278 A History of Judaism
cubits out of its place – others affirm, four hundred cubits. ‘No proof can
be brought from a carob- tree,’ they retorted. Again he said to them: ‘If the
law agrees with me, let the stream of water prove it!’ Whereupon the
stream of water flowed backwards – ‘No proof can be brought from a
stream of water,’ they rejoined ... he said to them: ‘If the law agrees with
me, let it be proved from Heaven!’ Whereupon a Heavenly Voice cried out:
‘Why do ye dispute with R. Eliezer, seeing that in all matters the law agrees
with him!’ But R. Joshua arose and exclaimed: ‘It is not in heaven.’ What
did he mean by this? – Said R. Jeremiah, ‘That the Torah had already been
given at Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to a Heavenly Voice, because
you have long since written in the Torah at Mount Sinai, “After the major-
ity must one incline.” ’ R. Nathan met Elijah and asked him, ‘What did the
Holy One, Blessed be He, do in that hour?’ – He laughed [with joy], he
replied, saying, ‘My sons have defeated Me, My sons have defeated Me.’The general lack of appeal by sages to individual revelation in talmudic
arguments suggests strongly that the refusal of the majority in this story
to allow such an appeal by R. Eliezer was the standard approach, even
though there is found in one passage in the Babylonian Talmud a
remarkable assertion that the disputes between the Houses of Hillel and
Shammai, which in the Mishnah are explicitly stated to have been left
unresolved, were decided once and for all in favour of the House of
Hillel by just such a ‘heavenly voice’:
R. Abba stated in the name of Samuel: For three years there was a dispute
between the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel, the former assert-
ing, ‘The law is in agreement with our views’ and the latter contending,
‘The law is in agreement with our views.’ Then a heavenly voice issued
announcing, ‘[The utterances of] both are the words of the living God, but
the law is in agreement with the rulings of the House of Hillel.’By contrast elsewhere the rabbis invoke strong limitations on their own
ability to bring about change. They assert in one passage in the Jeru-
salem Talmud that not even a miraculous intervention by Elijah could
change the way that a ritual enjoined in the Bible is performed, since the
custom followed by the people ‘overrides the law’.^19
The talmudic rabbis did not lack interest in theology and ethics, but
such notions as the providence of God and the centrality of Israel and
the Torah in the divine plan for the world were generally assumed in
stories and apophthegms rather than argued. But the ethical teachings
enshrined in the Mishnaic tractate Avot, ‘the sayings of the fathers’,