Journal of Early Christian Studies

In this revision of her 2010 dissertation, Michal Bar-Asher Siegal argues that the Babylonian Talmud’s redactors were familiar with Christian literature that circulated (mainly in Syriac translation) in monastic communities in the Persian Empire in late antiquity. The Babylonian Talmud’s redactors, she claims, drew selectively on monastic Christian literature (primarily the Apophthegmata Patrum), incorporating these “foreign” traditions into a “new and fortified entity” (200). The book thus joins a burgeoning conversation (most prominently in the works of Daniel Boyarin, Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Richard Kalmin, Jeffrey Rubenstein, and Peter Schäfer) about the nature of Jewish-Christian interaction in late antiquity. Bar-Asher Siegal’s distinctive contribution to this conversation is the close reading of the Babylonian Talmud against the Apophthegmata Patrum (a path earlier suggested by Catherine Hezser) and thus opening new questions about the nature of the relationship between rabbis and monks.

The structure of the book is easy to follow. Chapter One primarily concerns methodological issues relating to the comparison of religious texts (e.g., how might direct dependence be demonstrated?). Chapter Two is a survey of “Monasticism in the Persian Empire,” which also justifies use of the Apophthegmata Patrum as a comparandum (even in its Greek and Latin translations) to rabbinic literature. Chapters Three and Four (see below) compare rabbinic and monastic literature on the macro level of form, style, and motifs.

Chapters Five and Six are the heart of Bar-Siegal’s argument. These chapters closely read two stories in the Babylonian Talmud against parallels found in the Apophthegmata Patrum. It is to Bar-Asher Siegal’s credit that she provides fresh readings to both of these stories, which have been extensively discussed in the scholarly literature. The more convincing of these readings focuses on the stories of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai in the cave (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 33b). In the Babylonian version, the rabbi hides in a cave with his son for thirteen years, surviving on a miraculous tree and spending their days studying Torah, and finally emerging at Elijah’s urging, at which point he purifies a cemetery and gains the power to kill people at a glance. The Babylonian version of this story differs from that found in Palestinian rabbinic literature, and Bar-Asher Siegal demonstrates the strong parallels between the Babylonian version and motifs found in the Christian literature. The Babylonian version (and not the Palestinian one) is a “holy man narrative” (167), molded so that Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai looks very much like a monk.

If this story exemplifies the way that the Babylonian Talmud’s redactors Christianized Palestinian traditions, in Chapter Six she argues that the story of Eleazar ben Dordya and the prostitute (Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 17a) is a rabbinized version of an essentially Christian tradition. In this story, the rabbi pursues a prostitute and then quickly (by means of the prostitute’s own pronouncement) realizes his sin and prays until he dies; his death while [End Page 295] repenting is said to destine him for the afterlife. She compares this to the story of an encounter between John the Dwarf and a prostitute, in which through the help of Abba John the prostitute repents, dies, and has her soul lifted to heaven. Comparing these two stories which, as Bar-Asher Siegal readily admits, contain “obvious differences” (181), nevertheless provides a lens for understanding the rabbinic portrayal of death as an important part of the process of repentance, which is very rarely found elsewhere in rabbinic literature.

Chapters Three and Four provide a more general comparison between the Babylonian Talmud and the Apophthegmata Patrum that provides some context for the literary analyses. She thus notes that the Christian monastic sayings share formal characteristics with rabbinic dicta, as do (in a much more limited way) the documents that contain them. These chapters also survey themes and motifs exhibited in both corpora, such as: specific aspects of the pious life (e.g., prayer); ritualized recitation of Scripture; education imagery; stock characters (e.g., ignorant youth and virtuous commoner); talking to the dead; and rain and water. These comparisons, although made on a relatively superficial level, begin to create the impression of a (partially) shared religious Weltanschauung between rabbis and monks.

Bar-Asher Siegal’s study is explicitly literary and thus lays the ground for more historical questions. If she is correct, then we must posit that the Babylonian Talmud’s redactors—already a shadowy group at best—either read the monastic literature themselves in Syriac or had access to the traditions through some intermediary. How and why did they do so, though? And what is the larger cultural context—Jews and Christians living side by side as minorities in a Sassanian Empire—that gave rise to these interactions? These same rabbinic redactors were also at the same time not afraid to polemicize against Christianity or to subvert Christian stories. What is the historical model that makes sense of it all?

One final question that this book raises of special interest to readers of this journal is the importance of the Babylonian Talmud for study of late antique Christianity. Bar-Asher Siegal focuses on the single direction of rabbis drawing on monastic literature. The reverse too, though, might have occurred. If we are to see rabbis and monks in dialogue, then that dialogue could well have gone both ways and, if that is the case, then no responsible scholar of Syriac-speaking Christianity in late antiquity can afford to ignore the Babylonian Talmud. [End Page 296]