Ancient Rabbinic Texts about the Two Torahs: Oral and Written

There are certainly suggestive similarities between the Pharisees’ “traditions of the elders” and the rabbinic notion of Oral Torah—the extrabiblical laws (halakhah), practices, teachings, and traditions that would eventually be recorded in the classic works of rabbinic literature. Sifre Deuteronomy 351 refers to two Torahs given to Israel—one written and one oral.

There are also differences between the Pharisaic and rabbinic conceptions of the Oral and Written Torah. For example, it is unclear whether the Pharisees linked their traditional practices to the revelation at Sinai or to Moses himself. Indeed, in the New Testament (Mark 7, Matthew 15), the Pharisees’ extrabiblical practices are mocked because they are seen as deriving from humans rather than being divine in origin (see Jesus and the Law). By contrast, and perhaps to stave off such attacks, several rabbinic sources ground extrabiblical halakhah in the Sinaitic revelation. The talmudists of b. Berakhot 5a expound Exodus 24:12 as expansively as possible, with the result that the Oral Torah in its entirety (Mishnah, Talmuds, and midrash) was given at Sinai. Other rabbinic texts, such as Sifre Deuteronomy 313 and b. Megillah 19b, represent the Oral Torah as immanent within the Written Torah and developing gradually from it over the course of centuries, particularly through the application of divinely revealed interpretive rules to details of the biblical text.

These rabbinic reflections on the origin of the Oral Torah agree on two points: First, the Oral Torah is rooted directly or indirectly in God’s revelation to Moses at Sinai. And second, because the Oral Torah develops and completes the Written Torah, it is essential to a full and proper understanding of God’s will as expressed in the Written Torah. With the destruction of the sanctuary and the cessation of sacrificial worship, there remained one legitimate path for fulfilling God’s will, and that path passed through the rabbis, their interpretation of God’s Torah, and their articulation of God’s normative demands in the form of halakhah. The text in b. Berakhot 8a describes the “four cubits of the halakhah” as the remaining path to God, and b. Bava Batra 12a attests to the unique authority of the rabbis to articulate the halakhah.