The Invention of Religion

Elu v’elu divrei elohim hayim  Talmud Eruvin 13b

Elu v’elu (These and these) – The Talmud relates the following story:

Rabbi Abba said that Shmuel said: For three years Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed. These said: The halakha is in accordance with our opinion, and these said: The halakha is in accordance with our opinion. Ultimately, a Divine Voice emerged and proclaimed: Both these and those are the words of the living God. However, the halakha is in accordance with the opinion of Beit Hillel.

Rabbi Hannah Estrin comments:

Elu v’elu divrei elohim hayim, these and these are the words of the living God. Just like that, 2000 years ago, God ended an ongoing argument between the houses of Hillel and Shammai (Eruvin 13b) about who was correct. In general, Beit Shammai’s (house of Shammai) positions were stricter than those of Beit Hillel. The final law though, nearly always coincided with Beit Hillel. It was not that Shammai was wrong. Rather the House of Hillel had the bat kol, Divine voice, on their side. We read the words of the bat kol; “Both schools espouse the words of the living God, but the halakhah follows Beit Hillel”(Eruvin 13b & Yerushalmi Berakhot 1:4). The essence of what we learn is that although halakhah nearly always follows Beit Hillel, elu v’elu divrei elohim hayim, opposite opinions still reflect truth, insight, respect and holiness.

This seemingly superfluous term hayyim is then a clue to enable us to better decipher elu v’elu as a radical thesis from the rabbis that there are multiple legitimate interpretations of the Torah and with them vigorous debate and respect. The Mishnah emphasises [sic] the latter when it reminds us that even though the houses of Hillel & Shammai disagreed regarding the laws of marriage and divorce, the two schools intermarried (Yevamot 1:4).[1]

Why do we care about this story from the Talmud?  Pay close attention here.  What the Talmud suggests is that these contradictory statements are both divine truth.  Something very, very important is happening in this declaration; something that has affected rabbinic Judaism ever since the rabbis made this determination.  If you don’t understand what is happening here, you will never be able to understand how Judaism views the Torah and the Oral Law.

Daniel Boyarin has analyzed this radical shift in the function of language in his book Border Lines.  The citations that follow are long but extremely important:

“The Talmudic text begins by articulating a rather surprising principle in rabbinic legal hermeneutics: on the one hand, it is excluded that the Torah ever repeats the same law in two places; on the other, any given verse can have multiple meanings.  Here, indeed, we find thematized and theorized for the first time the theological principle that will motivate so much of rabbinic thinking thereafter, that the divine language produces manifold and different meanings.  Now we go back and read the midrashic practice, not merely as one of editorial tact but as a textual representation of this special theology of the divine Word.  This principle that any verse can have multiple meanings demonstrates how thoroughly different this rabbinic conception of language is from that which for ‘us’ is so commonplace that we can hardly think our way out of it long enough to understand another culture.  In the end, the shattering of the Logos reflected in such a conception of language provides the most significant clue for understanding how rabbinic Judaism and orthodox Christianity formed distinct religiocultural systems—at least for a time at the end of late antiquity—and not just distinct social groups.”[2]

“But the two versions of the Ten Commandments refer, of course, to only one speech event on the part of God.  The Palestinian Talmud and its midrashic parallels cite in this context several laws whose versions in Deuteronomy and in the earlier parts of the Pentateuch seem to be contradictory, and in every case they conclude that God made only one statement, which was heard as two, that is, that God said two things at the same time, and it is up to humans to reconcile the apparent contradiction.  The hammer striking the rock here thus refers to the mysterious nature of divine speech: it can make two statements at the same moment, which are then heard as if they were two statements but need to be reconciled hermeneutically, as the midrash does here, articulating a way in which the Sabbath is both remembered and kept.”[3]

“If Nicaea was a belated legendary invention that helped produce a Christianity ‘in which dissent and debate were literally swept aside,’ Yavneh as a ‘grand coalition’ in which everybody in Jewish antiquity who wasn’t an outright ‘heretic’ was a Rabbi and all opinions were equally ‘Torah’ was an equally belated talmudic invention.  This late moment of literary crystallization was the juncture at which the ‘agreement to disagree’ was raised to a theological and hermeneutical principle of the highest order, indeed, to a divine institution.”[4]

“In sum, just as the story of Nicaea ‘gives rise to the 318 conciliar “fathers,” and also to their only begotten credal Word, the story of Yavneh gives rise to the father Rabbis and their only begotten Oral Torah.’  Yavneh was projected back to the first century, Nicaea only into the beginning of the fourth.  Both legendary councils claim, moreover, to have the divine truth, Yavneh its Oral Torah, and Nicaea its apostolic teaching.  Moreover, . . . both authorize their claim to such truth in the same way, via a myth of apostolic succession.”[5]

“ . . . the distinction between the exclusive orthodoxy of the end point of the Nicaea myth and the equally exclusive, divinely sanctioned heterodoxy of the end point of the Yavneh myth embodied in the late talmudic saying, ‘These and these are the words of the living God,’ which, according to legend, ‘went out’ at Yavneh.”[6]

What does this mean?  It means that sometime during the 3^rd to 5^th centuries the Church Fathers were “invented” in a legend/myth that supported the exclusivity of unique doctrine as the objective and final truth of the Church, while at the same time the Rabbis “invented” the rabbinic tradition of the Oral Law handed down from Moses in order to support the claim that there is no final and unique truth in Judaism, but rather an endless point and counterpoint to any given text. Christianity adopted the idea of singularity; the idea that there can be only one truth, while Judaism adopted the idea of plurality, the idea that there can never be only one truth.  This is the real difference between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, but it is a difference that was created by men in order to (in both cases) solidify their power and control over the community.  Rabbi Estrin, whose comments began this investigation, downplays this radical difference.  He claims that the opinion of the House of Shammai “still reflect truth, insight, respect and holiness,” but this modifies the claim. According to the Talmud, the opinion of the House of Shammai does not “reflect” the truth, it is the truth, just as its opposite is also the truth.  Rabbi Estrin treats the words of the Talmud from the perspective of a Western thinker, where any given statement may contain elements of the truth.  We are familiar with this idea, but it is not what rabbinic Judaism claims because “elements” of the truth (or “reflections”) still imply that there is but one, real truth—and this is precisely what the ancient rabbis denied.  This critical difference is the basis of rabbinic Judaism, not the Bible.  Men created “monotheistic religion.”  Now that you know, how does that make you feel?

Topical Index: religion, Talmud, these and these, pluralism, Talmud Eruvin 13b

[1] https://rabbihannahestrin.com/2020/these-and-these-are-the-words-of-the-living-god/

[2] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: the Partition of Judeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 189-190.

[3] Ibid., p. 192.

[4] Ibid., p. 193.

[5] Ibid., pp. 195-196.

[6] Ibid., p. 196.