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orion Oral Torah
At 09:46 20/07/97 -0400, Stephen Goranson wrote:
>Yirmiyahu, I reread p. 197 (by Sussmann) in DJD X and did not find "oral
>torah" mentioned. Indeed oral torah according to Pharisaic and Rabbinic
>views is old. Essenes and Sadducees revered *torah* but had different
>views. To impose the Pharisee view or to retroject the Rabbinic view on
>Essenes or Sadducees would, in my opinion, distort history.
No one is retrojecting any Rabbinic views. That's a straw man. And I'd
appreciate it if you not continue repeatedly jumping to such illogical
assumptions, apparently biased against some perceived "rabbinicism" in what
I write.
Not finding the specific words "Oral Torah" is pedantic avoidance. There's
no escaping that the words I emphasized in Sussmann's statement referred to
Torah other than the written Torah, and that, by definition, is Torah
sheBa'al Peh. That's what Torah sheBa'al Peh means, and it is a phrase
which is far less anachronistic than the English "oral tradition" or "oral
law" which is used routinely (see Martin Jaffee and response). If you
prefer to call it Xuqim umishpatim that's fine with me.
May I assume that you recognize the existence of the "non-written Torah" (by
whatever term you think is more appropriate and can defend) in DSS times?
Or are you arguing that the non-written Torah -- which Sussmann calls
halakha, and I've attempted to appease with Torah sheBa'al Peh, and
explicitly acknowledges to be at the core of the DSS-era Jewish community in
all three of the major Jewish sects -- did not exist outside or before the
Perushim? Or are you arguing something else entirely? You're not seriously
going to represent that the words I emphasized in Sussmann's statement
describing this as central to all three sects refer to *written* Torah?
Yirmiyahu Ben-David
Paqid 16, Qehilat Ha-Netzarim (Nazarene Jews)
www.netzarim.co.il
Ra'anana, Israel