the most striking references to Elisha is found in a legendary baraita about four rabbis of the Mishnaic period (first century CE) who visited the pardes (Hebrew: orchard): The Tosafot, medieval commentaries on the Talmud, say that the four sages "did not go up literally, but it appeared to them as if they went up." Ginzberg, on the other hand, writes that the journey to paradise "is to be taken literally and not allegorically"; "in a moment of ecstasy [Elisha] beheld the interior of heaven", but "he destroyed the plants of the heavenly garden". The Babylonian Talmud explains what Elisha "saw" as a mystical experience: Whereas the Jerusalem Talmud seems to explain what Elisha "saw" as an earthly occurrence: humans suffering in a way that seemed to contradict the idea of reward and punishment. The Jerusalem Talmud also describes Elisha's activities after becoming a heretic. It is said that he would kill any student who was succeeding in Torah study. Also, he would enter the beit midrash and see boys studying Torah, and recommend them to take trades such as builder or carpenter, thus causing them to abandon their studies. Also, during the persecution (by Hadrian), when the enslaved Jews were attempting to perform their labor in a way that minimized Shabbat violation (i.e. two individuals each carrying part of a single load), Elisha would instruct the Romans to forbid this manner of labor, forcing the Jews to violate Shabbat to a greater extent. Analysis of the Babylonian Talmud's account Regarding the story in the Babylonian Talmud, Ginzberg comments that "the reference here to Metatron — a specifically Babylonian idea, which would probably be unknown to Palestinian rabbis even five hundred years after Elisha — robs the passage of all historical worth". Instead, he highlights the contrast between the accounts in the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud, noting that the Jerusalem Talmud "makes no mention of Elisha's dualism; but it relates that in the critical period following the Bar Kokhba revolt, Elisha visited the schools and attempted to entice the students from the study of the Torah, in order to direct their energies to some more practical occupation; and it is to him, therefore, that the verse "Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin" is to be applied. In connection with this the biblical quotation is quite intelligible, as according to another aggadah, "flesh" here means