The rabbis recognized that the oral Torah has laws with no scriptural basis TB Haggigah 10

The first Mishna in Pirke Avot begins “Moses received the Torah at Sinai and handed it onto Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the elders to the prophets; and the prophets handed it on to the men of the Great Assembly.” (My translation-gg) There are two important points the author of this Mishnah wants to emphasize. Notice the Mishnah doesn’t say Moses received the written Torah, but just Torah, meaning both the written Torah and the oral Torah. The oral Torah complements and explains the written Torah. The second important piece of knowledge the Mishnah imparts is the reliability of the oral Torah because it was passed down faithfully throughout the generations by the leaders of the Jewish people. Because the times necessitated it, the oral Torah was committed to writing. First the Mishnah was edited in its final form in the year 200 CE and the Babylonian Gemara in the year 500 CE. The Mishnah and the Gemara make up the Talmud which is the product of writing down the oral Torah.

Throughout our history not all the Jewish people accepted these two theological principles. The Samaritans, the Sadducees, and the Karaites denied the idea of the oral law and rejected rabbinical Judaism. Consequently, the rabbis wanted to make sure the theological underpinning of the oral law was clear and accessible to their flock so they wouldn’t dissuaded by these other sects of Jews.

With the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem, the rabbis understood they had to refashion Judaism to meet the new realities of life without the sacrificial cult. Although they never gave up the hope that the Temple would be rebuilt and the sacrificial cult would be restarted, they created what is now known as rabbinic Judaism. I think that the Mishna on daf TB Haggigah 10 shows that the rabbis were aware how instrumental they were in reimagining Judaism. The Mishnah describes three types of halakha from those who have no scriptural basis to those who have plenty of scriptural support. The Gemara clearly states that each type of halakha is part and parcel of Torah. “The mishna taught: These [hen hen] are the essential parts of the Torah. The Gemara asks: These, the topics mentioned in the mishna, which are not written explicitly but for which there is ample basis in the Torah, yes, they are the essential parts of Torah, whereas those other categories listed in the mishna that are written explicitly, no, they are not essential? Rather, one must say that both these and those [hen vehen] are the essential parts of the Torah. Every part of the Torah is essential, whether or not it is written explicitly.” TB Haggigah 11b, Sefaria.org translation)

“The halakhot of the dissolution of vows, when one requests from a Sage to dissolve them, fly in the air and have nothing to support them, as these halakhot are not mentioned explicitly in the Torah. There is only a slight allusion to the dissolution of vows in the Torah, which is taught by the Sages as part of the oral tradition.

The halakhot of Shabbat, Festival peace-offerings, and misuse of consecrated property are like mountains suspended by a hair, as they have little written about them in the Torah, and yet the details of their halakhot are numerous. The details of monetary law, sacrificial rites, ritual purity and impurity, and the halakhot of those with whom relations are forbidden all have something to support them, i.e., there is ample basis in the Torah for these halakhot, and these are the essential parts of Torah.” (Sefaria.org translation)

Clearly the rabbinic approach saved Judaism from extinction by being flexible and able to reinterpret Judaism. They reinterpreted read old ideas and read new insights into Torah. As a Conservative Rabbi, I think Conservative Judaism at its best tries to follow the example of the rabbis by being able to meet the challenges of the 21^st century and add new meaning in the Torah even if it means that some of our halakhot “fly in the air and have nothing to support them.”