This is what happens when another body of teachings are made equal with what God has spoken.
Jesus made it clear that the Bible was in a class of its own, exalted above 'all' religious traditions..... He rebuked the Pharisees not because they didn’t understand tradition, but for not accepting Scripture as the ultimate authority...... They negated the final authority the Word of God BY their religious traditions..... Their tradition made the word of God to have no effect. (Mk.7)...For centuries the Catholic church stopped the people from reading the word and had them obey their traditions instead.
......The Bible emphatically condemns the use of tradition as a source of authority because whenever tradition is set up alongside of Scripture, it eventually competes for the greater position and replaces it...... It then is used to reinterpret Scripture...... This is what happened to Judaism in the days of Christ, and this is what has happened in the Roman Catholic Church. ...
The Bible no longer was their source for God. Mans opinions eventually replaced the apostles teachings, rituals replaced the substance and darkness fell over the land....
No one can trace oral tradition back to 'its source', so we can never be sure of its accuracy. Oral tradition becomes subject to the very leaders that gave it and we have to take their word for its accuracy.
The Pharisee’s claimed they alone had the right to interpret and enforce scripture, and that is when everything went wrong..... What the Catholic Church has done is require its members to listen to the Church who will tell them what they are to follow and what the word says..... They then become the sole interpreter of what God said...
.... On the contrary Jesus said He would give each believer the Holy Spirit who is the author of the word, to have us understand what was written (Jn. 2:20-21). (Exerts from Let us Reason)
Concerning not being able to trace Oral Tradition back to its source - this is indeed quite true.
Indeed, Oral Tradition is ultimately grounded in circular reasoning, but Catholics still adhere to it:
Catholics say that truth was passes on by Oral Tradition even past the time (and through the centuries) beyond where Paul told Timothy to “hold fast to the traditions you have received.” When asked for proof of this they say that this truth was passed along and that they know it was passed along, and they know that it was passed along because this is what constitutes Oral Tradition —— and on and on in a circle.
Again, they have their way and so many have their own Bibles. And before now going way back there were so many confused Lists (The Clermont List which represented what was “canonical” in Alexandria in c.300 AD), fragments (the Muratorian fragment which represented what was “canonical” in Rome c.180 AD) and each of those (along with the earliest surviving Greek Manuscripts (Codex A, S and B) has books that neither Catholics, Protestants, Ethiopic Christians and others believe to be inspired scriptures.
Try and find something back then that wasn’t messed up and confused. The Early Church was a hodgepodge of beliefs and churches then basically held aloft their own scriptures in such a way as to say “Here are your scriptures.”
Nothing seems to have changed. So many different Bibles today just like back then when even before 180 A.D. churches all over the Roman Empire had books like the Revelation of Peter is more churches than you can imagine.