I don’t understand what is binding about a public decision. The public may have authority to punish, but before Heaven why should that bind me any more than the law of the state, which is also founded on public consent?
And regarding the Rabbi’s astonishment—that isn’t really a difficulty, because if the point is public acceptance, one has to distinguish between acceptance by the people and individual great figures who disagree.

The acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai is also based on public acceptance. See Beit Yishai there. The law of the state is also binding by virtue of that same principle. When there is a conflict about how to act, that is a different discussion.
As for the Shulchan Arukh, you are taking the charming but somewhat eccentric route of “one can raise a strained difficulty.” I prefer the route of “one can resolve it comfortably.”

That sounds completely absurd! Are you really claiming here that the law is binding on the same level as the Torah?
And what about in private? Do I really have a personal obligation to obey the law, on the same level as Torah-level obligations?!

Who said it is on the same level? I said it is the same mechanism, and when there is a conflict that is another discussion, which I did not get into.

Because if the binding foundation is the same foundation, that means the same level. I’m not talking about conflict; the very fact that you say the same foundation obligates both Torah law and state law is astonishing. And again I ask: is there an obligation to obey the law in private? Even the veterans of Har Hamor would rub their eyes at a positive answer.

Judah, if you’ve decided to wear me out, you’re on the right track. I said it is based on the same principle, and for some reason you conclude that the obligation is on the same level. It is not.
Suppose you owe gratitude to two people. One is your father and the other is someone who gave you three shekels to buy Bazooka gum. Do you think your obligation to the second is on the same level?
The discussion began with the question why one must obey public acceptance, and to that I replied. Now you are moving to another question (that of conflicts). That is a different discussion, and therefore I did not address it.

I don’t know why specifically this discussion is more exhausting than others.
In any case, the Rabbi is not answering the question whether according to his view there is a full obligation before Heaven to obey the law.

Until now you hadn’t asked that, but in my replies to your other questions I answered that too. Now, even though you didn’t ask it, you write that you did ask it, and even though I already answered it, you’re asking again. So is it any wonder I’m exhausted?!
There is such an obligation by virtue of public acceptance.

Is the agreement of the majority really strong enough to create an obligation upon all descendants of those who agreed, throughout all generations? And was there in fact such a binding agreement? How can one say that a kind of oral “agreement” (for there was no national assembly for this purpose) from about 1,500 years ago can obligate the secular Jew who long ago lost all connection to that agreement? By contrast, from the plain sense of the Torah it seems that even the secular Jew who has gone astray is obligated to return.

The obligation is on the collective, and therefore on all the individuals who belong to it. Like a law passed in the Knesset, which binds everyone even a thousand years later unless it is changed.

So the secular Jew is not bound, because he established an independent secular public nationality.

Incorrect. By establishing another nationality he violated the contract. Could the participants at Mount Sinai have established another nationality and backed out? Why bring in descendants at all? Either way: if establishing another nationality does not contradict the commitment, then even the original participants themselves could do so; and if it does, then their descendants cannot do so either. Unless you assume that the obligation on descendants is different from that of the participants themselves, but then there isn’t so much need for this discussion.

In the case of an obligation arising purely from public agreement, in my opinion one should assume both that the obligation on descendants differs from that on the original parties who agreed (and probably does not apply to them at all), and that the obligation on the original parties themselves is undermined insofar as it was based on a factual mistake.

If those who agreed at Mount Sinai based their agreement on a factual mistake (say, they took ayahuasca and God did not really reveal Himself), the obligation would not have applied even to them.

Suppose you were the son of a whole community that several generations earlier had accepted upon itself the religion and way of life of the Amish with a certain interpretation of Anabaptist Christianity. Would there be any problem with some members of that community deciding to stop seeing themselves as bound by the commandments of their ancestors? A descendant, in my view, is not bound by his ancestors’ decision except in matters of property (inheritance and the like), unless it is reasonable to think that he himself would have agreed to it had he stood in that situation.

I already explained that there is also weight here to the commandment and to the truth of the command, and not only to the contract and covenant. Beyond that, if the entire Jewish people were to decide to change their skin, that is not like one individual deciding to violate the covenant. Third, the Amish agreed among themselves, but here we have a contract with someone else.

If so, then this is not a full analogy. The public’s acceptance of the Babylonian Talmud does not involve a second party to the contract to whom the agreeing public is committing itself.

It is certainly possible that there is a second party: the Holy One, blessed be He. Just as there is a second party to the authority of the Sanhedrin (especially if one assumes that after its acceptance the Talmud too derives its authority from “do not turn aside,” as in Maimonides’ renewal of ordination).

It seems that Maimonides agrees that, according to his view, the renewal of ordination is a conjecture subject to discretion, so grounding the duty to obey the Talmud on a similar possibility may amount to “mountains hanging by a hair” (= non-compelling judgment).
In addition, the activity of the Sanhedrin is an explicit Torah-level command, and therefore it is more plausible to say there is an obligation to seek a natural way to realize it; but that is not the case with accepting specifically the Babylonian Talmud (rather than some other consistent method of halakhic decision-making of our choice).

Correct. If you do not accept that reasoning, apparently you will not feel bound. So what? Even at Sinai, someone who did not feel bound by the covenant made there would not have felt bound.

A – If so, then how did Maimonides omit many laws, on which there is no disagreement in the Talmud, because they do not fit his Aristotelian outlook?

B – What is your view regarding the well-known dispute about whether when the reason lapses, the enactment lapses / does not lapse?

A – Because reason is an interpretive tool, and laws based on a factual error are void.
B. See my article on repealing enactments.

A – Fine, that’s the point here: so anyone who thinks there is an error in their words can disagree,
after all, in practice Maimonides could not know whether at the time of the Talmud, 1,000 years before him, it was really so or not,

A – And one more thing: then the Karaites, who did not accept the Talmud, there is no problem with that even according to our own rules.
B – Regarding the seven Noahide commandments, how are they supposed to know about that obligation? They don’t even have the witness argument, nor did they have any general agreement.

A – In principle, correct, except that they do not accept the Oral Torah at all. They have no version of the Oral Torah.
B – From the same tradition of ours, which they cut off. But the seven commandments also have a moral dimension, and they can become aware of that even without tradition.

A – It’s all the same; when I say “Talmud” I mean the whole Oral Torah. So according to that, it’s not understood why by our own rules we are supposed to cast them down and not raise them up; if according to our own rules they are also fine—they didn’t accept the Oral Torah, there was no general agreement—then why by our own rules are we supposed to cast them down?

B – The question is even stronger against us as well: why do we claim there was general agreement? As Maimonides writes, that in the years after the sealing of the Talmud a consensus around the Talmud formed—after all, the Karaites, who were precisely in those periods, did not accept this at all. They were around 40%. Is that called “all”?

And if here they went by the rule that the majority counts as the whole, then the Karaites too would have been obligated by that rule,

And then likewise, since the Jewish people, almost in their entirety, accepted the Zohar (and the Ari), then everyone would be obligated by that as well.

C – And again I ask about the fact that Maimonides did indeed disagree with the Talmud and omitted laws that did not work in Aristotelian terms. So anyone who thinks there is an error in their words can disagree,

after all, in practice Maimonides could not know whether at the time of the Talmud, 1,000 years before him, all the mysticism he rejected existed or not; rather, that is simply what seemed likely to him.

Response:
A – There is no need to cast them down. Only someone who is not under compulsion and acts out of base desire has that status. See my article on enlightened idolatry.

B – There is acceptance by all the sages of Israel who are committed to Jewish law and the Oral Torah. That exists throughout the generations and not only then. Even today there are secular Jews who do not accept the authority of the Talmud.
Indeed, correct: the Karaites too were obligated. This is not by the rule that the majority counts as the whole; a majority is enough.
And so too regarding the Zohar, except that there it is not true that it was accepted.

C – In a case of error, yes. Why keep repeating the same question again and again?!

A – The basic question is: what is the source of my obligation and yours by force of the agreement of my ancestors or anyone else, even the entire Jewish people? (Yes, I read all the articles about “formal authority,” and it is precisely about this authority that the halakhic question is being asked.)
And it is not comparable to accepting the Torah, because there the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself actually obligated them: “He held the mountain over them like a barrel.”
And likewise it is not comparable to the Great Court, for there the Torah commanded us to obey.
But as for general agreement, from where do I get a halakhic obligation to obey?
I understand that it is good for ordering society, but from there to turning this into Torah—meaning that I would receive punishment in the World to Come for it, or if in private I transgress in a way that does not damage social order.
I understand that a community can make an enactment and whoever doesn’t agree can be expelled, but if he leaves the community—that is, leaves that agreement—is he thereby transgressing Jewish law? Why? Where in our Torah does this force come from?

B – In Laws of Rebels 2:6–7 the force of an enactment is because it spread through all Israel. Otherwise, he writes there that if it did not spread at all, it never took effect,
and if it spread and afterward lapsed, then even a court lesser than the original one can repeal it, even if it was a fence.
So it follows that in times when most of the Jewish people did not observe Torah, even so as for rabbinic laws, they could not enact anything—even if all the sages of Israel agreed—because, as stated, if the majority of the public does not keep it, it does not even need repeal.
And even if only afterward most of the Jewish people ceased to observe Torah and commandments (as in the time of the Hebrew Bible, when only 7,000 out of the two remaining tribes had not bowed to Baal, after the ten tribes had not observed and therefore disappeared), and similarly in the exile and basically until our own day (so I doubt whether even in the time of the Mishnah and Talmud most of the Jewish people were Torah-observant).
If so, it comes out that nowadays one could repeal many decrees, even with a lesser court, and in fact if historically, at the time of the sages of the Mishnah or Talmud, most of the Jewish people did not observe Torah and commandments (which is how it seems), then one wouldn’t even need a lesser court; it would lapse automatically.??

C – Another thing regarding ancestral customs:
Pitchei Teshuvah, Yoreh De’ah 214:5 and 228:30:
“Whether the son is obligated to conduct himself etc.—see in the responsum Zikhron Yosef, Yoreh De’ah siman 14, what he wrote on this matter, and he concluded that a son is not obligated to conduct himself according to his father’s practice except in what the son himself also practiced from the time he came of age, having been accustomed by his fathers to go in their ways. And in that manner too the author spoke when he wrote that public acceptance takes effect on them and on their descendants, namely that the residents of the city and their descendants already practiced כך, and it is like a vow that applies also to their descendants, and therefore they are obligated to act according to their enactment. But if the son never began to conduct himself according to his father’s good custom, the son is not obligated to conduct himself with that stringency.”

This is the language of Zikhron Yosef: “For certainly reason does not allow that a son should be obligated to conduct himself according to his father’s practice except in what the son himself also practiced from the time he came of age like his father’s conduct… But if the son never began to conduct himself according to his father’s good custom, the matter is as clear as the sun that the son is not obligated to conduct himself with that stringency, and there is no room for the difficulty of the Chavot Yair.”

D – Also, even in a case where he himself did follow ancestral customs or even accepted them himself, release from vows would help.

A – I answered.
B – “Spread” or “lapsed” refers only to a public that is obligated to Torah and commandments.
What does release from vows have to do with anything? Here we are speaking about acceptance of the system of which the vow is a part.

A – I understood that you base the obligation on Beit Yishai, which cites Rivash citing Nachmanides, from acceptance of the Torah.

But wouldn’t you agree that Nachmanides is problematic, since the acceptance of the Torah was actually through divine coercion and not from their consent?

And secondly, Nachmanides on this very point is itself subject to a dispute among the medieval authorities. For in Beit Yosef, Yoreh De’ah at the end of siman 214, he indeed brought it, but in Shulchan Arukh 214:1 he ruled anonymously like the medieval authorities who disagree with Nachmanides, and only in 228:28 did he bring it again, and the later authorities already noted this.
See, for example, Pri Chadash, Orach Chayim 496:2:
“And the author in Yoreh De’ah siman 214 was anonymous there in accordance with this view, except that afterward he mentioned the view of those who disagree under the formulation ‘there are those who say,’ and the Rema in the gloss also concluded that the custom is like the first view. And thus he also wrote anonymously in Orach Chayim at the end of siman 624. Yet in Yoreh De’ah siman 228:28 he wrote: ‘If there was in the agreement a fence for the many or a fence for the Torah and for a matter of commandment, they cannot release it.’ Thus he followed the responsum of Rivash, and this is astonishing, for here he ruled anonymously like the view introduced elsewhere as ‘there are those who say,’ and the later authorities did not comment on this, and it requires investigation. However it may be, to me the main view is like that of the Rosh.”

B – Another thing that is unclear to me from your words: what is the force of this matter that Ashkenazim follow the Rema and Sephardim the Shulchan Arukh? Do Ashkenazim really have to rule specifically like the Rema? Can’t an Ashkenazi rule like Maimonides or like the Shulchan Arukh and the like? That is, if an Ashkenazi asks what the law is and you answer him not like the Rema, is there really some problem? What exactly is the force of the Rema for Ashkenazim and the Shulchan Arukh for Sephardim? Or perhaps there really is no force to this.

If it is only on the basis of custom—meaning that in practice regarding cooking after cooking they followed him—then the practical consequence is that in a matter where he ruled but there was no custom like him, because it simply never came up in practice, then one is not obligated to rule like him in that matter. (Obviously one cannot say that the custom is that whenever there is a halakhic question, one rules like the Rema, because first of all ideas do not have the status of custom, and second, many times people did not rule like him.) And if this is by the law of custom, then we have entered the above dispute among the medieval authorities whether release is effective for custom, and according to the above Zikhron Yosef, one would not even need release if he had not practiced it from the time he came of age?

A – All this pilpul is irrelevant. Public acceptance does not fall into one halakhic category or another. It is a reasoning that precedes Scripture.
B – Its force is by virtue of custom. And only when the law is shaky in your hands. If you have a position, act in accordance with it.

Okay, thanks,
so it’s all just what is most reasonable. That fits with your words regarding proof for the existence of the Creator, and belief in the Sinai event, and life after death, meaning reward and punishment—that everything is according to what seems most likely.

In any case, I’d be glad for a resolution of something I don’t understand in Maimonides.

There is a passage of Maimonides in the introduction to the Mishneh Torah that I do not understand at all. He explains, or tries to explain, why we cannot disagree with the Talmud, and explains that there are things that are a law given to Moses at Sinai—fine, that everyone understands. But there are things they learned from the thirteen principles, or from their own reasoning; why can’t we disagree there? So he gives one answer, or maybe two answers—it’s not so clear how he mixed them together and zigzagged between them—and also it’s not clear where he got one of the reasons; it does not at all seem to follow from the Talmud, as follows.

And this is his language: “And each and every one writes for himself, according to his ability, from the explanation of the Torah and its laws as he heard, and from matters that were newly developed in each generation, in laws that they did not learn by received tradition, but by one of the thirteen principles, and the Great Court agreed upon them.” (Anyone who learns Talmud does not understand at all where Maimonides got this. It does not seem, or even begin to seem, that on every matter some amora or tanna said there was an agreement of the Great Court. And in general, what connection is there between the Babylonian amoraim and the Great Court? And even in the Jerusalem Talmud we are left with many disputes. In any case, where is this book, this protocol of the court with all its rulings? As stated, in the Talmud I only see that we are left with disputes. By the way, here it is understood why throughout the way Maimonides emphasizes that so-and-so and his court received from so-and-so and his court—he was already laying the groundwork for what he says here. But again, what is Maimonides’ source?) “And so it always was… wondrous judgments and laws that they did not receive from Moses, and the court of that generation reasoned about them with the principles by which the Torah is expounded, and those elders ruled and concluded that the law is so.” (There are endless things they did not rule on, and therefore all the medieval authorities disagree which way the law goes; in the Talmud there are endless statements of lone amoraim.)

And Maimonides repeats this view also in Laws of Rebels chapter 1: “The Great Court in Jerusalem are the essence of the Oral Torah, and they are the pillars of instruction, and from them law and judgment go out to all Israel, and concerning them the Torah promised, as it says: ‘According to the Torah which they teach you…’ One category is matters they learned by received tradition, and these are the Oral Torah; and one category is matters they learned by their own reasoning through one of the principles by which the Torah is expounded, and it seemed to them that this matter is so; and one category is matters they made as a fence for the Torah, according to what the time required, and these are the decrees, enactments, and customs… And ‘according to the judgment which they shall tell you’ refers to these matters that they learn by legal reasoning through one of the principles by which the Torah is expounded” (that is, again Maimonides learns that only the Great Court can derive through the thirteen principles)
“…And matters learned by legal reasoning: if the Great Court agreed upon them, then all have agreed; and if they disagreed about them, we follow the majority and derive the ruling from the many” (again it is puzzling: where did we ever see this when Rabbi Yehuda disagreed with Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Meir, or Rabbi Yochanan with Reish Lakish?)
“And so too with decrees, enactments, and customs: if some of them thought it fitting to decree a decree or enact an enactment or leave the people with this custom, and some of them thought it not fitting to decree this decree or enact this enactment or leave this custom, these argue against those and we follow the majority and derive the matter from the many” (again hinting at the third reason, consensus of all the sages)
“(4) When the Great Court existed, there was no dispute in Israel” (he changed the language of the Talmud, which says disputes did not proliferate, and the Kesef Mishneh did not comment, only cited) “Rather, every matter about which doubt arose for one of Israel would ask the court in his city” (would he not go to an individual amora? and people note the Tosefta Chagigah 2:4, Sanhedrin 7:1)… “the great one, and they would ask. If the matter about which doubt had arisen was known to the Great Court, whether by tradition or by the principle through which they had reasoned, they would answer immediately. If the matter was not clear to the Great Court, they would deliberate on it at that time and debate it until they all agreed or they took a vote and followed the majority, and they would tell all those asking, ‘Thus is the law,’ and they would go on their way. From the time the Great Court was abolished, disputes proliferated in Israel: one declares impure and gives his reason, and another declares pure and gives his reason; one forbids and another permits.” (So here Maimonides admits that already in the time of the Talmud there was no Great Court, contrary to what he says in the introduction—or perhaps that is how he concludes there, and the Great Court of 71 had been abolished some years before the composition of the Talmud, but here it seems to be many more years.)
And again in chapter 2: “(1) A great court that interpreted by one of the principles according to what seemed right in its eyes that the law is thus, and judged accordingly, and afterward another court arose and found another reason to overturn it—this latter court may overturn and judge according to what seems right in its eyes, as it says, ‘to the judge who shall be in those days’; you are obligated to follow only the court in your own generation.”

And later authorities already noted that from the language “every matter that was forbidden by count” it follows that there is something not forbidden by count, and Nachmanides wrote this in his novellae to Avodah Zarah 35. And the Ran brought his words in his halakhot and concluded that so too Rabbi Isaac the Elder answered in a responsum, etc., and so it also appears from the words of Beit Yosef in the name of the Semag, and likewise in Rashba in Torat HaBayit; see Yabia Omer 3, Choshen Mishpat 7.

The simple assumption is exactly like our understanding—that the amoraim derive on their own without needing a vote and the agreement of the court.

See also Rashba 2:268: “A fence and enactment established even by one sage… and his prohibition spread throughout all Israel, such as kachal, about which they said, ‘Rav found a valley and fenced it off’… And there is a custom that they adopted on their own, not through an enactment of sages… and it is forbidden to violate it like the body of the Torah itself, such as the fat of the sciatic nerve… women who see a drop of blood the size of a mustard seed.”

See regarding Ezra’s immersion, the language of Maimonides according to his view at the end of Laws of Shema, that Ezra and his court enacted it.

You have a fundamental mistake in understanding Maimonides. Maimonides is describing here the history of the Oral Torah from its beginning. He writes that throughout the generations there were interpretations that were agreed upon, and in that way they joined the general halakhic corpus, and therefore they are binding. Interpretations that were not agreed upon were not passed on as part of the corpus. And all this is speaking about the period before the era of the Talmud (!!!). In the Talmud itself there is documentation of various interpretations by various sages, and of course not all of them are agreed upon, and certainly not by the Great Court, which did not exist then at all. The conclusions of the Talmud were indeed agreed upon, but not by the Great Court; rather by the acceptance of all the sages of Israel who came after it.
Of course there is no point in looking for the book and the protocol, since there was a prohibition on writing down the Oral Torah. The writing began with the Mishnah and the Talmud, and then a kind of protocol was created, except that by then there was no Sanhedrin anymore. By the way, your questions demonstrate very well the logic behind the prohibition on writing down the Oral Torah (though of course that also has disadvantages).
As for the remark that there are things that were not decreed by vote—do you need proofs of this from medieval and later authorities? Doesn’t Maimonides understand that? Go and read the elementary text. What is the rule “a matter enacted by count requires another count to permit it” talking about, if every matter is a matter enacted by count? And what about the rule requiring a court greater in wisdom and number? Is it not well known that in Rabbi Yosei’s place they ate poultry with milk?

Fine.
And what do you say about Laws of Rebels 1:4:
“When the Great Court existed, there was no dispute in Israel. Rather, every matter about which doubt arose for one of Israel would ask the court in his city. If they knew, they would tell him; if not, then the questioner together with that court or with its emissaries would go up to Jerusalem and ask the court on the Temple Mount. If they knew, they would tell him; if not, all would come to the court at the entrance of the Temple courtyard. If they knew, they would tell them; if not, all would come to the Chamber of Hewn Stone, to the Great Court, and ask. If the matter about which doubt had arisen was known to the Great Court, whether by tradition or by the principle through which they had reasoned, they would answer immediately. If the matter was not clear to the Great Court, they would deliberate on it at that time and debate it until they all agreed or took a vote and followed the majority, and they would tell all the questioners, ‘Thus is the law,’ and they would go on their way. From the time the Great Court was abolished, disputes proliferated in Israel: one declares impure and gives his reason, and another declares pure and gives his reason; one forbids and another permits.”

This does not at all look like the Talmud (no need to spell it out to someone like you).

Yes, there is.

Make an important calculation.
After all, according to Maimonides there was even in the time of the amoraim a Great Court until some years before the end of the Talmud.
But we see disputes throughout the period of the tannaim and throughout the period of the amoraim. So how does that fit with the statement:
“When the Great Court existed, there was no dispute in Israel… If the matter was not clear to the Great Court, they would deliberate on it at that time and debate it until they all agreed or took a vote and followed the majority, and they would tell all the questioners, ‘Thus is the law,’ and they would go on their way. From the time the Great Court was abolished, disputes proliferated in Israel: one declares impure and gives his reason, and another declares pure and gives his reason; one forbids and another permits.”

After all, the latter part of his words—“From the time the Great Court was abolished, disputes proliferated in Israel: one declares impure and gives his reason, and another declares pure and gives his reason; one forbids and another permits”—that is exactly what happened even when the Great Court existed, meaning throughout the period of the tannaim and amoraim, and not only after it was abolished?

It is not true that there was a Great Court in the time of the amoraim. Maimonides also understands this, for the Great Court would have been able to decide the disputes and close them. There was a court of ordained sages of a certain type (there is a booklet by Yehuda Etzion, “Kazeh Re’eh Vechadesh,” that clarifies this topic). There were ordained sages even after the Talmud, in Babylonia until the time of Maimonides. But these were ordained sages of a different type, and the Great Court was not the Sanhedrin. That was abolished already in Yavneh.

You wrote: “It is not true that there was a Great Court in the time of the amoraim… and the Great Court was not the Sanhedrin. That was abolished already in Yavneh,”

and that is difficult for several reasons:

A – Maimonides explicitly says not like you: “And the Great Court of 71 was abolished some years before the composition of the Talmud.”

B – The Great Court and the Sanhedrin are the same thing.

B – The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 31a says that Yavneh (which is roughly the time of Rabbi Akiva) was not the last station of the Sanhedrin, but rather: “And from Yavneh to Usha, and from Usha to Shefaram, and from Shefaram to Beit She’arim, and from Beit She’arim to Tzippori, and from Tzippori to Tiberias,” meaning until around the fourth generation of amoraim, about 150 years before Ravina and Rav Ashi. That fits what Maimonides says: “And the Great Court of 71 was abolished some years before the composition of the Talmud” (although his phrase “some years” sounds like less than 150).

D – Even according to your view, that until the beginning of the amoraim there was a Great Court, it is still difficult, because in the Mishnah there are very many disputes among tannaim—so where are Maimonides’ words: “When the Great Court existed, there was no dispute in Israel… From the time the Great Court was abolished, disputes proliferated in Israel”?

A. I did not understand the contradiction. That is exactly what I wrote. “Some years” does not mean a single-digit number of years.
B. No, it is not. It depends on the context. Plain “Great Court” usually means the Sanhedrin. But “Great Court” is also used in contexts of the leading court of the generation.
C. That was not the Sanhedrin. Already in Yavneh capital law and other things were abolished. Ordination ended with Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava. There was a great court in the Land of Israel, but not a Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin in its full sense requires the Chamber of Hewn Stone and ordained sages.
D. There was a great court, but not a Sanhedrin.
See Sanhedrin 5a, where they discuss who grants permission to judge—the Land of Israel or the Exilarch. So we see that there were no ordained sages, and therefore no Sanhedrin, and still there was a great court in the Land of Israel authorizing people to judge.

Even 400 years? Since that is the gap between “some years before the composition of the Talmud” and 40 years before the destruction of the Temple?
And in any case, why were the few disputes between Shammai and Hillel not resolved in court? Granted, the Talmud said “disputes did not proliferate,” but Maimonides wrote “there was no dispute.”

First of all, the composition of the Talmud began at the beginning of the tannaitic period, so it is definitely not 400 years. It is a single-digit number of years (the two Yoseis). The disputes of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel were not resolved in the Sanhedrin, since Beit Shammai continued to act according to their own view. That’s it, I’m done.

A – When Maimonides says “the composition of the Talmud” he means Ravina and Rav Ashi; see the introduction to the Mishneh Torah, and this is his language: “And after the court of Rav Ashi, who composed the Talmud, and it was completed in the days of his son… and the Great Court of seventy-one was abolished some years before the composition of the Talmud.”

B – I was not speaking about Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, whose disputes were many, but about the disputes of Hillel and Shammai, who disagreed in only a small number of places.