⭐⭐ אלו ואלו — these and those are the words of the living Godאלו ואלו דברי אלהים חיים

Eruvin 13b. For three years the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai argued, each saying the law is according to us. A heavenly voice came out and said: "These and those are the words of the living God — and the law is according to the House of Hillel."

⭐⭐⭐ Read the two halves separately, because the sentence does two incompatible-looking things at once. The first half says both positions are divine speech. The second half says one of them is the law. It does not resolve the tension; it institutionalises it.

And the Gemara immediately asks the obvious question — if both are God's words, why does Hillel win? The answer is not that they were cleverer. They were pleasant and forbearing, they taught their own rulings AND Shammai's, and they taught Shammai's FIRST.

⭐⭐ So the deciding qualification is a practice of citation. The house that wins is the house that reports its opponent accurately and puts him ahead of itself in the sentence. That is a rule about how to hold a disagreement, ruled on by proving it from the ORDER OF TWO NAMES.

⚠ It is not relativism, and reading it that way flattens it. A losing opinion is preserved, studied, and can be revived — and it is still losing. The tradition keeps the rejected position in the book rather than in a footnote, which is a different claim from saying it was right.