The Triumph of Man (III)

D. The coup for the landing of God (1)

The arguments made by Yehoshua and Yirmeiah in Bava Metzia 59b are based on manipulations of Scripture so as to state the opposite of the biblical meaning.

They make two arguments, citing the authority of two Torah verses:

1. "It's not in heaven"

Yehoshua confronts the Divine Voice.

He invokes the verse from Deuteronomy 30:12, from a context that, on the contrary, highlights the unity between God and man, through the Commandment, and not their division (implied, for example, in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul):

"11. For this commandment that I command you today is not misunderstood by you and is not far off.

12. It is not in heaven, so that you can say: Who will go up to heaven for us, to bring it to us and give it to us so that we can hear it and do it?

13. And it is not even across the sea, so that you can say: Who will go across the sea for us, to bring it to us, to make us hear it and fulfill it?

14. But this Word is very close to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart to do it". (Deuteronomy 30)

- The expression "It is not in heaven" has, in the next verse, the reply "And it is not even over the sea"; so it is a verbal formula through which the intelligibility of the Commandment is affirmed, as the verse "11. For this commandment that I command you today is not incomprehensible to you and is not far off".

- Of course, the intelligibility of the Commandment emphasizes its human aspect - the mediation through which the Commandment does not remain just a Word, but becomes a fact ("so that you do it").

Yehoshua, however, selects from the context only five words "She is not in heaven", with the intention, explained by Yirmeya, to show that the Torah/Commandment declares about herself, as having been [already] given on Mount Sinai [and therefore , any further revelation is untimely].

The maneuver has no subtlety.

By the same method of argumentation, if Yehoshua had selected only three words - "She is not" - then it would have resulted that the Torah does not even exist.

It's absurd.

Although the manipulation of the biblical text is obvious, it did not receive the appropriate reply in the Talmud, but was resumed in Temurah 16a:(3-6-8), in the imaginary episode of Joshua's forgetting the Commandments, already analyzed, in "The Exodus from the tutelage of God" (2) - an appropriate title here as well, for Yehoshua's intention.

2. "After many to bend"

About 180 years passed between the death of Yehoshua (c.110 CE) and the birth of Yirmeyah (c.290 CE), according to approximate dates provided by historians.

In the meantime, lived Rav Yehuda (220-299 CE), who took up Yehoshua's "She is not in heaven" argument to justify the necessity of human creativity - the flesh - in the restoration of halachic norms imagined as lost.

Thus, Yirmeyah has (from Rav Yehuda) the explanation of the enigmatic argument with which, hundreds of years before, Yehoshua was said to have confronted the Divine Voice.

Bava Metzia 59b continues: "The Gemara asks: What is the relevance of the phrase 'Not in heaven' in this context?"

Yirmeyah is creative himself, so he introduces another biblical quote: "Since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not consider a divine voice, as it was already written at Mount Sinai in the Torah: "After many you bow" (Exodus 23:2)". Although it is not noticeable at first sight, we are witnessing a coup against God, in two steps, separated by approximately two centuries:

• In the first, Yehoshua evicted the divinity from the position of authority of the interpretation of the Law he gave;

• In the second, in the position of authority, which had been vacated, Yirmeyah installs the rabbinate, invoking "After many to bow", as a principle for validating interpretations.

But, as in the case of the other biblical quote, "Stoop after many" was taken out of context and not only that, but it was also transformed from a negation into an affirmation, because the original is the opposite: "Do not lean after the many to mischief and do not give testimony in judgment to please the crowd [until] you deviate [from the truth]." (Masoretic Text: Exodus 23:2).

Two questions:

I) Why did the narration in Bava Metzia choose this awkward quote?

It is easily observable that the quoted biblical verse accurately depicts the situation in which Eliezer is put by the account in Bava Metzia: Eliezer is alone, in confrontation, as it seems, with the entire assembly of rabbis and does not allow himself to be swayed by their multitude.

Therefore, the original verse "Do not follow the multitude" was an argument supporting his position (3) before a congregation of believers.

Eliezer is not just any rabbi, but, in his generation, he is the depository of the tradition that came, from mouth to mouth, in a straight line, from Moses (4).

Therefore, this is Eliezer's vocation, to be the one who faces the crowd, in the name of the divine interpretation, as it is counted.

The verse in Exodus 23:2 is addressed to him in a special way, as it is addressed to his ancestors who had the same task and the descendants who inherit it.

The invocation of this verse, in this story, cannot be a coincidence, but suggests that Eliezer defended himself against the overwhelming majority of the rabbis, invoking "Thou shalt not follow the multitude."

With literary fancy, it can be imagined that this biblical argument of Eliezer would have delayed, for some two hundred years, the conclusion of the narrative in Bava Metzia, until Yirmeyah could give the quotation from the negative form, in the affirmative form, with the illogical claim that , however, both have the same truth value.

Which was not only not rejected by the Talmud, but was actually incorporated as a clarification of the matter.

And as a solution. The Talmud tells that she was validated by God.

II) By what miracle of logic, "Don't follow the crowd" became "Follow the crowd"?!

Unraveling the mystery of this transformation from a negative sentence to an affirmative one, with the claim that they are equivalent, comes from Ibn Ezra (5), who reveals in the commentary to Bava Metzia 59b: "Our Rabbis, blessed be their memory, derived from this verse the law that the halakha follows the opinion of the majority. They have conveyed the truth to us, that from what the Scripture says - 'Thou shalt not follow the multitude in wickedness' - we learn that we are commanded to follow a multitude that wants to do good."

Ibn Ezra lived shortly before the Renaissance of the twelfth century, (when the genuine work of Aristotle was rediscovered, through translation from the Arabic language), about a century before Pope John XXI (1276-1277), about whom he is said to have been a Jew named Petrus Hispanus (6), an influential medieval logician.

Therefore, it cannot be imputed to the admirable scholar Ibn Ezra (who has a crater on the Moon), that he did not detect the illicit logical maneuver operated by "our rabbis" represented by Yirmeyah.

The reproach would be undeserved, all the more so since the Commandment, being an imperative sentence, supports a more subjective conversion process, depending on the interpretation and the intention of the communication - a loophole through which manipulation can slip.

The correct logical conversation of the verse is "Follow the many to the truth", and not "to the good", which disqualifies the testimony of Yirmeyah and "our rabbis" (7).

The correct attribution of meanings to the two biblical verses invoked in Bava Metzia 59b invalidates the Talmudic basis here for the majority rule.

In addition, regardless of currents of contemporary thought, removing the author's interpretation of his own text, but, nevertheless, invoking the text as an argument, (as the rabbis who fight Scripture with Scripture do here) is a self-contradictory approach that hurts.

The theses supported by the rabbis against Eliezer (and of divine intervention) are not supported logically, but are imposed as victorious, proving, only, that no text, no matter how holy it may be considered, cannot defend itself against aggression political manipulation.

God was slyly evicted by two twists.

Notes

(1) The idea of a "coup" is mentioned in "Elu v'Elu", but the intention is attributed to Eliezer: " [...] a kind of coup that threatens to tear down the walls of the Beit Midrash.

(2) "The biblical fragment [from Deuteronomy 30] seems an echo of the Babylonian proverb with which the "Dialogue of Pessimism" ends (text dated around 1000 BCE): "Who is so high as to reach the heavens? Who is so wide as to encompass the whole world?" ("Getting out from under the tutelage of God"/g) Inventiveness derived from the prohibition of renewal/Note 1/ MAKE/BURSA/August 12-15, 2022)

(3) "Elu v'Elu", p.5: "But pragmatism would never have been sufficient to uphold the authority of the original texts without religious faith - in Scripture as the word of God and in the Talmud as revealed interpretation and application or genealogically authorized of this word. For this reason it is always possible to go back to the originals, quoting God, so to speak, against the rabbis."

(4) "Elu v'Elu", p.8: "Eliezer ben Horcanus, a student of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai, together with Rabbi Yehoshua, is a representative of Beit Shammai.

Eliezer represents the "halakha rishona" - the traditional oral laws handed down from teacher to teacher in Sinai (Pirkei Avot 1:1) without forgetting, extrapolating or innovating. Like his teacher, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai, Eliezer says, "I never learned anything that I did not learn from the Master."

(5) Avraham ben Meir ibn Ezra (1092/93 - 1167), better known as Ibn Ezra (in Europe, Abenezra), was a commentator of the Torah, medieval poet, philosopher and grammarian, Spanish Jew.

He is famous for his biblical commentaries, which, along with those of Rashi, are ubiquitous and indispensable. His comments focus on grammatical explanations and the "peshat" (simple, direct meaning) meaning of the text. influenced Spinoza. He was nicknamed "The wise, the great and the admirable learned". A crater on the Moon was named Abenezra in his honor.

(6) Petrus Hispanus (Petrus Juliani) (early 13th century-1277), physician, logician and Jewish cleric (Portuguese/Spanish) converted to Christianity, became Pope with the name John XXI (1276-1277). Representative of the logical tradition of the University of Paris; his work Tractatus (Summulae logicales) served as a textbook in many medieval universities and was commented on by authors from different philosophical and theological schools. Works on medicine ("Thesaurus pauperum") and psychology ("De anima") are attributed to him. According to some authors, it would be two people with the same name: one who only wrote works on medicine and psychology and became pope later; another who wrote only works of logic.

(7) The logical derivation operated by "our rabbis", as Ibn Ezra put it (without contesting their conclusion, which is blatantly contradictory to the verse from which they started), is vicious.

It has the appearance of a "conversion by contraposition" from Aristotelian logic, an operation consisting in the transformation of a conditional sentence into another conditional sentence, in which the conditional terms are negated and reversed, so that the resulting sentence has the same semantic content, but opposite truth values . In reality, from the admonition "Do not follow the many in evils", rigorously logically we learn "Do not follow the many in non-evils", and not "in the good", as "our rabbis" derived. In the judicial context of the verse in Exodus 23:2 ("Thou shalt not testify in judgment to please the crowd"), the terms "bad" and "good" are relative - what is good for the plaintiff is bad for the defendant and vice versa. Therefore, the term "evils" refers to false witness ("Thou shalt not follow the many in false witness") and, therefore, the antonym of "evils" in this context is not "good" but "truth": and from the truth, in this legal circumstance, follows the good, defined as fair judgment.

"Don't follow the many in bad deeds" means confessing the truth, regardless of the pressure of the many.

The pressure of the many may not be immoral, but only the fruit of a mass illusion, so that the Commandment in its authentic form has the role of strengthening firmness.

E. An unjust excommunication, God's joke?

If the carob flies up from its roots, at Eliezer's request, and also at his request, the stream begins to flow in reverse, the walls of the school bow, the Divine Voice takes its part when it requests it, if the prophet Elijah reveals to mortals what God said on the occasion and that he smiled, of course, this is a fiction and pursues a purpose other than telling a story.

The purpose is to say that the majority decides: "Since the majority of the rabbis disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer's opinion, the halakha is not established according to his opinion."

But the literature of this Talmudic fragment is more fantastic than it appears: it gives the impression that the narrative has unity of time, because it uses at the beginning of the story the words "In that day" which it repeats in the epilogue: "In that day, [...] the wise they came to a consensus about him [Eliezer] and excommunicated him."

The epilogue of this narrative is surprising, since the Gemara had to wait two centuries to receive Yirmeyah's answer "After many bow down", (probably because only one in two hundred years dares to claim that a Divine Commandment states the opposite or).

Therefore, the vicious conclusion that the halakha is not established according to Eliezer's opinion could not be drawn "In that day", but two centuries later.

It was not the basis of Eliezer's excommunication, although the excommunication is attested by historians.

It would appear that the rabbis excommunicated Eliezer arbitrarily if we were to take the story seriously.

Fiction cannot be disproved by the laws of nature.

It builds a universe with its own laws - the carob flies, the stream flows backwards, the walls of the school and the Divine Voice participate in the debate and God himself smiles.

All this is "part of the convention", in the name of the message that the story wants to convey.

But that Eliezer was excommunicated following a justified rabbinic conclusion two centuries after his excommunication makes the story taste dubious, blurring the line between fantastic and false and suggesting that an injustice has been done there. Dictatorship of the majority.

Even if they would not have had access to Aristotelianism, the commentators, in the end, were sensitive to equivocation, so that in Tosafot (1), next to the paragraph stating that God smiled, the following note was added: "He smiled and said: "My children have overcome me." And what was said at the beginning of Avodah Zarah (3b), "There is no more laughter before the Holy One, blessed be He, since the Temple was destroyed" - one thing remained established, whereas here it is only a joke that He told."

Is "My Children Overcame Me" God's Joke?

Was Eliezer excommunicated for this joke?

"And the Sages said: Who will go to inform [Eliezer] that he has been excommunicated? Rabbi Akiva, his beloved disciple, said to them: I will go, lest some unfit person inform him in a painful and offensive manner, causing him thereby to destroy the whole world." (Bava Metzia 59b6) The threat seems serious, it is in Eliezer's power to turn the waters and distort the walls, and he, in despair, lost his reason for being, as the story goes.

was god kidding

While it lost its bearing, inducing the impression of forgery, (in addition to the flawed logical operations), this literary fragment also lost its rational cadence, accepting that God smiles, while Eliezer must resist the temptation to destroy the world .

God smiles at the twisting of His Word.

Eliezer is punished for following God's word. After all, this is Judaism's version of man's triumph over divinity.

But Judaism is not the only religion where the interpretation is at the mercy of the majority, history records similar events in Christianity:

- Marcion was excommunicated (144 AD) two or three centuries before the Christian canon was established;

- Although it is not attested by any biblical textual basis, the doctrine of the Trinity was voted favorably at the Council of Nicaea (year 325 CE) by 313 bishops out of the 318 participants; and so it remained.

The majority decided that each of the beings of the Trinity is God and that together they are God - a deliberately illogical doctrine, thus signaling the limit to which reason can advance in the knowledge of God.

Subtlety that did not meet unanimity.

According to the testimonies, in the end, of the five bishops who opposed, only two - Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais - maintained their opposition and were exiled and anathematized.

Of course, Arias was excommunicated.

The ending - two versions

-The first version

But why, why does the Tosafist mention the Temple?!

How much does Eliezer's excommunication recall the loss of the Temple?

"The Gemara reports: His eyes shed tears, and as a result the whole world suffered: A third of the olives suffered, and a third of the wheat, and a third of the barley. And some say that the very dough kneaded in the hands of a woman was corrupted. The scholars said: There was great sadness that day, because every place to which Rabbi Eliezer turned his gaze was burned."

Since the loss of the Temple, laughter has perished.

"Rabbi Akiva said to him: 'Teacher, your colleagues seem to be distancing themselves from you.' He used a euphemism, because in fact they were the ones removing Rabbi Eliezer."

Why does the Tosafist mention the Temple, precisely when God recognizes the triumph of the people over him?

The divine smile - clairvoyant pain for irreversible alienation?

- Second version:

In Judaism, the complete emancipation of man in relation to God, which probably took place after the destruction of the Temple, claimed the elevation of man to the status of God.

But Christianity had already updated, through Jesus Christ, the concept of man-God (latent, in the Book of Enoch, proving the existence of such an aspiration). Yehoshua ben Hanania was engaged, however, polemically in relations with the Judeo-Christians, whom he considered heretics: what is the cause and what is the effect, in this case? As it is said: "One who is behind the lid of the ark, should visualize himself as if he were standing in front of the lid of the ark..." (Berakhot 30a) . The facts are ancient, and what are considered causes today could, in fact, be the effects back then. Both versions are valid, as aspects of the inflection of evolution towards deification. The sadness of this ascension comes from the two tragedies on which it is based: the restructuring of the relationship with God and the killing of the man-God.

Notes

(1) The Tosafot ("additions") are medieval commentaries on more than thirty treatises of the Talmud. They take the form of critical or explanatory glosses, and are printed, in most editions of the Talmud, on the outer margin of the page, on the side opposite Rashi's commentaries. The authors of the Tosafots lived in the 12th/13th centuries in Germany, France, England and Italy and are known as Tosafists (in Hebrew B'aley HaTosafot). Their roots lie in the work of Rashi - in fact, Rashi's sons-in-law and grandsons are considered among the founders and most influential members of the Tosafot school. Their commentaries on almost every tractate of the Talmud were collected, edited, added to, and passed down from generation to generation, with certain collections gaining more importance (depending on the tractate and locality). Their approach is analytical, comparative and incisive and often takes a critical stance towards Rashi's commentary.