The Oral Torah

[Blue Bird]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

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On to your post -

I would say your first sentence is in error because there are many different types of Rabbi's so you cannot just say "if you ask a rabbi".

Next, I would say if you read what the Sages of the time wrote, you'll notice they disagreed a lot of the time so how can you say they were "systematically reading-onto the text whatever interpretation was convenient."?

That's the beauty of Judaism, there isn't really a right or wrong answer. It's a study of the text, the words, the letters and trying to understand what it means as a whole.

The Karaties don't believe in the Oral Torah from what I understand, but then again they do have certain rules and regulations they follow, so isn't sort of the same thing?

If I'm not mistaken, they even wear a kippa. If that's the case, where did they get that from? It's certainly not in the Torah.

This is a common response, but I would point out that their disagreements were generally inconsequential- they left incongruencies alone while obsessing over non-issues, and since beliefs cannot be defined except by reference to behavior, this means that in effect we are forced to take up a particular interpretation in an even stronger sense. 

The Karaites derive their liturgy from grammar- when examining alaw the first question is always what the subject of the law refers to, whereas in the Talmud it is on how the law was *intended* to be *followed.*

I don't follow you because your statement is very general, could you please give some examples? Thank you.