The Torah is perhaps the very weirdest law book ever written

At best I think we can compare it to the American constitution for the constitution forms the foundation of all American laws yet being highly concise cannot be the sum total, rather the starting point of the laws

We often make this mistake approaching our Judaism

We see the principle as the principle, not realizing that the Torah is in fact an evolution

I don’t know if your are familiar how the legal system works, but it is constantly evolving, basically as cases come up, judges rule based on applying previous principles to current situations

So for example, what is the definition of cruel and unusual punishment? well as the case gets heard and a judgment passes and a similar case is brought to court, we now have a definition of cruel and unusual from a previous court case with which to base our current understanding.

As time goes by we have more and more precedents

Cases in fact doesn’t really look at the constitution, rather previous judgments that have defined the constitution

We often look at Judaism as a once in a lifetime revelation from God to Moses and then Judaism was developed.

The truth is, this ignores the principle of general and specific principles.

To understand this we must relate a story that when Moses came to heaven he saw God studying and he was saying the opinion of Abaya and another sage who would only come by, a thousand years later and form a major part of Judaism through their teachings.

Explains the Baal Shem Tov, these two sages (as is general) were from two sides of the spiritual spectrum, namely chessed and gevurah, to be lenient or strict; hence their information that they thought, taught and became part of Judaism thousands of years later, actually was based on their predisposed soul that when looking in the Torah to discover the final resolutions of cases presented then, would automatically see things in a specific light.