How were Written Torah and Oral Torah learned before the commentaries and before the Talmud was written?

An excellent question. Let’s discuss each component separately:

1) Written Torah: most of the commentaries we have on the Torah date from one of two times:

a) The Mishnaic/Talmudic times (roughly until the year 50CE). These commentaries are either meant to derive laws from the wording of the Torah, or to teach some lesson. It is safe to assume that these commentaries are based on tradition. Meaning that a teacher taught his student the commentary on the verse, and that tradition was passed down through the generations. If there would a perfect chain (and there never was nor is), the tradition could be traced back the Moshe. Thus the tradition dating back to the giving of the Torah provided commentary on the Torah.

b) The Rishonim (“first commentators”; around the year 1000 CE) until the present time. Some of the commentaries are based on tradition—although not nearly as strong a tradition as the ones from the Mashnaic/Talmudic times. For the most part though, and certainly in later centures, the commentaries are based more on one’s own reasoning
and understanding, since the tradition has weakened considerably.

So in short, there were always commentaries on the Torah, in the form of the tradition from Moshe. In fact, this tradition constitutes the skeleton of the Oral Torah. In later generations, we have expanded this work of commentary known as Oral Torah with our own commentaries, which is exactly G-d’s intent.

2) As far as how the Oral Torah was learned before the Talmud was recorded: the short answer is that it was taught orally from teacher to student, which is exactly why it is was called the “Oral Law”. This continued until roughly 200 CE when Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi recorded the Oral Law to writing.

Nonetheless, it seems pretty clear that even before Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, individual students kept a written record of their learning in private journals meant to aid in the retention of the information. However, these journals were never meant for public consumption and were hidden and buried after some time. Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi was the first to record the Oral Law in writing meant for the public.

Be well,
Rabbi Yoel Spotts