Babylonian Talmud

English

R. Yishmael asked R. Akiva, while they were walking on the road. He said to him, You are one who served Nachum Ish Gamzu for twenty-two years, who expounded the meaning of all the particles "et" in the Torah. What was his exposition of "the heaven and earth" - "et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz"? He said to him, If it had said "shamayim va'aretz," I would have said, "Shamayim" is the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Now that the words are "et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz," "shamayim" means the heaven, literally, and aretz means the earth, literally.

Sefaria Community Translation · cc0

Hebrew / Aramaic

b. Chagigah 12a (Vilna) · cc-by-sa

Notes

The same encounter as Bereshit Rabbah 1:14 — R. Yishmael asking R. Akiva what Naḥum of Gam Zo made of the two ets — and the answer has changed. Here Akiva says that without the particles he would have taken shamayim to be a name of the Holy One, blessed be He; now that the text reads et ha-shamayim ve-et ha-aretz, heaven means heaven literally and earth means earth literally. In the Palestinian version the danger is that the heavens and the earth would be taken for deities and Akiva is rebuked for the answer; here the danger is narrower, that one word would be a divine name, and the answer stands unchallenged. Both are a Jewish witness to the same anxiety the Latin bench meets at Megillah 9a and in the Greek word order (K3). And note what neither version does: it never occurs to either that the et might include the angels.

Threads

• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  One encounter, two answers. Both have R. Yishmael asking R. Akiva what Naḥum of Gam Zo made of the two ets. In Bereshit Rabbah, Akiva's first answer is that without them we might have said heaven and earth were deities, and he is rebuked for it with Deut 32:47 before the real answer (the sun, moon and constellations; the trees, plants and Eden). In the Bavli the danger is narrower — shamayim would be a name of the Holy One — and the answer, that heaven means heaven literally, stands unchallenged.
• ← parallel · Moses ben Naḥman (Naḥmanides)
  Ramban gives the Palestinian form of the et-derivation (sun, moon, stars, constellations; trees, herbs, Eden) and not the Babylonian one (that without the particles shamayim would be a divine name), although both were before him — the inventory is usable for his physics and the anxiety about the divine name is not.