Rabbi Eliezer’s reliance on a heavenly voice reflects an attempt to change Jewish law by means of personal revelation instead of through the transmitted tradition or legal reasoning; otherwise the Sages would have been persuaded by him and he would not have needed a heavenly voice.

The question about Elijah is different, because he comes by virtue of the authority of the transmission that Israel received from Sinai, to which he is much closer, and so in that respect his authority is more reliable than what we received from the Sages. And it is well known that there are historical errors and other errors in the words of the Sages, and that when Torah scholars increased who had not fully apprenticed themselves to their teachers, disputes increased, and so on.

This has nothing to do with the question of errors. The claim is not that the tradition is correct and Elijah is mistaken, but that Elijah does not participate in halakhic discourse. The Torah was not given to ministering angels but only to human beings. In the case of the Oven of Akhnai too, a heavenly voice emerged, which shows that the Sages were mistaken. There as well, the claim was not that the Sages were right and the heavenly voice was wrong, but that the Torah was handed over to human beings (even if they make mistakes).

Of course, if a ministering angel came to change a commandment, we would not listen to him. But Elijah does not come to “turn the heart of the fathers to the children” as a ministering angel, but as a human being (and an agent of God), and as such he should be given at least equal standing in halakhic discourse. Naturally, Elijah’s own knowledge constitutes persuasive evidence that our tradition is mistaken and his is correct. What is this comparable to? To a Torah scroll proven to have been written by Moses our Teacher, in which it says “one with crushed genitals.”

As for the Oven of Akhnai, is it necessary to understand the story as a question of whether truth determines the law or halakhic discourse does? In my opinion one can understand it this way: everyone agrees that if it were found that the truth is that God commanded us this way and not that way, one is obligated to listen to the truth. However, once the Torah was given, the Holy One, blessed be He, ruled out the very possibility that personal revelation (or revelation to a small group) could serve as a criterion for determining truth against what can be derived by natural reason from Torah discussion. But that does not necessarily mean that even good evidence not based on personal revelation—such as Elijah, who received the tradition from Sinai directly and without exiles that caused Torah to be forgotten from Israel—also could not serve as such a criterion.

Sorry for barging into the discussion here.
But it seems to me you’re talking on two different planes.
There is the plane of halakhic discussion following a legally doubtful situation. There the understanding that apparently emerges from the “Oven of Akhnai” is indeed that a prophet has no greater power than a sage, so he is one equal among equals.
But there is also the plane of tradition, where Elijah says that this is what was transmitted to him as a law given to Moses at Sinai. There one does not argue back against the law, as was said: if it is an established law, we will accept it. There are even those who would say that the medium of tradition is removed from the medium accessible through reasoning.

In any case, I seem to recall hearing that some have wanted to say that at times one sage disputed the reliability of another rabbi’s tradition, and by rejecting that tradition the matter reverted to the realm of halakhic discussion.
And I think Copenhagen’s question can stand only on this narrow point: can Elijah’s reliability in transmitting the tradition be rejected?

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A second point: there is the expression “teiku”—that the Tishbite will resolve difficulties and problems. Doesn’t that indicate a certain understanding of Elijah’s authority?

Tuvia,

Your words imply that in principle there is no ruling that Elijah cannot change by virtue of his reliability as a transmitter of the tradition. Isn’t that so? After all, the whole question is under the assumption that his identity (and therefore his reliability) is beyond doubt. Is it possible that his identity is beyond doubt but his reliability is not?

In any case, in my opinion it seems that the various views on how to interpret the Oven of Akhnai have to be reconciled with what is told in Jeremiah 26, where all the sages thought he deserved death as a false prophet and only the princes of Judah saved him. Yet there was apparently at least a halakhically doubtful situation there as to whether he was a true or false prophet (at the very least—for they were unanimously of the opinion that he should be put to death, as Uriah was put to death). And the clear message of the chapter is that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not uphold such doubts; the truth itself regarding what God wants is what matters, and halakhic and theological discussion cannot rise up against its own Creator.

All the more so from one who errs in an explicit Mishnah to one who errs in an explicit Torah law.

Neither his identity nor his reliability need be in doubt. His status within the halakhic field is the problem. Even if he is right and reliable and he is Elijah the prophet, his words still have no standing in the halakhic field. “A prophet is not permitted from now on to introduce anything new” was not said because the prophet is mistaken. It refers to a true prophet. Likewise, the identity of the source of the heavenly voice and its reliability are also not in doubt. We do not accept it because it has no standing in the halakhic field.
If you think that truth is the necessary and sufficient condition for Jewish law, then that is the point of disagreement between us. And not because there is no truth (I am not a pluralist), but because besides truth there are other parameters that determine halakhic decision-making.
In short, theological and halakhic discussion most definitely can rise up against its Creator—and quite a lot. These things are explicit in the words of the Sages in several places. That is the meaning of the expressions “It is not in heaven” and “A prophet is not permitted from now on to introduce anything new,” and the discussion about a bright spot that preceded white hair, and the days of separation of Moses our Teacher, and the like.

This position seems inconsistent to me. Why does anyone care that the Torah was given at Sinai? Because of the inherent, self-standing authority of the Creator of the world to command us to observe His commandments within the framework of the covenant of the fathers and the covenant of Sinai. And the mouth that forbade is the mouth that permitted. The moment it becomes clear retroactively that you were commanded differently from what you previously understood, refusing to listen is no different from a principled refusal to observe God’s commandments in the name of some foreign ideology—raising the idol of conservatism above the God of truth.

But when a prophet comes and claims that a commandment has been abolished for generations, it is clear to us that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not send him to do that, for the Creator does not change His mind and the Torah has already been given saying that they must be observed forever.

Even if one had to think that the heavenly voice in the Oven of Akhnai was speaking the truth (and I see no reason for that), still, since its words imply that the ruling for future generations should be the opposite of what the Sages concluded on the basis of their natural understanding from the Torah given to them, in such a situation the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself commanded us not to listen. Therefore it is clear that the truth is that this is only a trial that we must withstand against the temptation (even if He Himself may be the source of the trial, as in Deuteronomy 13:4).

By contrast, when Elijah comes and says that an error occurred in the received tradition, there is no prohibition that contradicts his words and says that one must under no circumstances believe that errors are possible in the transmission of the Torah. Elijah’s reliability—not as a prophet, but as an earlier and trustworthy link in the transmission of the Torah—clarifies that this is God’s will, and refusal to listen to him seems like contempt for the word of God itself.

In any case, as for theological sacred cows: all the prophets are full of slaughtering the theological sacred cows that Torah functionaries and priests sometimes built from their own minds or decreed out of an erroneous understanding of the Torah, and the clear expectation there is that we listen to the true prophet in such situations: “And it shall be that the man who will not listen to My words that he speaks in My name, I will require it of him”—a demand that cost the Jewish people much blood. If even in matters of theology we say that the words of true prophets have no authority, then this is no longer original Judaism but a new religion like the ones invented by the Christians, the Muslims, the Mormons, and the like.

That’s how the Sanhedrin decided, and that is the will of God. What’s unclear?
A prophet who introduces a new point of Jewish law not merely as a temporary measure—it seems one must say that the Sages received a tradition from father to son, father to son, a law given to Moses at Sinai, that this is a trial.
If the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to change the law, He can do another revelation at Mount Sinai. Or change our understanding so that everyone forgets the earlier thing, and so on.

Tuvia,

From your words it is not clear which part of the argument you disagree with. In your opinion, was there ever some Sanhedrin in the Chamber of Hewn Stone that made a decision binding for all generations saying that if it becomes known that an error occurred in the transmission of the Oral Torah through father-to-son tradition, and the law given to Moses at Sinai rules otherwise, one is forbidden to obey the law given to Moses at Sinai? Even if there were some imaginary Sanhedrin that ruled this way, where would its authority come from? See Maimonides, Errors 13:17.

The Holy One, blessed be He, wanted many times to change mistaken halakhic understandings: “For I did not speak to your fathers, nor command them on the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices”—that is, the law is that before dealing with the laws of sacrifices one must ensure that the rational commandments are being kept (as the Kuzari says, 2:46–48), and He exacted full vengeance when the people did not listen. As I noted above, the law in Jeremiah’s time was that he deserved death as a false prophet (chapter 26) and that one should not listen to him, for such was the legal precedent with Uriah; and only thanks to the princes of Judah and Ahikam son of Shaphan was he saved (as God had promised).

Let me ask it this way: if you had lived in Jeremiah’s time, and halakhic pilpul had indicated to you that he was a false prophet, and your rabbi had instructed you likewise, and the local custom was to heed your rabbi’s rulings (and even if the Sanhedrin had ruled that way in error), would you have refused to listen to Jeremiah’s words?

Copenhagen, the ground rules of this discussion are not clear to me. Do you accept the Talmud as an authority? In particular the claim that “It is not in heaven”? If not—then this is one discussion; if so—then it is another.

The claim itself is completely consistent.
The Holy One, blessed be He, Himself—the One who commands all the commandments—for His own reasons told us not to pay attention to a heavenly voice, as the Sages learn from the verse “It is not in heaven.” What is the logical problem here?
By the way, you keep repeatedly identifying Jewish law with truth, and in my opinion that identification is mistaken. There are situations in which one must do something because that is the law even if it is not the truth. For example, if I reached the conclusion that the Talmud erred in a matter of Jewish law, since the Talmud has authority I am supposed to obey it even though in my opinion it is mistaken. There can be perfectly understandable reasons for this (such as concern over a slippery slope of deviation from Jewish law even without authorized instructions). In any case, I do not see any inconsistency here whatsoever.

The Talmud and the tradition are of course an authority, but a derived and dependent one. It is comparable to a soldier who is obligated above all to obey the chief of staff, who appointed for him a personal commander and ordered him to obey that commander so long as his commands meet certain conditions. The moment an order is issued that does not meet the conditions laid down by the chief of staff, the personal commander’s authority in that matter lapses and the chief of staff’s authority returns—for from the outset the commander’s authority was derived and dependent. So too, it seems, regarding traditions—otherwise they themselves would become a god to whom we are subordinated independently, and that cannot be.

I explained why Elijah’s case is not similar to a heavenly voice. I too agree that it has no authority to overturn Jewish law derived from halakhic inference. But Elijah is not a heavenly voice; rather, he is an instrument through whom we learn that we erred in our halakhic inference.

The inconsistency is with the belief that the entire system is derived from God’s authority. If it indeed is such a system (for whoever holds that it is), then its authority is not absolute but must satisfy the conditions given to it by the One who delegated that authority. I do not see a situation in which the Holy One, blessed be He, allows us to see clearly that we made a mistake in understanding the law and nevertheless wants us to persist in the mistake against His commands. After all, the prophets preserved prophecies for all generations, and they all testify otherwise.