 (See Urbach, 836n.93)

In the Talmudic period, the verse is thus called upon to justify the radical shift in rabbinic belief after the destruction of the Temple.Due to the conditions of exilic Jewry, the rabbinic leadership decided to permit the Oral Torah to be transcribed in writing and disseminated.The verse is interpreted to mean that "It is better that one letter of the Torah [the verse forbidding the writing down of the Oral Torah] should be uprooted than that the whole of the Torah be forgotten."