doctrinal disagreements among Christians. Others warned that the Jews did not regard the “apocrypha” as scripture, so it made little sense to cite the “apocrypha” as defense of Christian doctrine to Jews. Still others used “apocrypha” to describe certain books which Catholics reject as non-biblical.
Thus, there was no distinction between “oral tradition” and “scripture.” What was “scripture” was what was accepted by tradition as doctrinally correct. Thus, many books were rejected as doctrinally unsound (The “Gnostic” Gospel of Thomas, etc.), outside of the apostolic tradition (the Shepherd of Hermes), spiritually beneficial but doctrinally unnecessary (The Didache), or containing far too many local variants (most Acts of the individual Apostles).
This notion can still discerned within the ambiguities of the Council of Trent: The canon is defined as those which contain unique doctrine which must be defended. “Greek Esdras” is left in a limbo: unnecessary, since it contains virtually nothing unique, but not condemned. Psalm 151 and 3 Maccabees, commonly read at mass by the Orthodox, but lacking among Western masses, go unmentioned.
As local Traditions diverged, Scripture emerged as a test of what comprised authentic Tradition: nothing contrary to Scripture could be regarded as authentic. But this is a practice for discerning Tradition, not for subjugating Tradition as an invalid authority. Thus, we come to the authority of the Pope: where a doctrine has gone without contradiction from among the authoritative orthodox (small “o”) who have properly considered the notion, the Pope can discern that a doctrine has been Tradition, and can thus declare that the doctrine is infallible; he cannot decide that his own opinions are infallible. Nor can a Catholic in good faith contradict a doctrine of the Church simply because no pope or council has ever ruled on it.
Thus, it’s not a matter of a Pope lacking the free will to affirm a false doctrine; it’s a matter of him lacking the authority to do so. As a matter of being author of History, not as a matter of denying free will, God has affirmed that the Pope cannot with proper authority infallibly declare what is false (”Whatever you declare bound on Earth is bound in Heaven.”).
In a sense, then, the issue of whether a tradition carries authority, the answer is that it is a matter for the Church to decide as a whole (as in an ecumenical council that is approved by the Pope), or for the Pope to discern has been decided.
Jewish and Christian oral traditions are totally invalid and unreliable.
The oral traditions of any other religious group is questionable.
However the oral traditions of secular humanist and/or anti-Christian/Jewish are 200% valid and reliable and irrefutable.
(my sarcastic comment for this thread
The answer is yes, as one is mimicry of the other.
So the authentic Christian tradition must be with the Church, complete with Trinity, Mariology, non-Biblical holidays, etc.
The alternative is that the Jewish tradition remains authentic.
OK, there’s another alternative: The Holy Spirit (AKA the voice in one’s head) vouchsafes private interpretation.
I have always thought through practices and observance and rituals that the Church of Rome....aside from the glaring difference....shares a lot with observant Judaism
Peter created first a church for fellow Jews to accept Jesus
Whereas Paul ...my guy...created church of Antioch afresh for the goyim
I know anecdotal prolly
I honestly can’t speak about the Jewish oral tradition because I’m not Jewish, but I believe even secular historians acknowledge that they had oral tradition far longer than any Scriptures.
This it’s quite similar with Christianity (or really Catholicism within Christianity). Both religions started off with an oral tradition (teaching) that was passed on person to person, until the most important of those teachings were written down. This is what we call “the Bible” or “Scriptures” today. They are the product of Tradition. This is often overlooked or ignored in Scriptural discussion. There almost seems to be an unspoken presumption that the Scriptures came first and then oral traditions were tacked on later. This is the exact opposite of what occurred in both religions.
For Christianity specifically, for me I don’t think it’s reasonable to view its “evolution” so to speak in any other way. That is (as I’ve said before, not on this thread but other times) it isn’t believable, for lack of a better word, to claim after Jesus ascended into Heaven that immediately, the apostles hurried home, wrote down the Gospels, and then carried copies of what they just wrote and used that to “convert” people.
No, what clearly happened was, right after Pentecost really, the Apostles went forth and preached what happened to THEM. That is, they spoke from experience. Their own experience. And just as anyone can easily discern when a man is different, when he is changed in some way, the Gospel was preached not via men standing up on a pulpit and reciting words from the Bible, but by sharing what happened to themselves with others. By being a witness for Christ in every sense of the word.
Now, this is how the Church started and flourished through the first days, weeks, months and years if it’s beginning. This is how it was done, until one by one the Apostles met their earthly death and went to be with their Lord. But do we honestly believe that with the death of the last Apostle, that the Church suddenly changed direction, and started to only use the Gospel writings, (and letters) to share the Good News? That this perfectly natural perfectly human way of being Christian and sharing Christianity with others suddenly stopped?
Of course not. What the Bible was and has always been is again, a PRODUCT of Tradition. So thus, the initial teachings (of Jesus Himself) were recorded in the Gospel books we know today. Written record of their testimony. Why? Because they had a love for their God (Jesus) that commanded them to keep as much as they could recorded, so that all important teaching would be preserved. A perfectly reasonable thing to do. But this clearly wasn’t enough.
As we also know, the Bible (Christian) contains letters (mostly of St. Paul) addressing certain concerns in the Church at the time. Some of the letters that he wrote (and a few others) are now known to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, ie, are Scripture. But not all.
Does anyone believe it’s reasonable to believe that the teachings of St. Paul (much less those of St. Peter and the other letter writers) are all contained in what they wrote “for” the Bible? That is, does anyone seriously believe that they went around, and, after writing these letters just pointed to them and said “read this” when ANOTHER question about the Faith came up? Please.
It’s obvious what occurred then, and what continues now (at least obvious to me). Christ’s method for saving humanity was not to give us a book and say “read it and you’ll be converted”. He gave His Holy Spirit to guide us, as human beings, to live as human beings and by doing so, in doing this (living our lives but with renewed focus on him) THAT is how Christianity is spread. Where Scripture comes in is precisely in this need to know more about what has changed this person I have met. What we point to when someone asks, “What has changed you? Who have you met? I’d like to know more?” It’s our Tradition.
But not all of our Tradition. Just as the Jewish Bible (which is what the early Church had) was not the entire Christian Tradition, so is our Christian Bible not the entire Word of God. It’s what is the most vital for salvation but it isn’t everything there is to know about the Gospel. Even St John claimed this IN the Bible when he wrote not everything Jesus did was in what he wrote (cf John 21:25). So if not everything of what Jesus DID is in the Bible, why should we believe everything He TAUGHT is in the Bible? Much less the teachings of any of the Apostles?
Indeed, there is much more to learn even today. It would have been impossible to put everything Jesus had to teach about every human being who lived or was going to live, in the Bible. This is because while we share a common desire for Christ, we are all different people, so it’s not possible to put down in writing teaching that is perfect and complete for 6 billion (or more in the future) different people. (Note, 2 Tim 3:16-17 does not say “All Scripture alone...” Or “Only all Scripture...” And yes, as verse 17 says, Scripture is necessary to be complete and furnished for every good work, but again the word “only” or “alone” does not appear in that passage).
We are all on a shared journey to Christ but we each have our own cross to bear. It is by bearing this cross we are led to Christ, become converted, and truly educated in the Faith. That is, by simply living and engaging in reality. It’s through this “shared individualism”, that we are Christians today. It’s a matter of faith, really, to believe that our oral Tradition today is indeed a part of the Word of God but I submit it’s not that difficult given one’s own experience.
In conclusion, for me it’s just not reasonable to believe our faith is “based on the Bible”. For me, it seems more reasonable to claim that Chrisitianity is actually an unbroken line of 2,000 years of friendship. For just as when one has a problem that can’t be faced alone (and there are many that can’t many more than we care to admit) we go to a friend for help. Help in solving the problem, facing the problem, living WITH the problem.
And this is Christianity. We go to others for help, in humility (thus the importance of humility) because indeed, what could be more important than our soul, our Faith? Certainly not a problem to be faced alone. The only “difference” is that in Christianity, we not only have our friends alive here on Earth to help us, but also those that went before us, such as St. Paul through the Scriptures, but ALSO all the other saints who have written helps through the ages, NOT that their written words are the Word of God, but that they themselves, their lives, their WITNESS are a sign for all of us to discover and then wonder, “Who did this for them? How can I meet the same person?”
We then can meet Him today, in His Church. In every way that matters, in every way that saves, in the EXACT way the Apostles encountered Him: through and in, REALITY.
Catholic oral tradition? I’m sorry, but after all of the scandals in resent years you would think they would choose another term to describe it.
Next question?