The majority of people even slightly rehearsed in Global religions
know what the Torah is. In a general sense it is the Bible of the Jews,
containing the books of Moses and the majority of the same books as our
King James Version of the Old Testament, just under different
headings.
However, have you ever heard of the
Talmud? This book is another form of Hebrew scripture that originates
between 200-100 B.C. and pertains to folk knowledge because before it
was written down and codified, the Talmud was a collection of knowledge
that was passed down orally. The origins of the Talmud are seated in
the Jewish belief that along with the written law that the Lord gave
Moses on Mount Sinai, He also gave Moses a set of Oral Laws. This Oral
Law was handed down since that time, and added to by the great Jewish
thinkers, priests, and rabbis as the centuries progressed and they
gained more knowledge about the Written Law and interpreted it more and
more.
There was a big controversy at
the time of this codification of the Oral Law into the Talmud, because
of the implications of changing the medium of the knowledge from oral
and folk knowledge to written accessibility. First off, the Jewish
culture always has been, and still is, a strong advocate for the power
of tutors and learning the ins and outs of the religion one-on-one from a
teacher that has spent his life studying the Torah and learning from
his teachers. If it was written, the Rabbis and other masters of the
time feared that the people would no longer get the full benefit of
studying their religion with a tutor because they would believe they
could study the written law on their own. While the Oral Law stayed
strictly oral, it would be impossible for a truly devout Jew to study
their religion without a tutor who is versed in the Oral Law. However,
for the same reason that the codification of the Oral Law into the
Talmud was opposed, it was also advocated. At the time, the Jewish
nation was going through some struggles with Roman and Babylonian
Occupation, and a shortage of learned and worthy tutors to pass on the Oral Law to the next generation.
A
second factor opposing the Talmud was the fear that by changing the
medium of the Oral Law, the Law itself and its very nature would be
changed. Part of the importance of the Oral Law is that it allows for
the interpretation of the Written Law (in the Torah) to fit the modern
society, the century in which the religion is being practiced. The
nature of the Oral Law gave it more flexible content, including things
like important arguments between prominent theologians about issues of
the day, as well as more unchanging content like the specific rules for
Sabbath Day observance.
Orthodox Jews today still
refuse to learn the content of the Talmud without a competent teacher
instructing them, instead of just reading it, to preserve as much as
they can the original, folk medium of the Oral Law. It is an
interesting and important point to consider: whether the way information
is presented affects the content and character of the information
itself. Does writing it down make the Oral Law less valid than if it
was taught face-to-face from a learned rabbi? This is a question that
Jews struggle with and have to answer for themselves today as much as
they did 2100 years ago.
Most of the content of this post was gathered from various chapters in The Book of Jewish Belief by Louis Jacobs.
Great post Morgan! It surprises me that one of the oppositions to writing down the Talmud was that they thought it would change the law itself and its nature. This seems totally counterintuitive to me. It seems obvious to me that danger of change was much greater BEFORE it was written down. I guess they really did want a flexibility - something that Christians fear. At the time of Jesus, this was one of the things for which he called the pharisees and scribes hypocrites; because they had, with their oral traditions, lost so much of the original meaning of the Law.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to me that they kept the laws separate and didn't combine them into one written law or one oral law. Like Mike said, it seems that if they had done this it would have eliminated the chance of any change.
ReplyDeleteThe previous comment also reminds me of the ages when Catholic priests were the only ones who could read and interpret the Bible, but they preached their own beliefs to the people. Their oral beliefs and traditions made them hypocrites much like the pharisees and scribes during Jesus' time.
I think that there was a lot of political power in keeping the oral law separate and unwritten. It meant that you had to trust what other people said. In essence, it was the same type of situation that most Europeans were in prior to the publication of the Gutenberg Bible. (I think this is what Misa was touching on in the comment just above mine.) It is interesting to me, that controlling what commoners know and think about religion is so important, but it's huge.
ReplyDeleteThis summer, I was at Cambridge, and I took a class called "Terror and Faith" about the history of the Reformation in England. This interplay of religion and politics is what that course was all about. The availability of religion a major political tool, but the availability of knowledge in general is as well. You could probably argue that that is what politics in general boils down to.
Way to lead the way to our written unit.
ReplyDeleteI would like to pose a counter to the two previous comments. I think there was greater security in preserving the law in an oral form. Think about us and our cell phones. Do you remember when you were in elementary school and had to memorize your home phone number and your parent's work number? If you were like me you expanded this small reportiour to include playmates, carpools, and your favorite restaurant. Now with cell phones we can store even more numbers with high fidelity and less effort, but what happens whey you lose your phone? The entire compilation of knowledge is lost. When they first started recording things, like the Talmud, it was costly and time consuming they would have few copies. If these copies got destroyed and noone had preserved it as an oral tradition we have a lost cell phone n our hands: noone has God's number. If knowledge is committed to knowledge and passed on it can be more secure than if it is recorded in one place and turned to for easy reference even if this medium offers higher fidelity.
I also take issue with oral tradition being equated with hypocrisy. Let's be fair there are also good oral traditions that helped people more fully live the law. Think of the mantra "What would Jesus do?" While not high fidelity to the new testament, I would say it is not an evil hypocritical plan.
Lauren wouldn't keeping it oral knowledge give more people access to scripture than if it were changed to written in a time when most people were illiterate?
ReplyDelete