Email from reader:
I tried to do a search for past threads regarding this topic, but didn’t come up with anything useful. If I simply missed where this has been discussed, please point me there.

So, I’m kinda wondering what the Messianic Jewish perception of the Oral Torah is. Do you believe that it exists? If so, do you believe that it was given at Sinai along with the Written Torah?

The Oral Torah is what God gave to Moses in written form, known as the Torah. Being of divine origin, its instructions are contained in a super-compressed presentation in written form, with even individual letters conveying meanings important to the full understanding of what HaShem intends to communicate to us. It is the duty of each generation to extract its contents according to the rules it teaches (almost like a self-extracting zip file), and those that withstand the power of the argument over time tend to be considered on the level of the written Torah since it is from the written Torah that those arguments are derived.

It is said also very clearly:

Exodus 24:12
The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and commands I have written for their instruction.”

What HaShem gave to Moshe was the Tablets, The Torah, and the Commandment for their instruction. The “Commandment” for their instruction refers to the understanding of each mitzvah of “The Torah” and the “Tablets.” This understanding was not written down.

The Torah is clear that God gave Moses a divinely inspired document, and that the specific contents of that divinely inspired document, once fully extracted, can only be viewed one way – hence the “Commandment” for their instruction.

This “commandment for their instruction” is what is discovered whenever anyone inquires of the Torah deeply, and within the rules of Torah hermeneutics taught from the Torah itself.

So yes, there is an Oral Torah. It’s just that when HaShem gave it to Moses, he gave it in several forms: the tablets, the Torah, and the commandment for their instruction; teaching us that one is extracted from the other: the tablets from God, the Torah from the tablets, and the Commandment for their instruction from the Torah.

So then this is why we find Yeshua presenting arguments against the arguments of some Pharisees promoting arguments that seemed Torahful but actually were not – he uses Torah to refute them. Thus Yeshua promotes the concept of Oral Torah, but when it is derived from the Torah in a truly right argument that places all the variables, all the Torah, into consideration and reflection. This is why no one could refute him (or dare ask any questions to implicate him) because he as “the Living Torah” certainly knows Torah!

So then, when we read the written Torah, our argumentation and inquiry is meant to extract that Oral Torah from which the written Torah compresses – a discovery which is the glory of kings, as it is written in Proverbs:

Proverbs 25:2
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.

Also another root found within Torah is “orah” which means “light,” as in “thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” So then the Torah is compared to light, illumination – as Yeshua said “I am the light of the world,” and we know that it he through the Torah the world was made. The Torah then, is how the world works, and one looking at it, sees the light of the world. Anything contrary to it is a corruption of the world, and is thus darkness, and death.

Torah also means instruction, as it is said in Proverbs speaking of HaShem and the Torah:

Proverbs 1:8
Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s Torah.