[daniel1212]

It is really a fascinating study on the validity and continuity of oral tradition.

Written tradition is not inspired oral tradition, while even SS type churches have traditions, but tradition can also perpetuate error, which Christ reproved by Scripture as being supreme. Upon substantiation of which the church was established, contrary to the imagination of some RCs.

[Mrs. Don-o]

We may both be neglecting something here which is intensely interesting and may be crucially important. That is that the written Hebrew Torah itself is an inextricable compound of oral and written Tradition.

This is because the earliest Biblical Hebrew did not have vowels, and was not even pointed for vowels. Therefore every single word in the Hebrew text had missing vowels which were supplied only by Oral Tradition.

Hence you not only couldn't interpret the Torah correctly overall without Oral Tradition--- as the Jewish ages of the Great Assembly (Anshei Knesset HaGedolah) insisted --- you couldn't even make out one word of it.

I am not trying to spring a "gotcha" with this statement. I am just at the point of marveling over it myself, not polemicizing it.

I think we're left with one of two positions, if I am understanding this correctly. Either:

• the vowels of the Torah, though not written, are Divinely inspired, or
• the Torah does not contain a single readable word. It is not comprehensible.

Is there a third option?

What do you think?