Yet when Josiah read the book of the law to the people they understood it.
Maybe the people were not as stupid as others think they were.
There is a commandment of circumcision, but one will not find an explanation in the Written Torah of what circumcision means, the where, what and how. Likewise there is a prohibition of working on the Sabbath, but there is no definition as to what constitutes forbidden tasks. There are commandments of fringes on four-cornered garments, and phylacteries placed on hand and head, but there is no explanation of how these are to be produced or how they are to be worn. There is also a mandate of ritual slaughter that renders kosher species of animals permissible for Jewish consumption, but there are no instructions for how this is to be performed. Deuteronomy 12:21 states “slaughter...as I have commanded you”, yet nowhere in the Written Torah do we find the details of that command. Also, the Hebrew text consists of consonants only. There are no written vowels. Words without vowels are clearly ambiguous. They could be read in many different ways with altogether differing meanings.