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:
Is there a third option?
What do you think?
True. Ancient Hebrew does not accommodate vowels, and vowel pointers are a later addition. Likewise, punctuation.
Hence you not only couldn't interpret the Torah correctly overall without Oral Tradition
Rather, one couldn't interpret Torah without Hebrew acculturation. No Hebrew document would contain vowels - Does one need an 'holy oral tradition' to interpret an invoice, a bill of lading, or a wedding contract?
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.
It is a "gotcha" statement if the premise that of one believes that the Masoretic vowels are not trustworthy, then they impugn the Masoretic Text (MT) and thus the integrity of Scripture, while if they believe that the Masoretic vowels are wholly correct, then they must uphold that the Jews successfully preserved the vowels of Scripture for thousands of years, through oral tradition alone, and which thus sanctions Roman claims for her oral tradition.
However, both are false dilemmas, as it is not necessary that the vowel points (VP) be perfectly correct under one view of Divine inspiration (DI), nor does the integrity of the VPs in the MT less sanction all else that falls under oral tradition (OT), including quite obviously that of Catholicism.
The second false dilemma is shown as being so by the fact that, rather than the TORAH not containing a single readable word without DI OT, even without vowels many English sentences are comprehensible, for the place of vowels (A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y) usually is determined by knowing language, including grammatical structure and or context. For example, "TH PRSN THT CNNT RD THS SNTNC KNWS LTTL GRMMR." Sometimes it is harder to make out what a poster (like me) is saying on FR!
Code crackers can even break down encrypted messages in a foreign language given enough time and resources. But it is true that without vowel points much Hebrew would be unintelligible now.
And tradition, as meaning inherited knowledge, how a term, words or teaching was understood by the natives certainly is overall needful for correct understanding of communication of any length and depth. And in this case re VPs, understanding how the words of a song are sung enables the notes.
However, a brain, the ability to reason and write, etc., are also all necessary, but that does not mean that everything else was that came via this means was/is DI, nor does OT supplying VP sanction OT as being DI in all else.
But are the VP Divinely inspired? This is a point of contention within evangelicalism itself, some of whom hold that "both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds provide evidence for the existence of both the Hebrew vowels and accent mar ks at the time of their composition." And further that "Even theological modernists such as "Hupfeld and Riehm . . . advance [the view that] the Old Testament books were divided into verses even before the time [on the TMT theory] of the Masoretes . . . the verse bounded by 'soph pasuk,' the placing of which harmonizes with the accentuation .. . [is mentioned] in the post - Talmudic tractate Sofrim..." - http://faithsaves.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Evidences4TheInspirationOfTheHebrewVowels.pdf
I would say that if the 10 Commandments which God wrote with His own "finger," (the Holy Spirit) did not contain them then they are not DI, and there are those who hold that there are errors in the MT, (as well as then non-uniform LXX mss).
Yet apparently even the dead sea scrolls have no VPs, and rather then VPs being DI, i lean toward seeing these as being akin to copying and translating and even preaching of Scripture, and in which, the human instrument of conveyance works to provide the sense as he understands it.
So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading. (Nehemiah 8:8)
But it is the word as originally written (or at least copied mss of it) that is wholly inspired and the supreme standard by which translation and preaching is examined by.
As with the transmission of God's word, I see man as being a steward of the manifold grace of God," (1Pt. 4:10) and so that while God gave a perfect word, man is responsible and accountable to both discern, believe and preserve it, all by God's grace and under His Divine superintendence.
And that it has been well preserved, as well as exposing errors. Including the DI NT writers eclectically using correct texts from both the LXX and the MT, and in which the Holy Spirit sometimes recasts His own words (as in rendering Is. 6:9,10 in Jn. 12:40).
And thus rather than OT being the standard as being DI, instead it is examined in the light of what is wholly inspired, that being the word of God as closest we can see to what was originally written, and how it was.
See here on alleged errors of the VP in the MT and a learned debate btwn both sides.
Finally, the unique depth and scope of human language is one of the things that sets man apart from animals, who often excel in smell, but do not write poetry and or us similes, metaphors, anthropomorphic terms, engage in tact and abstract concepts, etc., But perhaps context or bodily position or or grammatical structure can determine a meaning, and like us, the very tone or perhaps volume of a sound. In everyday communication we take all such for granted.
Likewise a translator working to provide Scripture in the native tongue or a foreign people must understand their culture and traditions to correctly do so. One translator, struggling to find a word for "faith" which did not exist in the native's tongue, found his answer when a native rushed into his hut and plopped down in a chair, and said, "how good it is to rest in this chair." But another found a native trying to eat the pages of his translation because he read the word of God had to be in him!
Thus the need for teachers, yet despite great authority being given to such, (Dt. 17:8-13) God nowhere provided or needed a perpetual infallible magisterial office, outside Himself, but instead sometimes raised up men from without it in order to reprove it and preserved faith, and sometimes to provide more Truth.
And thus the the church actually began in dissent from those who sat in the seat of Moses over Israel, who were the historical instruments and stewards of Scripture, and inheritors of promises of Divine guidance, presence and perpetuation. (Lv. 10:11; Dt. 4:31; 17:8-13; Is. 41:10, Ps. 89:33,34)
And instead souls followed an itinerant Preacher whom the magisterium rejected, and whom the Messiah reproved them Scripture as being supreme, (Mk. 7:2-16) and established His Truth claims upon scriptural substantiation in word and in power, as did the early church as it began upon this basis. (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.)
For the fact is that it is abundantly evidenced that as written, Scripture became the transcendent supreme standard for obedience and testing and establishing truth claims as the wholly Divinely inspired and assured, Word of God.
Thanks be to God.
(NKJV) Isaiah 66:5 Hear the word of the LORD, You who tremble at His word: "Your brethren who hated you, Who cast you out for My name's sake, said, 'Let the LORD be glorified, That we may see your joy.' But they shall be ashamed."The bolded text is radically different, though it contains many of the same terms. But the sense is different. If you look at the pointing, it does seem the modern translation, the NKJV, is correct, but what on earth does it mean? Whereas if you remove the pointing, an alternate becomes apparent, and using it the KJV translation works perfectly well, and in fact runs better as a flow of ideas. I believe the KJV translators had access to the pointed text, so they must at this point have either intentionally or accidentally ignored the turn it gave to the sense. I'm not a KJV Onlyist, but this seems to be something they got right against all odds.
(KJV) Isaiah 66:5 Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word; Your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the LORD be glorified: but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed.