Well that is a distortion of the original point. The Hebrews hold Torah as the ultimate authority. None of the pagan practices of praying to the dead or for the dead is mentioned in Torah, the Prophets or even the Writings. You would have to refer to the A.D. Talmud for such. Which is manmade tradition and not TaNaKh. At every turn Jesus Christ rebuked the manmade machinations of the Pharisees.
The NT tells us it is appointed unto man to die once and then judgment. Also the gulf between the Rich man and Lazarus could not be passed. All of these matters Jesus and the apostles address. We have no OT Hebrew accounts of Hebrews praying for the dead. There are no NT accounts for praying to Anyone other than The Father.
There are however plenty of TaNaKh and NT references to marriage, kids eating and drinking since the Hebrew tribes had to live too. And as having the flesh of a man, Jesus Christ ate food and drank wine, endorsed marriage etc.
So linking such necessary functions of human life to non Torah and non NT practices is a fallacious premise.
You may now quote the various non Hebrew texts and which I of course will respond with "show me the command from YHWH through a prophet instructing this process of praying for the dead or showing approval of such."
“The Hebrews hold Torah as the ultimate authority.”
I’m not bound by Hebrew practice or lack thereof. And neither is any other Christian. I eat pork and like it.
“None of the pagan practices of praying to the dead or for the dead is mentioned in Torah, the Prophets or even the Writings.”
Irrelevant. Many Christian things are not mentioned in the Old Testament.
“So linking such necessary functions of human life to non Torah and non NT practices is a fallacious premise.”
No, it is not.
And French historian Jacques Le Goff states,
“It then becomes clear that at the time of Judas Maccabeus - around 170 B.C., a surprisingly innovative period - prayer for the dead was not practiced, but that a century later it was practiced by certain Jews.” — Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, p. 45, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.