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( Oral Torah)
A term used to denote the legal and interperative traditions which were transmitted orally, and which were not written in the Torah. According to Rabbinic Judaism, the oral Torah, oral Law, or oral tradition (Hebrew ???? ???? ??, Torah she-be-`al peh) was given by God orally to Moses in conjunction with the written Torah (Hebrew ???? ?????, Torah she-bi-khtav). The Mishnah is the record of the oral Torah. While other cultures and Jewish groups maintained oral traditions, only the Rabbi's gave ideological significance to the fact that they transmitted their tradition orally.[1] According to Rabbinic tradition, Moses and the Israelites received an oral as well as the written Torah ("teaching") from God at Mount Sinai. The books of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) were relayed with an accompanying oral tradition passed on by each generation. Jewish law and tradition thus is not based on a strictly literal reading of the Tanakh, but on combined oral and written traditions. Rabbis of the Talmudic era conceived of the Oral Law in two distinct ways. First, Rabbinic tradition conceived of the Oral law as an unbroken chain of transmission. The distinctive feature of this view was that Oral Law was "converyed by word of mouth and memorized."[2] Second, the Rabbis also conceived of the Oral law as an interprative tradition, and not merely as memorized traditions. In this view, the written Torah was seen as containing many levels of interpretation. It was left to later generations, who were steeped in the oral tradition of interpretation to discover those ("hidden") interpretations not revealed by Moses.[3] The "oral law" was ultimately recorded in the Mishnah, the Talmud and Midrash.
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