A. You wrote that you tend to interpret a heavenly voice as a strong inner understanding. If so, what was it that Rabbi Yehoshua rejected when he dismissed the heavenly voice (which said that the Jewish law follows Rabbi Eliezer) and said, “It is not in heaven”? If suddenly everyone understood that Rabbi Eliezer was right, then that is their opinion and there is no dispute at all. Could a person (G. E. Moore, for example) say: I understand with strong inner certainty that the truth is such-and-such, but in my opinion the truth is otherwise? Maybe that could happen if he knew he had been given a pill that alters thoughts.

B. In the Talmud, Sotah 33a, they try to prove that the ministering angels know Aramaic from the fact that Shimon the Righteous heard a heavenly voice from the Holy of Holies in Aramaic. Apparently it is explicit that they understood there to be a heavenly voice that is an actual voice from an angel, not an inner understanding (or a human voice from a human mouth that the Holy One happened to arrange). Even if we explain the Talmud’s rejection there—“a heavenly voice is different,” meaning that a heavenly voice is not the voice of an angel and therefore only a heavenly voice could be in Aramaic—it is still explicit that a heavenly voice has a “language,” which means it is not just understanding. And if it is not an inner understanding but rather a suddenly formulated sentence that fell into their hearts, then that would seem completely identical to a transcendent voice. How do you explain that Talmudic passage?

A. A good and sharp question. There is such an interpretation of a heavenly voice (I think Rabbi Margaliot brings it). In this case, apparently it is impossible that everyone present received such an insight. It is not even possible that everyone except Rabbi Yehoshua received that insight, because then he would have been in the minority and his opinion—that we do not pay attention to a heavenly voice—would have been rejected. Beyond that, I now think that according to this interpretation one cannot say at all that we do not pay attention to a heavenly voice, because if that is our understanding then obviously we will go with it. What else could we follow?
Perhaps the heavenly voice was everyone’s inner understanding that Rabbi Eliezer was the greatest sage and that the Holy One was with him. After all, those really were the proofs brought there—proofs about the man himself, not about the Talmudic topic itself. And we do not follow that kind of heavenly voice, but rather what we think about the topic itself.
If not for that possibility, the only way out I see is that this story really does mean a heavenly voice in its transcendent sense, except that it never actually happened. Its whole purpose is aggadic literature meant to teach us that the Torah is in our hands and that we should not expect assistance from above. And even if someone claims he received such assistance, we should pay no attention to it.
Now I recall that even regarding the Raavad’s expression in his glosses, “the holy spirit appeared in our study hall,” Rabbi Margaliot explained there that this means an inner insight. Though perhaps that was said only there?…
In the Jerusalem Talmud, Sabbath 6:9, examples are brought of following a heavenly voice. There it seems that this is not a transcendent voice but an insight that appears within us out of a tangible context. Admittedly there is an element of divination there (they infer that one should not go down to Babylonia to study with Shmuel because they hear schoolchildren studying the verses “Shmuel is dead” in the book of Samuel). Maybe that explains to us what the heavenly voice is. It is an insight that arises from a context we happened upon by chance, a kind of divination. We do not follow it in Jewish law. And in fact in the Jerusalem Talmud there it sounds like there are opinions that in everyday life people do follow this, and that there is no issue of “do not practice divination,” etc. There is room to analyze this.

B. According to the explanation I suggested, maybe one can understand that this really does depend on the wording. “Shmuel is dead” is not a thought but a formulated sentence. And so too in the other examples there, they depend on language.

Still, all this requires further examination.

In the answer above you leaned toward linking the law of factual revelation by a heavenly voice to the law of dreams, which carry no weight. Maybe that too applies only to a subjective heavenly voice in the sense of inner understanding. But regarding a public heavenly voice, I heard today from a Torah scholar a proof that in the Talmud, Yoma 75a, in the wilderness generation they decided monetary cases based on the manna (the portion of an enslaved person would fall at his master’s house, and that is how they knew to whom he belonged), and the cases would seem comparable. In any event, presumably it all depends on the degree of credibility and certainty, as you wrote there (and it seems to me that even with a dream, if someone believes the dream he must act accordingly, and the same would apply to a religious court).

I discussed this in the above article. When there are objective indications of the dream’s reliability.

There and in column 374 you said (according to Maimonides) that dreams carry no weight even when there are objective indications, because this is still in the subjective realm. Here in the answer you leaned toward comparing a heavenly voice to dreams. But if a heavenly voice is something public and objectively reliable, then it seems more reasonable to compare a heavenly voice to the manna in the wilderness. No?

If it is a voice that goes out and everyone hears it, then it is objective. Otherwise it is like a dream, and according to Maimonides one should not believe it. Though perhaps a dream that appears to everyone is different?…