There are actually many areas where the Oral Law subtracts from the basic reading of the text. Substituting monetary restitution for cutting off a woman's arm if she touches a man's private places sure sounds like a subtraction to me.
And how about R' Hillel's foundation of the pruzbul which allowed people to carry over loans after the Shmittah year? Seems like a subtraction of the Shmittah rules.
Orthoprax: I think that Bilbulatsia's point was just that addition happens substantially more than subtraction. Are you familiar with eisegesis? Unlike exegesis, which derives rules based on references in texts, eisegesis commences with a cultural practise and then retroactively finds sources within the texts to legitimise it. This was very common amongst the Rabbis, leading to an incredible amount of laws and traditions for which there is only the vaguest literal reference in the Bible.
(not duplicate)
You're both right. When I was writing the post I couldn't think of as many examples of subtraction as I could of addition, but they definitely exist.
Especially now, when for some reason chumras are a good thing, there seems to be wayyyy too much addition.
Anyway, that's a side point. Simon, I want to know what you think of my answer to your question overall. 
The old slippery slope. If it's not all divine, down to the last letter, then exactly is not? Where do you dray the line? Revelation, but no Torah? Torah, but modified a little? Or a lot?
That's why Chareidim are SO adamant that the text *and* transmission, TMS, is absolutely perfect.
Baal Habos: I hear where you're coming from, but I don't think that this sort of blinkered fundamentalism was at all the status quo at the time of Chaza"l. On the contrary, I think the Torah was alive to them in a way that it can never be alive to us: they could change things and adapt things and the Torah grew; we change things and adapt things and Torah dies. A major reason for this is that, for them, "Torah" was a system of law and homily. For us, however, "Torah" is also the accumulation of older customs, the dead-weight of centuries of Judaism.
Bilbulatsia: I always enjoy reading your posts but, in this instance, I feel that you only brushed the very surface of what you set out to explain. It was interesting reading what you think of TMS, but I am also interested in knowing what you think the Rabbis thought. My personal opinion is that TMS today means something very different to what TMS meant back then; I just can't put my finger on precisely how...
I recommend Who Wrote The Bible as well as The Bible With Sources Revealed both by Richard Elliot Friedman. On my post To DH or Not To DH at
http://shmuzings.blogspot.com/
20...gs_archive.html
I compare REF to Umberto Cassuto's theory of single authorship of the Bible.
On one level I think it's pointless to speculate what the Rabbis believed, because it's hard to really know.
But, I'll still try and answer you.
I think the key to understanding their beliefs can be found in history and archeaology. I'm no expert, but I can make some assumptions.
The Rabbis had limited knowledge. They had no way of knowing how incomplete the Torah was. Their science, like the general science of the time (Greek/Roman) wasn't spectacular. These are people who, if a whale carcass washed up onto shore would believe it to be a leviathan. Or, if they saw a dinosaur skeleton they would call it a behemoth.
So for them, the concept of a "God of gaps" would be far more relevant than it is for us. We take so much for granted, like not believing in fairies, scientific method, an understanding of cause and effect that negates the need for superstition.
I think that because of that mindset, which I see as intelligent, but innocent and even ignorant, they would be far more receptive to the idea that God dictated a book to Moses, and that their oral traditions were from God also.
That said, I think it's quite clear they were well aware of the human error after transmission and knew that mistakes could be made.
And they didn't have the same kind of reverence for the text as OJ does now. They couldn't have, if they were to rip it apart, picking up phrases and verses and reinterpreting them to prove their own points. No Rabbi would do that now.
So yes, I think they believed in TMS, but I think that in some ways their scope was broader than that of rabbis today. That's why the contradictions and inconsistencies didn't matter to them, because for them it was just the tip of the iceberg. With the text going hand in hand with the oral traditions, they didn't have the same problems as skeptics do today.
Of course, some of them could still have had enough of an agenda to change things.
Commenting by HaloScan
