The Early Jewish Sages and the Oral Torah

The idea of the “traditions of the fathers”—namely, that there were oral traditions about interpretation that accompanied the Written Torah—developed in the Second Temple period and was especially popular among the Pharisees, for whom this was a part of their sectarian belief system (see PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES). In the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the slow emergence of rabbinic Judaism in the centuries following, scholars believe that these “traditions of the fathers” developed further into what came to be known as the Oral Torah. With the destruction of the Temple and its ritual cult, prayer and Torah study became the primary means of serving God in rabbinic Judaism.

In rabbinic literature, sages are revered for their interpretive and exegetical analyses of both the Written and the Oral Torah. In the absence of prophets and prophecy, the interpretation of the divine word becomes a means of divining God’s will and increasingly becomes the province of the rabbinic sages, not of the scribes as in earlier times. See also THE RABBINIC LEGACY.