The title of this post may sound absurd and contradictory. After all, how can the central body of Oral Law, which is the basis of Phariseeic Judaism, and contains all the D'Rabbanan additions, in any way prove the arguments of Karaism?
My answer to this is to look at the circumstances by which the Talmud, and the Mishnah came about as written forms. The argument given by the Talmud itself is as follows - firstly they say anyone who puts the Oral Law into written form is as if they are burning the Torah. However, due to the collapse of the Israelite State, and the roman conquest, it became hard to transmit the Oral Law orally, or to remember it. Hence the need arose to write it down.
This pedagogical principle, is in fact a central Karaite argument - that the large body of information known as the oral law is impossible to transmit from verbal memory alone. Thus, it would have been impossible to do this for the 1700 years from the Sinai through to the end of the Temple era.
An additional argument would be to look at the TNK itself. Even with the written records, there are some inaccuries within the NaCh , occasional errors, incomplete sentences here and there. How could such a body of work have been memorised from mere repetition? It was not memorised in Hezekiah's time.
So the Talmud's existence is one of the greatest testaments to the Karaite idea, and from the best source to prove it, namely the opponents of Karaism!
I always thought: how could the oral law be transmitted continuously if the Torah itself was "lost" in King Josiah times?
ReplyDeleteIf you have any good ideas, best to write them down!
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