The Halacha learned from “the Torah is not in heaven” is that we do not decide Halacha according to prophecy. I can not find it discussed anywhere else. In Terumah 15 and the midrash it talks about after Moshe died 3000 halachas were forgotten. The Jews wanted Joshua to divine them and he refused because the Torah was only given once by revelation and they would need to learn them again from the text, not from Prophecy. R. Eliezer knew this and there are interesting sichas on this.

What is interesting here is that it is leared from aggadah / story but no one here disagrees with the source (the actual halacha is a given) which seems to me that it was an undisputed learning from a long time back – Har Sinai?

The interpretation of a word or passage (of the Scriptures) by reading into it one’s own ideas. Hence eisegetical a.
1878 P. SCHAFF Through Bible Lands I. v. 53 The eisegetical manner of those allegorical and typological exegetes who make the Scriptures responsible for their own pious thoughts and fancies. 1892 N.Y. Evangelist 3 Mar. 4/4 (Funk), Dr. Elliot..held firmly to the doctrine that exegesis, and not ‘eisegesis’, is the province of the student of the Scriptures. 1924 H. E. FOSDICK Mod. Use Bible iii. 87 The reformers..could use eisegesis instead of exegesis on many a passage which they thought they were literally interpreting. 1958 Times Lit. Suppl. 3 Jan. 10/1 Fully aware of the perils of eisegesis, Dr. Grant pronounces quite firmly against any such reverence for philosophy or theology as would empty history of meaning.

I am by no means a rabbinic scholar, so the following is my opinion only. I will certainly disagree with any suggestion that traditions in the Talmud date back to Moses and, while that might seem like a minor point when you consider that I do allow for several generations, I only allow for several generations in traditions of halakha. When we come to textual readings of the Bible (specifically those that are used in order to make a homiletic, political or polemical point), I wouldn’t even grace them with that. I see no harm in suggesting that they originated with their authors or their author’s teachers, and don’t feel as though that cheapens them in any way.

Furthermore, I cannot help but feel that you are advocating a broader conception of “Oral Law” than is found explicitly within the early rabbinic literature. Excepting general statements that suggest that anything said by a diligent student (תלמיד ותיק) was given to Moses at Sinai, what is there to state emphatically that the entire commentary on the Mishna derives from the same source as the Mishna itself? Bearing in mind, please, that we are referring to the whole Talmud as a commentary on the Mishna here, and not just those sections that explicitly comment upon it.

Because the Oral Torah isn’t anyone’s “own ideas”, the process of finding an asmachta isn’t eisegesis.

Eisegesis does not have to have anything to do with misinterpretation: it is merely the process of reading ideas from one source (be that source your own head, an external text, or even an external body of tradition) into another. If you wish to take a strictly literalistic reading of the Tanakh (and this has a value of its own as well), then some of the rabbinic methods of eisegesis are deliberate misreadings. They impose rabbinic Hebrew translations (for example, עולם = “world”, rather than “eternity”; מקום = “God”, rather than “place”; etc) onto Biblical words, found in passages that are then taken from their immediate context. That’s only one type of eisegetical method, and it’s not one that is at play in the passage that I’ve referred to above.

Now you’ve sent me scurrying off to Wikipedia for a definition of eisegesis. The difference between it and exegesis is that the former (a) misinterprets the text, and (b) introduces one’s own ideas. Even with your reframing, the Oral Torah is not anyone’s own ideas.

The difference here is between process and outcome. The system of halachic authority and its associated processes are what is sacrosanct. No-one has the right to jump straight to the conclusion, even if they know they are correct. Following the correct process will by definition lead to the correct result.

BTW, I love the Star Wars analogy. Great thought experiment to substitute in, say, Rabbi Akiva & Bar Kochba.

Looking for a English-Yoda translator I have been, but found one, sadly I have not.