In the Mishnah before us, Rabbi Akiva asks Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua, in that same marketplace in Emmaus, another question: What is the halachah for one who slaughters five consecrated animals outside the azarah (Temple courtyard) in a single lapse of awareness? The punishment for slaughtering kodashim outside, meaning slaughtering the animals outside the Beis HaMikdash, is kares, and therefore one who does this unintentionally is liable to bring a chatas. The question is whether he is liable for one chatas for all five, since he slaughtered them in a single lapse of awareness and did not know that the matter was forbidden, or perhaps a separate chatas for each and every one of the five animals.
The principles explained above:
One who eats two olive-sized portions of cheilev in a single lapse of awareness - is liable to bring only one chatas.
One who cohabits with five niddah women in a single lapse of awareness - is liable for each and every one, because they are separate bodies, distinct from one another.
The question, then, is to which of these two laws should the five animals be compared: Are they too considered separate bodies so that there are five liabilities here, or is their halachah like eating the cheilev, and he brings only one chatas for all of them.
The Sages answered him that they did not have a tradition regarding this specific question.
Rabbi Yehoshua said: I have a tradition. An animal that was consecrated as kodshei kodashim (the most holy offerings), such as an olah offering, and before its blood was sprinkled on the Altar they slaughtered it and ate its meat - this constitutes me'ilah, forbidden use of consecrated property, and the transgressor brings a me'ilah guilt offering in addition to returning the principal and adding a fifth. The tradition he has is that if the meat of that animal was prepared in five tamchuyin - a tamchui is a serving dish, and here it refers to five different methods of preparation, baked, roasted, and the like, all done from one animal - he is liable for a me'ilah guilt offering for each and every one of them.
And from here Rabbi Yehoshua learned a kal vachomer: If for one animal that was eaten in five different ways one brings five me'ilah guilt offerings, all the more so that one who slaughters five animals outside the Beis HaMikdash is liable for a chatas for each and every one of them.
"Rabbi Akiva did not ask them this":
Rabbi Shimon said: "לֹא כָּךְ שָׁאֲלָן רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא" - "Rabbi Akiva did not ask them this" - this was not his question. Rabbi Akiva would not ask a question upon which there is a clear difficulty, and to such a question there are two clear refutations:
It is impossible to compare eating to slaughtering: With eating, a person benefits from the food, and each and every dish provides its own distinct benefit, and therefore there is reason to hold him liable for each one individually; this is not the case with slaughtering an animal, which does not involve different types of benefit.
And even if we compare the animals to human beings, there is still a distinction: With the prohibition of a niddah, the woman herself is also liable for her own chatas, and therefore there is reason to say that five women are five separate bodies and the man brings five chatas offerings for them; but with animals, which do not bring a chatas, one cannot say this about them, and one chatas is sufficient for all of them.
Rather, this is what Rabbi Akiva asked: "אֶלָּא בְּאוֹכֵל נוֹתָר מֵחֲמִשָּׁה זְבָחִים בְּהֶעְלֵם אֶחָד מַהוּ" - "Rather, what is the halachah for one who eats nosar from five offerings in a single lapse of awareness?" - one who eats nosar, meat left over from five different offerings, in a single lapse of awareness. Eating nosar also incurs kares, and the question is: Is eating from five different animals judged like eating olive-sized portions of cheilev in a single lapse of awareness, for which he is liable for only one, or is it judged like five niddah women, for which he is liable for each and every one. Meaning: is he liable for one for all of them, or one for each and every one.
They said to him: We have not heard - even regarding this question they do not have a tradition. Rabbi Yehoshua said: "שמעתי באוכל מזבח אחד בחמישה תמחויין בהעלם אחד, שהוא חייב על כל אחת ואחת משום מעילה" - "I have heard regarding one who eats from a single offering in five serving dishes in a single lapse of awareness, that he is liable for each and every one due to me'ilah." Even though he ate everything in a single lapse of awareness, since the meat was prepared in five different dishes he brings five me'ilah guilt offerings. "ורואה אני שהדבר קל וחומר" - "And I see that the matter is a kal vachomer" - and if for one animal he is liable for five offerings, all the more so that one who eats nosar from five animals is liable for five chatas offerings.
Rabbi Akiva said: "Im halachah - nekabel" - if you have a tradition in your hands regarding the question of nosar itself, we will accept it and not question it. "Ve'im ledin - yesh teshuvah" - and if you only have a logical deduction from the law of me'ilah, there is a refutation to it. They said to him: Refute it - say what your reasoning is, why one cannot learn the liability of five chatas offerings from the liability of five asham me'ilah offerings.
Rabbi Akiva's refutation - stringencies introduced regarding me'ilah:
The basis of the refutation is that regarding the laws of asham me'ilah offerings, stringencies were stated that do not exist for a chatas brought for an inadvertent violation of an act punishable by kares, and since me'ilah is more stringent, we cannot learn from it:
"Im amarta bime'ilah, she'asah bah es hama'achil ke'ochel ve'es hamahaneh keneheneh" - Reuven who gave Shimon to eat meat of an olah offering that had not yet been sacrificed, Reuven the feeder is the one liable for me'ilah and not Shimon the eater. The reason for this is that the essence of me'ilah is removing an object from the domain of hekdesh to a secular domain, and the one handing over the food is the one making the transfer. The same law applies to 'the one who provides benefit is like the one who benefits': One who provides a friend with benefit from hekdesh property, such as a hekdesh hammer in the beis midrash, is considered as having benefited himself and is liable.
"Tzeiruf hame'ilah lizman merubeh" - the measure for me'ilah is benefiting the value of a perutah. If he benefited the value of half a perutah today and the value of half a perutah next week, the two actions combine and he is liable for me'ilah, even though they were done with a large time gap. This is not the case for eating chelev, where two halves of a kezayis only combine within the time of achilas pras, the timeframe it takes to eat a half-loaf, between two and nine minutes, and they do not combine over an entire week.
And since all these do not apply to nosar - "tomar benosar she'ein bo echad mikol elu" - that one who hands nosar to others is not liable for their act of eating, and also acts of eating the measure of a kezayis do not combine over a long time. It turns out that me'ilah is more stringent, and we cannot learn from it, where one brings five asham me'ilah offerings for five dishes, to the matter of eating nosar from five different animals.
In summary: There is no novel teaching here beyond the principles explained at the beginning of the chapter. One who performs the same prohibition several times in a single lapse of awareness - eating nosar, desecrating Shabbos or cohabiting with a niddah - brings only one chatas. By contrast, regarding me'ilah, which is more stringent, he brings a separate asham me'ilah for each type of benefit in its own right, such as a different taste, a different recipe or a different dish. The exception is a 'divided body,' which deals specifically with people: when there are two partners to an action and the second one is also liable for a chatas, the bodies are found to be divided. Therefore, one who cohabits with five niddah women brings five separate chatas offerings, even though all the acts were done involving one prohibition and in one lapse of awareness, without him knowing that the matter is forbidden.