re: #21 Sergey Romanov
‘m not completely sure what you mean when you argue the necessity of the existence of OL from the non-observant POV (from the observant POV it is, obviously, granted). Did there have to be interpretations of text immediately upon the “release” (let’s call it thus) of the written Torah? Obviously, even if they only were personal interpretations by each reader. Was there a unified public interpretation almost immediately after the “release”? May be, may be not, but if there was, there is no evidence that it corresponded to the OL as you have it now. As well there could have been competing schools of interpretations for an undefined period of time.
Fair enough. Let me please clarify. Because of the voweless structure of written Hebrew, it is impossible in many cases to have any idea what a given written verse is saying without the oral tradition telling you waht words are even there. It could literally be be two different words, like milk or fat, which have the same letters, but not vowels, and without an oral tradition to tell you to fill in the vowels for milk rather than fat, you could not learn a basic law of kashrut.
Your distinction of observant vs. non-observant falls flat on this matter, because there is no way to even get the original text correct in the first place, let alone the commentary without the commentary.
Another example. You have to bind tefillin. OK what are tefillin? There is no description of them in the written law at all. How do you make them? How do you bind them? Yet you have to do this….Without an oral law to tell you, you have nothing.
Another example, don’t murder. Great commandment! What constitutes murder? You have soldiers called for, so it can’t be don’t kill. What is the law?
Another example, women have to bathe in a mikveh. Men bathe in them too, not with the women though. What is a mikveh? How do you build one? When do they bathe?
This is all stuff straight from the written law that would be meaningless without an oral law to tell you about it and no amount of independent searching of the text itself for clues could possibly fill those details in. Yet we Jews are pretty clear what that all means. Everyone knows it is no milk and meat for example.
As a direct logical conclusion, the written law necessitates the Oral law and it is impossible that the two not be taken together to get anything out of it - from the start!
By rejecting the oral law, this is how other faiths based on ours built in a tremendous room for interpretation that simply is not there, even though certain things they took for granted without realizing it.