“... In this way, the Bavli narrative shifts focus away from the “two powers” po- lemics that are the central concern of the parallel narrative in 3 Enoch, in which Elisha states clearly, “Certainly, there are two powers in heaven!” The variants in the textual tradition of this phrase in the Hekhalot sources suggest that it is no coincidence that the Bavli’s idiomatic “perhaps, God forbid” becomes the unambiguous “certainly” in 3 Enoch. It would have been enough in all cases for Elisha simply to declare, “There are two powers in heaven!” Yet every extant version includes some verbal qualifier that modifies the declaration: b. Hagigah 15a has “perhaps, God forbid,”52 3 Enoch has “certainly,”53 Merkavah Rabbah has “he thought perhaps,”54 and an additional extant fragment from 3 Enoch has the presumably corrupted savri’.55 The contrast between 3 Enoch’s and b. Hagigah’s presentations of this phrase clearly reflect divergent concerns. In b. Hagigah, the text is edited to read as if Elisha never truly thought that there are two powers in heaven. Rather, his exclamation serves rhetorically in context as an implicit rebuke to Metatron for giving a false impression that might confuse the unwary. The exclamation implies that because Metatron is sitting, someone might see him and falsely conclude that there are two powers in heaven. Correctly reading the idiomatic expression “perhaps, God forbid” means that there is no reason, at this stage in the Bavli narrative, to think that Elisha committed any misdeed. Elisha in 3 Enoch, in contrast, is presented as “one who says that there are two powers,” a ...”