Q&A: When Did the Oral Torah First Appear?
When Did the Oral Torah First Appear?
Question
Hello and blessings,
When did the Oral Torah first appear?
Thanks in advance, Benjamin
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. Do you mean when it is dated archaeologically? What does it mean, when did it first appear? What is its first written source? When was it first said? (By the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, at Sinai).
Discussion on Answer
It’s hard to answer a question like that. Presumably some foundations were received there (perhaps basic interpretive tools). What happened afterward was development by the sages of the generations through plain-sense interpretation and through interpretive methods and reasoning. It seems the system developed over the years, and in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) it was probably fairly minimal.
If I understand the Rabbi’s answer correctly, our forefathers were Karaites with the potential to adopt the Oral Torah—that is, they didn’t eat hot Sabbath stew on the Sabbath?
The proliferation of Jewish laws appears for the first time in the Talmud and does not appear in the Bible. Does that mean that the Oral Torah did not exist in the biblical period, or rather that it existed in a more limited form? What did the Oral Torah look like on the day it was received at Sinai? Was it just a “core seed” when it was received and only exploded at a later stage? On what principles was it based that made it possible to expand it without end or limit?