Page - 32 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

32 | Johanna Stiebert www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 23–33 of people, sometimes whole nations. While the expression does not mean echo, it seems to pertain mostly to a smaller voice, even a murmur, and sometimes to a muf- fled sound coming from the netherworld. According to the Tosefta,29 following the death of the final prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the Holy Spirit departed from Israel but the bat qôl was still heard occasionally (Sotah viii.2). The suggestion is that not only a prophet but also his generation has to be worthy to receive the voice of God, or of God’s holy spirit, but the smaller bat qôl persisted beyond the period of prophecy into the rabbinical period, issuing pronouncements of the divine will. Bat qôl is a lesser gift but it is not less reliable. One story recorded in both Talmuds30 recounts a rabbinical argument about the purity or otherwise of a new oven. After Rabbi Eliezer has called up a series of mira- cles to prove the oven’s purity but has still failed to persuade the other rabbis, the bat qôl (coming from heaven and accepted as divine) decrees that the view of Rabbi Eliezer is correct and should be adopted. At this point Rabbi Joshua points to the Torah passage at Deuteronomy 30:12,31 which states that divine commandments are present (by implication, here on earth) and need not, therefore, be retrieved with great difficulty from heaven. He goes on to declare that because the Torah is not in heaven, there is no cause to pay heed to the bat qôl. In other words, the bat qôl has been relegated below the authority of Torah in legal decisions: God may speak out loud, but God is overruled by his Torah (see Babylonian Talmud, Nezikin, Baba Metzia 59b). The postscript to this story is that another rabbi, Rabbi Nathan, a mystic who from time to time met with Elijah the prophet, God’s messenger, who had been taken up to heaven, asked Elijah, “and what did God do next?” – that is, after that moment when Rabbi Joshua pushed divine pronouncement out of the ruling. Elijah replies that God laughed with mirth, because God’s children had defeated God. In other words, God gave the Torah and along with it the capacity to interpret it, and even God cannot interfere in that process. God’s voice can be heard and is correct – but it cannot over- rule. Such a concession to human activities of interpretation and exchange is rather heartening and affirming in any analysis (such as this one) of the multifarious depic- tions of the body and voice of God. 29 Tosefta (meaning “supplement” or “addition”) is a compilation of Jewish oral law, in many respects a supplement to the Mishnah (the written down Jewish oral law). The Tosefta uses the same orders, or divisions (sedarim) as the Mishnah. 30 The Talmud is a wide-ranging record of rabbinical discussions on Mishnah. There are two Talmudic traditions: Yerushalmi (the Jerusalem Talmud) and Bavli (the Babylonian Talmud). 31 This passage is also of interest on the topic of voice. Here divine commandment is said to be near (rather than far and inaccessible). It is called “the word” (haddābār) and is located in the mouth and heart (Deut. 30:11–14).