Introduction
This article, based extensively on the work by Professor
Yair Furstenberg,[1]
explores the very notion of the well-known ban against writing down the Oral
Tradition. It is generally accepted that rabbinic literature essentially remained
in an oral form since Sinai; and that only from around the period of the
redaction of the Mishna in 210 CE was it finally permitted to be written
down for the first time.
However, Furstenberg writes in his Abstract that:
“multiple Talmudic anecdotes point to a complex
reality that does not align with what seems as an explicit prohibition.”
To resolve this complexity, Furstenberg suggests that we need to understand that two distinct “book cultures” existed between the rabbis of Palestine and Babylonia at that time.
