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Unlike the NT which was written on paper or vellum the OT was written on papyrus which is very unstable. The OT scrolls were copied and a copy was kept in every single synagogue no matter how small. When the copy became damaged in even the slightest way it was ceromonially destroyed. But if there were a million synagogues and each one was copying the scrolls before they destroyed them then we would have a million lines of descent going back to the original. Any errors that crept into a copy would be noticed soon since it could easily be compared to the copy at any other synagogue. The process of copying them was painstaking and if a scribe made a single error during the process he would then destroy the damaged copy ceromonially again.We actually have older parts of the NT than we have of the Hebrew OT.But not knowing the amount of time that has elapsed since the penning of the first copy and the penning of the last copy in no way makes it more or less likely that the first copy is the result of an oral tradition. Moses could have written the book and then it was copied many times resulting in todays copies. Or Moses could have written the book and then it was copied less times resulting in the copy that we have today.What we would expect if the OT were a result of an oral tradition is that there would be different versions that were written down in different places based on errors that crept into the oral stories.If you want to say that Moses wrote down what he heard then we need some evidence of that. (other than him saying when he wrote it that he was writing down what was told to him by God. THAT certainly was an oral origin. If you can prove there is no God then you can prove that it was not written as it claims to be. If you are going to assume there is no God then the proof is circular)The greatest evidence we have is that when one looks at the words used in the OT the stories seem to contain four different narratives that are intertwined together as if there were once four different text that were combined. (still not oral but some would say that maybe those alleged narratives were oral first). The problem is that the alleged existence of four narratives is completely hypothetical based on interpretations of stylistic differences. Having looked into the matter I could easily see a bias in the desire for some to want their to be four different narratives and absolutely no reason to presume that the four narratives were not the result of Moses writing four different narratives himself. If there were four narratives (that is a pretty big "if") and if they were not all penned by Moses then we still need some evidence that they were the result of an oral tradition before they were written down.
Unlike the NT which was written on paper or vellum the OT was written on papyrus which is very unstable. The OT scrolls were copied and a copy was kept in every single synagogue no matter how small. When the copy became damaged in even the slightest way it was ceromonially destroyed. But if there were a million synagogues and each one was copying the scrolls before they destroyed them then we would have a million lines of descent going back to the original. Any errors that crept into a copy would be noticed soon since it could easily be compared to the copy at any other synagogue. The process of copying them was painstaking and if a scribe made a single error during the process he would then destroy the damaged copy ceromonially again.
We actually have older parts of the NT than we have of the Hebrew OT.
But not knowing the amount of time that has elapsed since the penning of the first copy and the penning of the last copy in no way makes it more or less likely that the first copy is the result of an oral tradition. Moses could have written the book and then it was copied many times resulting in todays copies. Or Moses could have written the book and then it was copied less times resulting in the copy that we have today.
What we would expect if the OT were a result of an oral tradition is that there would be different versions that were written down in different places based on errors that crept into the oral stories.
If you want to say that Moses wrote down what he heard then we need some evidence of that. (other than him saying when he wrote it that he was writing down what was told to him by God. THAT certainly was an oral origin. If you can prove there is no God then you can prove that it was not written as it claims to be. If you are going to assume there is no God then the proof is circular)
The greatest evidence we have is that when one looks at the words used in the OT the stories seem to contain four different narratives that are intertwined together as if there were once four different text that were combined. (still not oral but some would say that maybe those alleged narratives were oral first). The problem is that the alleged existence of four narratives is completely hypothetical based on interpretations of stylistic differences. Having looked into the matter I could easily see a bias in the desire for some to want their to be four different narratives and absolutely no reason to presume that the four narratives were not the result of Moses writing four different narratives himself. If there were four narratives (that is a pretty big "if") and if they were not all penned by Moses then we still need some evidence that they were the result of an oral tradition before they were written down.
