The paper claims that Halivni wasn't an (neo-)orthodox Jewish thinker at all - not because of his controversial acceptance of Higher Biblical criticism - but on exclusively theological grounds. The paper will prove that claim by utilizing a passage from the very founder of neo-orthodoxy, Rabbi S.R. Hirsch (1808-1888), on the relationship of the oral and written Torah to each other, a subject on which Halivni seems to have the exact opposite theological approach: The Talmudic sages did not hold a dogmatic believe in the divinity of the entire oral Torah. This comparison will than also help us to formulate more general criteria for the notion of orthodoxy within the Jewish religion.