To you it may be theory, but not to us. Let me attempt to clarify the problem with 4 Ezra. The story in 4 Ezra essentially claims that Judaic texts were passed down through many generations until the Babylonian Exile, and at that point all recordings of these books were completely lost due to the chaos and destruction. The only person to retain some memory of these was supposedly Ezra, and even he needed the holy spirit to rest upon him to fully reproduce them. Thus, the chain of tradition was broken into two pieces: Before Ezra and after Ezra.
Frankly, we're looking here at a bit of a logical dilemma: The author of 4 Ezra claims that Ezra wrote 94 books that no one had any copies or memories of, approached the Jews and said: "Hey guys, here are a bunch of books that y'all forgot about, that I have just reproduced." If no one had any memory of them, why would they believe him that the books are valid?
Now, setting aside this logical dilemma, another issue is that there don't appear to be any other sources that validate the author of 4 Ezra's claim that all of the texts were lost. He's the only person who happened to be aware of this cataclysm! None of the prophets from the time of the destruction of the Temple and the Babylonian Exile make any mention of this! Truly odd, I must say.
Finally, yes, there are multiple Jewish sources that attest to the unbroken chain. The most famous is the mishnah in Avot 1:1:
"Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly."
The next mishnayot in the chapter describe teachings of the next links in the chain, those that came after the Men of the Great Assembly.
Would it not make sense that such a horrific event in Jewish history would be recorded elsewhere? I can easily see multiple midrashim by our sages explaining what Israel did to deserve such a punishment. Yet no such midrashim exist. Truly odd.
I'm sorry if I misunderstood you, and you perhaps are more familiar with that person - I don't even know his name, as you may be able to tell, but that is what I gathered from what he said.
Many many sources. Too large a topic to tackle it right now. Maybe someone else could sum it up. @rosends, could you perhaps sum up why we believe that the sages of the past were greater than us?
What authority does this "messiah" have to change ancient traditions?
And are you saying you don't believe in the existence of the Oral Law?
I hope you'll remain consistent with this position and not be one of those Christians who denounce the Talmud until they can use it to "prove" Christianity.Ah yes, the Talmud...
To be completely honest, I don't think we're going to be able to agree on the authority of the Talmud. I appreciate it's importance to your community - but I don't recognise it's authority any more than you would in the book of MattitiYahu for exampleSo it's difficult to comment on what it says.
With that said, my comment on Jubilees was intended to to present a possible Jewish view of the book, not to convince you that our view is correct. Likely none of what I've written so far has convinced you that the Jews are correct in our view of the apocryphal works, so we'll just add Rav's tradition as recorded in Bava Batra to the pile.
Final note for this post: Why do you spell Yehoshua and Yehudah with an "a" after the "Y"? That's not how they're pronounced in Hebrew. Believe me, the theophoric bit remains theophoric however it's pronounced in Hebrew or spelled in English.
