Thoughts of this story from the Talmud

[The Mikado]

Background: there is, of course, a Biblical injunction that touching something that touched a corpse makes one ritually unclean.  This does not apply to the ground, and, by extension, something like a clay oven built directly out of the ground can touch a corpse and still be fine as far as ritual purity goes.  (Whether or not you want a corpse on your oven is a different question)  However, what about a clay oven that's been transported and is sitting on the ground but no longer part of the Earth itself?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So Rabbi Eliezer defends his Oven of Serpents and Rabbi Yehuda condemns him for it.  Rabbi Eliezer performs several miracles and even gets the Lord Himself to endorse his position, but Rabbi Yehuda reminds God that He doesn't have the ability to go back on the Torah now, reminds Him of Deuteronomy 30:12 "It is not in heaven" and points out that His own Scriptures had said "After the majority one must incline."  (Exodus 23:2)  The Rabbis effectively outvote Rabbi Eliezer by pointing out that he's in a minority of two on this issue: him and God.

[The Mikado]

I've heard this story before. I didn't know what the exact issue at hand was.

I love the idea that Rabbi Eliezer is so insistent on defending his oven that had a corpse touching/in it.  I'd want to ditch that not out of ritual cleanliness reasons, but out of...cleanliness reasons.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The Talmud was written in an era when there was a massive backlash against priestly Judaism of the animal sacrifice at the Temple variety (mainly because neither Temple nor priests still existed) and there was a real need to refocus the religion on something else, and the Halakhic 613 Laws of Moses was the answer.  The Torah wears the same priestly garments that the Temple Priests once did and the Law itself is treated in this super-reverent fashion.  The implication in this story is that the Law is so important that God Himself can't override it or insist that his interpretation is superior (due to the requirement that in manners of disagreement, the majority consensus carried the day).  Note, however, that the passage describes the walls of the building as staying slumped, not falling over but not returning to fully upright.  The walls are recognizing that Rabbi Eliezer has a point, even if his argument didn't win.