Moreover, if indeed in the consciousness of that generation there was no giving of the Bible at all and there was no Bible, and now they suddenly find an unknown book with certain contents, why do they conclude that it is a Torah of Moses that he received from GOD and that the requirements within it are binding them?
Why should they not see it as a forgery and nothing more?
It seems clear that they had a tradition of the existence of a Torah scroll given by Moses, and that there were different laws in it. What is important in our discussion, however, is that even if there was indeed a period in which the Torah scroll was forgotten from Israel, this needs to be considered. This information does not cut off the Jewish tradition. This is because the essence of tradition is not the Torah, but rather the existence of an oral tradition. In fact, the oral tradition is the basis for belief in the Torah, since without that tradition we would have had no reason to attribute holiness to it!
