Written and Oral Law
The feature that distinguishes Rabbinic Judaism is the emphasis placed on the Oral Law or Oral Torah. The authority for that position has been the insistence by the Rabbis that the oral law was transmitted to Moses at Mount Sinai at the same time as the Written Law — the Torah — and that the oral law has been transmitted from generation to generation since. The Talmud is said to be a codification of the oral law, and is thereby just as binding as the Torah itself. As an example, in Exodus 18 and Numbers 11 of the Bible is cited to show that Moses appointed elders to govern with him and to judge disputes, imparting to them details and guidance of how to interpret the revelations from God while carrying out their duties.
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Famous quotes containing the words written, oral and/or law:
“The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the language he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader’s eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.”
—J. David Bolter (b. 1951)
“The Americans are violently oral.... That’s why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all—isn’t respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)