Of the four sages who entered Pardes, the mystical orchard of divine secrets, one emerged and lost his belief. His name was Elisha ben Abuyah, and the tradition eventually renamed him Acher, "the Other."
What did he see? In the account preserved in Harris's 1901 Hebraic Literature, Elisha was allowed to glimpse a higher heaven. There he saw the angel Metatron, the recording angel, seated on a throne and writing down the merits of Israel. Elisha was stunned. Is it not taught that there is no sitting in heaven, no weariness, no fatigue above? Two powers, then? The doubt cracked his world in half.
Metatron was discovered in his violation and was flogged with sixty lashes from a fiery scourge. The angel, smarting, was granted permission in turn to erase the merits Elisha had accumulated. One peek behind the curtain, and the Rabbi's heavenly ledger was wiped clean.
One Shabbat that fell on Yom Kippur, Elisha was riding past the ruins of the Holy of Holies when a bat kol, a heavenly voice, called out, Return, you backsliding children. But Acher, remain in your sin. A faithful disciple tried to bring him back through the children's schoolrooms, where young boys recited their verses. In the twelfth schoolroom the disciple called on a boy with a speech impediment, who fumbled the verse, But to the wicked God says, What right have you to declare my statutes (Psalm 50:16). In the boy's stammer, Elisha thought he heard his own name called instead of rasha, the wicked. The blow struck. His face went dark, and he cried that if he had a knife he would cut the boy into pieces and send one to each school he had visited. The tragedy of Acher is that he had already decided heaven would not forgive him, so nothing in heaven could reach him anymore.