Introduction
According to rabbinic literature of late antiquity, a Jew could be excommunicated or banished from the community for around twenty-four spiritual and social violations.Footnote 1 The Talmuds’ list of sins that necessitated the separation of a transgressor includes, for instance, profaning the name of God, selling forbidden meat, insulting one's master, and obstructing justice.Footnote 2 Once condemned, the sinner was physically isolated from other people and prohibited from the same actions that a mourner was, such as cutting one's hair or wearing phylacteries. After the sinner repented or a certain amount of time passed, the ban was then lifted, typically by the master who had initiated it. Indeed, the master-disciple relationship is often at the center of banning and cursing in rabbinic literature.Footnote 3 Although the rabbinic concept of excommunication draws from earlier biblical and Second Temple precedents, such as the book of Ezra,Footnote 4 it is in many ways a late antique innovation featuring prominently in Babylonia. The reason that bans and excommunication emerge as a salient feature of Jewish society in this period is related to the rabbis’ historical contexts within Roman Palestine and Sasanian Babylonia. As I show in this article, exegesis and history both played a role in the formation of the talmudic laws of banishment.
The Babylonian Talmud articulates a hierarchical but variable set of laws regarding temporary and permanentFootnote 5 forms of banishment through the use of the terms 
(nidduy), 
(šamta’), and 
(ḥerem), as well as 
(nezifah)Footnote 6 and other terms designating, for example, heavenly bans.Footnote 7 From a philological perspective, each of these terms has a complicated but traceable evolution of meaning from biblical through talmudic literatures. In rabbinic sources the nidduy is a temporary thirty-day ban that may have involved the separation of the sinner from the community, whereas, by comparison, the šamta’ sometimes deals with punishments rendered by the Jewish courts, especially in Babylonia. The ḥerem is the harshest penalty of excommunication, involving the segregation of a sinner from other people by four ’ammot (cubits), and in some cases it is defined as the punishment imposed upon someone who has already undergone several nidduy bans.Footnote 8
For its part, the Babylonian Talmud does not delineate a stable institution or exact ritual regarding such punishments, a fact that complicates scholarly attempts to create a taxonomy of Jewish bans. In some ways, the general inconsistencies regarding excommunication in the Talmud reflect an inherent variability in how various sages interpreted earlier scriptural prooftexts that precede terms such as nidduy and ḥerem (e.g., Judg 5:23 and Ezra 7:25–26). In addition to employing exegesis, the Babylonian rabbis defined excommunication according to the socio-legal costs and benefits of implementing bans against Jews in courts of law in various locales. Talmudic bans, especially the šamta’, are tied up with the social context of court enforcement, drawing from authoritative traditions to help to establish proper legal practices. As Yaakov Elman shows in an article on nidduy, the sages’ attitudes toward bans differed depending upon the geographical locale of the rabbinic center whose traditions the Talmud was recording.Footnote 9 Elman analyzes statements attributed to Rav Yosef and Rava and, turning to the Sasanian context, explains that one reason that nidduy was more common in Pumbedita than in Mahoza is because of the latter's unique location in the cosmopolitan culture thriving near the imperial capital Ctesiphon.Footnote 10 This argument seems to me to imply that rabbinic bans were more prominent in areas where the rabbis were less integrated into Sasanian political culture. With this thesis Elman is building upon an earlier study on bans by Gideon Libson, who also contextualizes nidduy relative to aspects of Jewish self-governance in Sasanian Babylonia. Stressing how bans worked to enforce observance of the law among non-rabbinic Jews, Libson writes:
Behind this type of nidduy stood the desire to protect the status and authority of the sages, and the honor of the Jewish self-governmental authorities in Babylonia. Nidduy in these cases served not only as a means of punishment, but also as an efficient instrument for gaining obedience and enforcing authority, in particular in relations between the rabbis and the community. We find this form of nidduy only from the second Babylonian amoraic generation onward, and only in the centers of Babylonia, in particular in the district of Pumbedita. In the district of Sura nidduy served primarily against those who violated rabbinic enactments, and as an instrument of coercion in the hands of the sages and [their] courts.Footnote 11
These studies by both Elman and Libson demonstrate the value of examining further the formulation of talmudic bans within a Sasanian setting. As I show in this paper, Talmudists can access the sociohistorical background of excommunication in Jewish Babylonia by turning to relevant non-rabbinic sources produced in Sasanian Persia. Historical and comparative research adds value to the literary, hermeneutical approaches toward a given text under consideration, in this case b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–17b. In this paper, I perform a literary analysis of b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–17b in relation to related rabbinic sources and then move to exploit comparative data attested in two corpora produced contemporaneously to the Babylonian Talmud, namely, the Jewish Aramaic bowl spells from Sasanian Mesopotamia (ca. 5th–7th cents. c.e.)Footnote 12 and relevant Middle Persian Zoroastrian sources composed by the Persian monarchy and priesthood in the Sasanian and post-Sasanian eras. If it is accurate to presume that the rabbis, sorcerers, and Zoroastrian priests functioned in overlapping spheres of life in western Sasanian Persia—such as in courts of law, magic, intermarriage, divorce, and conversion, among other areas—then the Aramaic incantations and Middle Persian sources offer historians of Jewish Babylonia external data with which to interpret the role that both magical and imperial contexts played in the rabbis’ formulation of bans. Using bans as a test case, one can map out intersections between rabbis and Jewish sorcerers in both discursive and social spheres. The Jewish Aramaic bowl spells, which invoke cognate terms of nidduy, šamta’, and ḥerem, prove that Jewish discourses about excommunication comprised more than the elite scholastic viewpoint of the rabbis, thereby challenging previous scholarly assumptions about and descriptions of dichotomies of power between the so-called hegemonic elite and the marginal masses—or, to put it another way, between halakhah and magic.Footnote 13 To date, talmudic studies has not fully grappled with the ways in which the Aramaic spells alter the field's understanding of rabbinism in Jewish Babylonia, though recent attention paid to the Sasanian context of the “Bavli”—the Babylonian Talmud—is moving the field in this direction.Footnote 14
In addition to the bowls, Talmudists can further illuminate the impact of the non-Jewish society on internal practices like bans by utilizing targeted Middle Persian texts. In contrast to Palestinian rabbinic literature, the Babylonian Talmud frequently discusses bans in the context of both Jewish and Persian imperial judicial authority, thus inviting comparison with Persian sources. While Zoroastrian literature does not contain a concept of excommunication with which to compare potential talmudic parallels, one can still draw on the insights of Sasanian studies in order to understand better the ways in which the Persian Empire's judicial institutions and policies toward non-Zoroastrians delimited and shaped the definition and implementation of nidduy, šamta’, and ḥerem.
In Jewish Mesopotamia, bans were essentially death curses executed by rabbinic masters and courts of law. While some bans were nothing more than verbal curses meant to express disapproval, the talmudic evidence also attests to the social dimensions of the practice. Bans and curses, instigated by a Jew's infringing upon the communal cohesion through a violation of the covenant, were essentially embodied forms of expulsion. As I explore in more detail throughout this essay, the social dimension to banning was acute in cases where the identified wrongdoing adversely affected the authority of the Jewish courts to administer justice, such as ignoring a court subpoena or testifying against a Jew in a gentile court of law (see b. B. Qam. 113b–114a below). Several of the violations that necessitated excommunication, such as injuring a court messenger, inhibited the functioning of the Jewish judicial system.Footnote 15 In sum, talmudic bans exemplify the complex dialectic that existed in Jewish Babylonia between, on the one hand, the voluntaryFootnote 16 and localized Jewish courts, which deployed bans as a form of punishment in order to maintain their legal power, and, on the other hand, the Sasanian institutional authorities and legal systems.
Rabbinic Excommunication in Roman Palestine
Despite the scant scholarship on Jewish excommunication in Sasanian Babylonia, the practice of banning is at the center of scholarly debates regarding rabbinic legal authority among the Tannaim and Amoraim of Greco-Roman Palestine. For instance, in a classic essay entitled “The Rabbi in Second-Century Jewish Society,” Shaye Cohen argues that the power of excommunication was the sole tool of compulsion that the Tannaim possessed to pressure Jews to comply with judicial decisions.Footnote 17 For Cohen, the threat of banishment from one's community was a driving force behind rabbinic legal authority in Tannaitic Palestine. Cohen describes the voluntary nature of the system as follows:
Rabbinic authority depended upon the social status, the powers of persuasion, the charisma and the personality of the rabbi more than upon his institutional or bureaucratic setting. It was a voluntary act for a Jew to accept the verdict of a rabbinic court or the authority of a rabbi. The tannaim had no means (aside from excommunication, about which the tannaim say little) to enforce their decisions and decrees. They were not the agents of the state. In sum: the rabbis did not control the religious and civil life of second-century Palestinian Jewry.Footnote 18
Tannaitic courts possessed scant power of judicial enforcement save for the threat of excommunication. The authorities’ punishment of alienation compelled followers into or away from certain forms of behavior. The Mishnah and talmudic sources illustrate the coercive intent of bans by juxtaposing them with the penalties of flogging and capital punishment.Footnote 19 For the Jewish authorities, excommunication was therefore a means of disciplining subjects through physical persecution.Footnote 20 Yet unlike apostasyFootnote 21 or conversion, an excommunicate's identity transfer from insider to outsider was caused by sin and imposed by outside agents. Excommunication thus acted as a type of “dividing practice,”Footnote 22 both socially and spatially, and depended upon the authoritative use of scripture. As Steven Katz has countered regarding the temporary nidduy, rabbinic bans were not necessarily about dividing the community but were ultimately part of the rabbis’ quest for social unity, since someone banned was still legally a Jew. As Katz writes, it was meant to invite the sinner “back into the fold by the acceptance of communal-rabbinic authority.”Footnote 23 More divisively, scholars debate whether the sages in this period declared bans against Jewish-Christians, including in the context of the synagogue, as a way to define the communal boundaries.Footnote 24 Tannaitic courts did not act under the aegis of the Roman state, but rather were dependent upon the community's acceptance of the judges’ reputation for fairness, charisma, and legal knowledge.
As attested in the Jerusalem Talmud, the later Amoraim of Palestine conceived of excommunication in similar terms as their Tannaitic forebears. The historian Seth Schwartz argues that the threat of excommunication was the basis of R. Yehoshua ben Levi's legal power, explaining how in y. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 3:1 (81d) “the only means of compulsion Rabbi Joshua ben Levi has is the threat of excommunication, which he refuses to use on principle.”Footnote 25 Schwartz states that the early Amoraim and patriarch were limited in their ability to enforce a Jew's compliance with court decisions.
Indeed, the written remains themselves offer clear indications of the constraints on rabbinic and patriarchal influence. In the third century rabbinic and patriarchal authority were unquestionably limited. The rabbis and patriarchs had become more aggressive—a policy that apparently yielded real results. Yet the Palestinian Talmud itself, interested though it is in playing up rabbinic authority, never describes the rabbis as possessing jurisdiction in the technical sense. No one was compelled to accept rabbinic judgment. The rabbis could threaten, plead, and cajole but could not subpoena or impose a sentence. Only the Roman governor and his agents had such authority.Footnote 26
According to both Cohen and Schwartz, the legal authority of the Tannaim and Amoraim in Palestine was delimited by the Roman Empire.Footnote 27 Faced with imperial domination, banishment was the means of enforcement that the Jewish courts had at their disposal. The rhetoric of the Jerusalem Talmud is one of self-praise regarding legal power, as Schwartz explains, and one of the ways that the rabbis justify their authority to banish sinners is through Torah study. Given all this, the Palestinian rabbinic concept of banishment thus sits at an interesting crossroads in the dialectic between exegesis and history: while the punishment of banishment was imposed upon internal others and rooted in biblical and mishnaic law, its implementation was simultaneously bound up with the broader sociohistorical structures of legal authority in Roman Palestine.
Talmudic Bans in a Sasanian Context: The Four Sections of b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–17b
But was this also the case in Jewish Babylonia? Were Babylonian rabbinic laws and practices of excommunication affected by the institutions and policies of the Persian Sasanian Empire and the presence of groups residing in late antique Mesopotamia?Footnote 28 And what type of dialectic was at play between voluntary Jewish courts and Sasanian imperial authorities?
Historians of late antique Judaism have largely overlooked these questions regarding the Persian context of the Bavli's concept of excommunication. As numerous recent studies demonstrate, Sasanian religions are ripe for comparative inquiry. This behooves scholars of the late antique East to break down the longstanding disciplinary boundaries between the study of talmudic Judaism, Syriac Christianity, Manichaeism, Mandaeism, Zoroastrianism, early Islam, and the Aramaic bowls.Footnote 29 The historiographical isolation of these academic disciplines from one another contradicts the historical realities of the heterogeneous landscape of Sasanian Iran wherein these groups intermingled.Footnote 30 Thus, even in cases of internal laws such as banishment, scholars of the late antique East should avail themselves of comparative lenses that emphasize sociohistorical contexts, since such laws were affected by surrounding cultures and institutional structures. What can we learn about nidduy and šamta’ using methods of comparison?
One rich discussion of excommunication in the Babylonian Talmud is b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–17b. These pages treat mourning rites and, by extension, the analogous laws of excommunication. The Talmud addresses an instance when a public ritual commandment conflicts with a private one—for example, is a mourner supposed to celebrate the festivals instead of performing the rites of mourning? Based on Deut 16:14 (“you shall rejoice on your festival”), the Talmud concludes that a mourner should in fact celebrate the public event of a festival. The Bavli's textual stimulus for its discussion of excommunication is m. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 3:1–2’s reference to the “released excommunicate” who may cut his hair and wash his clothes during the festival. The Talmud then queries: Is an excommunicate supposed to act like a mourner during the festivals? Initially driven by this question, the subsequent pages elaborate on rabbinic bans. One way to divide up the literary structure of b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–17b is into the following four sections: (1) 14b–16a: an exegesis of m. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. ch. 3 that includes a case-by-case study of thirteen actions that an excommunicate may or may not do as compared to a mourner, with numerous baraitot attributed to Rav Yosef and objections by Abaye; (2) 16a: a set of thirteen questions and answers, initially attributed to Rava, regarding how Judg 5:23 and parts of Ezra and Nehemiah are prooftexts that legitimize the Babylonian Jewish courts’ enforcement of court summons using bans; (3) 16a–17a: a series of stories and related traditions, including baraitot, describing instances when Shmuel, Rav Yehudah, and Resh Lakish banished their students; (4)17a–b: a popular etymology of the term šamta’ and a reference to the blowing of a shofarFootnote 31 during the excommunication ritual.
Each of these four sections expresses a unique message for the rabbis with respect to excommunication. For example, the final section (section 4) exemplifies the rabbis’ connection of excommunication (šamta’) with death and mourning.Footnote 32 In the following excerpt from b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 17a the Babylonian sages Rav, Shmuel, and Shmuel's father offer up popular etymologies of the word šamta’. The wordplay reads:
What is excommunication [
]? RavFootnote 33 said: A name of death [
]. Shmuel said: there will be desolation [
Footnote 34]. Shmuel's fatherFootnote 35 said: And it affects (the person who is excommunicated) like animal fat on an oven.Footnote 36
Rav and Shmuel explain šamta’ using the similar-sounding phrases “a name of death” and “there will be desolation.” Rav's explanation of the term as “a name of death” suggests that the violator was under a type of death curse. As seen in the statements of Shmuel's father, some sages were cognizant of the long-term negative effects that a šamta’ would have on a person's reputation. Many sages express a wariness of imposing a ban on students, as seen, for example, in b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 17a: “Rav Pappa said: May (reward) come to me since I have never declared a šamta’ on a rabbinical student.” In our text above, according to Shmuel's father the social stigma of excommunication would linger upon someone “like animal fat on an oven.” Yet even this point remained disputed among the sages, as seen in R. Yohanan's subsequent tradition (not cited above), based on gematria, that a ḥerem ban eventually exits the 248 limbs of the sinner's body.
As mentioned above, the lemma that prompts b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–17b's discussion of excommunication is m. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 3:1–2. This text from the Mishnah inventories people who are allowed to perform actions that would normally be prohibited to them in preparation for the festivals, such as cutting one's hair. One of the individuals in this list is someone whose ban has been lifted by the sages.
These [people] may cut their hair during the festival: he who comes from beyond the sea, from captivity, or out of prison; or he who was under a ban [
] and was released by the sages; and so too he who sought [release from a vow] and was released; and the Nazirite and the leper who have come from uncleanness to purity.
And these [people] may wash their clothes during the festival: he who comes from beyond the sea, from captivity, or out of prison; or he who was under a ban and was released by the sages. . .
In this passage from the Mishnah, the Tannaim include the dispensation of cutting hair and laundering clothes in the case of an individual whose ban was lifted by the sages. As seen here, bans and vows, both forms of verbal restraint, are juxtaposed in rabbinic sources, a connection likewise attested in the Aramaic bowls. The two Talmuds advance differing commentaries on a 
(menudeh). For its part, the Jerusalem Talmud engages the question of when the ban was actually released—was it prior to the festival? The interpretation of m. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 3:1 in y. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 3:1 (81c) reads:
“He who was under a ban [
] and was released by the sages.” What [type of case] are we dealing with? If [it is a case] where they released him before the festival, he should cut his hair. If [it is a case] where they did not release him before the festival, he should not cut his hair. Rather, we are dealing with [a case] where they released him before the festival, and the thirtieth day of his ban took effect during the festival. For [it is taught in a baraita]: There is no nidduy for less than thirty days, and there is no rebuke [
] for less than seven days. There is no nidduy for less than thirty days: “but a whole month, until it comes out of your noses” [Num 11:20]. There is no rebuke for less than seven days: “would she not bear her shame for seven days?” [Num 12:14].Footnote 37
This passage in the Jerusalem Talmud probes the precise timing of an excommunicate's appeal and release from a ban, initially clarifying that if the excommunicate is released prior to the festival, then it is permitted to cut hair. The passage concludes that the case of the released banned is an instance when “the thirtieth day of his ban took effect during the festival.” A baraita is cited that proves the length of a nidduy is thirty days and a rebuke seven days based upon the prooftexts Num 11:20 and 12:14, respectively. This latter biblical source is relevant for rabbinic bans in that it describes Miriam being banished from the camp for seven days due to 
(ṣara‘at), a type of skin impurity, which, as Lev. Rab. 16 explains through a play on words, is caused by “uttering an evil name.”Footnote 38
In its interpretation of m. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 3:1, the Gemara in b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–16a raises a different set of issues. Interestingly, it changes the terms of the discussion from nidduy to šamta’, a ban that was an innovating legal practice in Babylonia. Unlike the Jerusalem Talmud, the Bavli highlights the court's role in implementing a ban (šamta’) on a litigant who refuses a court verdict. In its discussions of excommunication, the Bavli contextualizes bans from within the functioning of the Jewish courts. To illustrate this, let us look at an exemplary excerpt of section 1 from our lengthy text (b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ 14b):
“He who was under a ban.” What is (the law) for how he acts (in line with) his ban [
] during the festival?Footnote 39 Rav Yosef said: Come and hear—we judge monetary crimes, capital crimes, and floggings.Footnote 40 And if (the guilty) does not obey a judgment, we excommunicate him [
]. And if you think that he should not act (in line with) his ban during the festival, so thatFootnote 41 he was excommunicated before (the festival), (and) the festival comes and supplants it, (are) we now supposed to excommunicate him? Abaye said to (Rav Yosef): But perhaps (this means they should) investigate the case (i.e., not declare a judgment until after the festival). For if you do not say so, (then) the capital crimes told in the baraita, so too they execute. (The judges) would be prevented from rejoicing on the festival, as it was taught (in a baraita): R. Akiva says—from where (do we know) that a court [
] that executed a person may not taste anything all day? The Torah states: “You shall not eat over the blood” [Lev 19:26]. But rather to investigate (the case),Footnote 42 it happens that it delays judgment, so that they can come [
] in the morning and investigate the case, and then leave and eat and drinkFootnote 43 all day long and then return as the sun sets and they conclude the case and execute him.Footnote 44
At the beginning of this passage, the Pumbeditan sage Rav Yosef quotes a baraita that states that Jewish courts are active in judging capital and financial crimes during the intermediate days. After the baraita, the text adds that the courts should also excommunicate (šamta’) someone who refuses to obey a court judgment. Subsequently, Abaye challenges Rav Yosef's understanding by drawing a distinction between two phases of the judicial process—studying a case versus declaring a judgment. Abaye explains how Rav Yosef's interpretation of the baraita is illogical because it permits an execution despite the rule that a judge is not allowed to celebrate after executing someone. In support of this position, Abaye brings into the debate a second baraita, which cites Lev 19:26, a verse stating that judges are forbidden to eat after an execution. In contrast to Rav Yosef's argument for the permissibility of judging capital crimes, Abaye maintains that a court's activity should be limited to studying capital and financial crimes but that the declaration of verdicts should be postponed. Abaye, however, does not get the last word in the debate. In the final line of our text, the Talmud retorts that Abaye's position is not sustainable since it delays the verdict, which is not permitted. The way around these problems, the text concludes, is that the judges can study the case in the morning, go eat and drink during the day, and then return to the courthouse in the evening to declare the verdict and execute the guilty individual.
Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Persian Imperial Context of Rabbinic Excommunication
After section 1 of b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–17b surveys the thirteen actions that an excommunicate may or may not be permitted to perform as compared to a mourner, section 2 turns to a discussion of a court's ability to impose a judicial summons. This passage invokes three of the major terms about excommunication: nidduy, šamta’, and ḥerem. In the following passage from b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 16a, the Talmud cites three biblical verses that justify the court's implementation of the punishments of ḥerem and šamta’. Here, a šamta’ is used to punish someone who refuses to honor a subpoena. Writing on this source, Yaakov Elman has argued that “Rava's interest in ḥerem and nidduy—excommunication and the use of the ban—seems to have been restricted to enforcing the authority of the rabbinic courts.”Footnote 45 Referencing the formal document of bans used against judicial insubordination, Elman explains that it “seems to have been a Babylonian invention, and may reflect the problems of the rabbinic courts within heterogeneous Sasanian society, especially in competition with governmental courts.”Footnote 46 The interconnections between Sasanian and Jewish courts, which include areas of Jewish self-governance led by the rabbis, created a tension in Jewish society regarding issues of jurisdiction and the right and proper methods to enforce the law.Footnote 47
The following excerpt from b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 16a, which appears in a larger discussion of court agency, declares that a šamta’ should be imposed upon someone who rejects a summons:
A. From where do we derive that we excommunicate [
] (someone who does not obey a court summons)? As it is written: “Curse Meroz” [Judg 5:23].B. (From where do we derive) that (the agent must make clear) that this is the ruling of a great so-and-so? As it is written: “said the angel of the Lord” [ibid.].
C. (From where do we deriveFootnote 48) that we can impose a ḥerem [
]? As it is written: “Bitterly curse” [ibid.].D. That one who eats and drinks with or stands within four cubits of (the excommunicated person) (is liable)? As it is written: “its inhabitants” [ibid.].
E. And that we specify the sin in public? As it is written: “Because they came not to aid the Lord” [ibid.].
F. And Ulla said: Barak excommunicated Meroz with four hundred shofar blasts. There are some who say that Meroz is a great man. There are some who say that it is a star. As is it written: “The stars fought from heaven” [ibid. 5:20].
G. From where do we derive that we declare his property to be without an owner? As it is written: “and that anyone who did not come in three days would, by decision of the officers and elders, have his property confiscated and himself excluded from the congregation of the returning exiles” [Ezra 10:8].
H. From where do we derive that we fight, curse, hit, tear the hair from, and put under oath (the excommunicated person)? As it is written: “I censured them, cursed them, flogged them, tore out their hair, and put them under oath by God” [Neh 13:25].
I. From where do we derive that we tie up, imprison, and pursue [
Footnote 49]? As it is written: “whether by death, ‘uprooting’ [], confiscation of possessions, or imprisonment” [Ezra 7:26].J. What does “uprooting” mean?
K. Adda Mari said in the name of Nehemiah bar Barukh who said in the name of Rav Hiyya bar Abin that Rav Yehudah said:Footnote 50 it means pursuit.
L. What does pursuit mean?
M. Rav Yehudah son of Rav Shmuel bar Shelat said in the name of Rav:Footnote 51 it means that we excommunicate [
] immediately, and repeat it after thirty days, and (then) impose a ḥerem on him after sixty days.N. Rav Huna bar Hinena said to him that Rav Hisda said thus:Footnote 52 Monday, Thursday, and Monday.
O. These words apply in cases of money, but in the case of impudence (we do it) immediately.Footnote 53
This exegetical passage delineates the biblical bases of rabbinic court authority. Lines A–F give grounds for the laws of excommunication through a verse-by-verse explanation of Judg 5:23, on the Israelites’ conquests of Canaan. Line A connects the imposition of a šamta’ on someone who disobeys court orders with the phrase “curse Meroz.” As explained by Forkman, in the biblical context the word “curse” connotes both magical curses and social exclusion.Footnote 54 Similar to the rabbinic connection between bans and Jewish and gentile courts, these biblical passages administer curses (
) for disobedient behavior such as sexual deviancy or social sins. Subsequently, line G of our passage above goes on to cite Ezra 10:7–8,Footnote 55 which invokes ḥerem in reference to the confiscation of property by the courts. In lines G–I above, the exegetes validate the Babylonian Jewish courts’ physical punishments of “fight[ing],. . . hit[ting],. . . [and] imprison[ing]” and seizing property by appealing to Ezra and Nehemiah's building up of communal boundaries via the confiscation of property and exclusion of individuals who refused to obey their orders to assemble in Jerusalem and leave their foreign wives.
In line I of our sugya above, the Talmud asks what biblical text authorizes the courts’ right to “tie up, imprison, and pursue [
]” violators. The answer given is from Ezra 7:25–26, a foundational text attesting to the practice of expulsion in the early Second Temple period. The passage is from Artaxerxes's Aramaic letter commissioning Ezra's mission and reads:
And you, Ezra, by the divine wisdom you possess, appoint magistrates and judges to judge all the people in the province Beyond the River who know the laws of your God, and to teach those who do not know them. Let anyone who does not obey the law of your God and the law of the king be punished with dispatch, whether by death, corporal punishment, confiscation of possessions, or imprisonment. (Ezra 7:25–26 NJPS)
In this text, the Persian Achaemenid king authorizes Ezra to appoint judges and administer penalties for those who violate the law of “your God” and “the king.” In b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 16a, the exegetes seek to define “corporal punishment,” with Rav Yehudah concluding that it means “pursuit,” an unclear word whose meaning line L interrogates, before Rav then defines “pursuit” in terms of a nidduy ban.
The Term (rdp) in the Jewish Aramaic Bowl Spells
The root 
(r-d-p), whence comes 
(hardafah), literally “pursuit,” also appears in Jewish Aramaic bowls from Iran, including one that is aimed against a lilith who murders children. In this unusually large Jewish Aramaic bowl, a sorcerer imitates what the demons think, adding that they appear in human form and say “let us sweep away the children in the market places, let us chase them in their bodies [
], let us chase them in their roads.”Footnote 56 The description of the demons chasing bodies parallels the effects of a rabbinic ban, which of course Rav Yehudah, in the name of Rav, connects to the concept of pursuit. In a different incantation, the term appears in the phrase “persecuting deeds [wbm‘bdy rydwpy],” which utilizes the same verb as line I in b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 16a. This incantation, which references the spirits of Babylon and Iraq, makes a positive appeal to the “two hundred and fifty-two bans [ḥrmy]” in order to ward off the spirits that are “loosened by evil sorcery and persecuting deeds” and that cause “eye diseases” and “migraines.” The incantation bowl, which is composed in a Jewish script and has a demon drawn in its middle, reads as follows:
I swear upon you and adjure you evil deeds and evil doings, demons, plagues, headache demons, afflicters, eye diseases, evil spirits, charm spirit and sorcery spirit, pain, wretched(?) Šibta spirit, scab, blood and tears, scars(?) and migraine and all spirits loosed by evil sorcery and by persecuting deeds and all painful pains and all deceivers; may you be cast down and all. . . may you die. I adjure you spirits of Babylon and Arab, spirits of Iraq and Mesene, spirits of the Euphrates and the River Tigris, may you depart, vanish and die by means of the two hundred and fifty-two bans (standing together?); even from Dodo, daughter of Dodo, amen, amen, selah.Footnote 57
How does this text's usage of rydwpy and ḥrmy compare to the Talmud's engagement with cognate terms? In this bowl the term 
appears as a negative concept like evil sorcery, which can unleash linked physical and metaphysical evils (e.g., headache demons). By contrast, in b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 16a Rav Yehudah equates Ezra 7’s concept of corporal punishment with “pursuit” (hardafah), which Rav then defines as a repeatable nidduy, all within a judicial setting. To some extent, the bowl above inverts the Talmud's usage of the term ḥerem: the two hundred and fifty-two bans are the verbal tools that the sorcerer uses to battle illnesses of the body and the evil spirits, whereas in the Talmud a ḥerem ban is a severe form of punishment against a sinner. Thus, while the sorcerers use magical bans to protect a client's body from evils and persecution, conceptualized as rydwpy, the sages implement bans as a way of physically punishing a sinner and reinforcing rabbinic authority over the voluntary courts. In similar fashion, then, both the Talmud and the bowls use bans to drive away non-compliant male or femaleFootnote 58 sinners or harmful metaphysical entities such as demons. Bans ultimately protect against or induce physical persecution. From this comparison of the data, one sees that overlapping spheres in Jewish Mesopotamia employ cognate terminology to describe both physical and metaphysical realia. The hermeneutics behind and real-life application of bans were not only bound up with one another, but they were also engaged with metaphysical imagination.
As seen in the bowl above, one point of overlap between the concept of excommunication as attested in the Talmud and in the bowls is the motif of bodily injury. In several bowls from the Schøyen collection that include stories about R. Hanina ben Dosa, the sorcerers invoke the bans ḥerem and šamta’ alongside the root rdp, “to pursue, chase,” which here is used to designate the evil spirits’ persecution of the client's body through illnesses. This magical invocation of bans as a positive force against illness, followed by the metaphor of the breaking into fortified cities, is a recurrent motif found in the bowls. This incantation heals and protects Mahdukh from an array of evil spirits that “recline among the graves,” “on rooftops,” and “in the body,” especially in the eyes, ears, and head. The middle of the Jewish Aramaic bowl beginning with line 8 reads as follows:
I adjure you, you, evil spirit, [who m]et [Ra]bbi Ḥanina ben Dosa, and Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa said to her, to the evil spirit who met him at that time, the verse that is written: “You make darkness and it i[s ni]ght, wherein all the animals of the forest creep” [Ps 104:20]. And again I adjure you and again I beswear you, you, evil spirit, that you should not go and not become to Mahdukh daughter of Newandukh, neither a companion of the night nor a companion of night and day. For if you [g]o and persecute the body [
], head, temple, ear, thigh, and eye-sockets of Mahdukh daughter of Newandukh, you, e[vil] spirit, they [will] ban [
] [you] and [b]reak you and excommu[nicate [
] you just as] mighty fortified cities were broken, against which Nurael, Raphael and Michael were sent. By the name of yhwh, “yhwh is a man of war, yhwh is his name” [Exod 15:3]. “yhwh [strong and mighty], yhwh mi[ghty in battle” [Ps 24:8]. “yhwh is king], yhwh re[igns” [Ps 10:16], “yhwh shall] reign [for eve]r and ever” [Exod 15:18]. nomina barbara Footnote 59
This excerpt of the bowl, written for a Persian-named client Mahdukh daughter of Newandukh, uses the threat of bans to ward off the evil spirits from persecuting the client's body through illness. The rabbinic and biblical elements of this incantation manifest themselves in the appearance of the first-century c.e. Tanna and wonder-worker R. Hanina ben Dosa, one of the most common sages found in the bowls, and in the two biblical quotations. In this bowl's historiola, which exhibits both similarities and differences to an aggadah in b. Pesaḥ. 112b, an evil spirit meets R. Hanina ben Dosa, who cites Ps 104:20 against it. This bowl's inclusion of a wonder-working rabbi is just one of numerous examples in the incantations where rabbinic figures appear in shamanistic contexts. As these bowls display, the Jewish sorcerers invoked magical bans as a way to shield a client's body from demons and disease that persecute the body through pursuit.
Persian Imperial Courts and Rabbinic Excommunication
There is another text in the Babylonian Talmud (b. B. Qam. 113b–114aFootnote 60) that discusses the šamta’ ban in light of Persian imperial law. In this sugya, which references land taxes and 
(baga’), “rural area adjoining a city,” from Middle Persian bāg, “garden,” Rava and Abaye explain Shmuel's famous dictum that “the law of the state is the law” through the example of the government's building of bridges. According to the rabbis, the Persians are permitted to invoke their imperial rights and requisition private land in order to construct public works. The rabbis argue that because the Persians have the legal right to the land upon which they build public infrastructure, a Jew who uses the bridges is not guilty of benefitting from stolen property. In this manner, the policies of the king and his emissary dictate rabbinic regulations. In the subsequent section of this late Amoraic composition,Footnote 61 some of which I translate below, the rabbis declare that excommunication is a necessary punishment for a Jew who testifies against another Jew in a gentile court. Beginning as a legislative act initiated by Rava or Rav Huna, this section contains references to what are likely two Sasanian institutions—namely, 
(be dawar), “Persian court (?),”Footnote 62 and 
([dine de-]magista’), “magian court (?).”Footnote 63 While the two specific contexts of the dawar and magista’ in this text remain elusive, what is clear is that the sages define their internal rules of excommunication according to the presence and regulations of gentile, presumably Persian, courts in Jewish Babylonia. A key excerpt from b. B. Qam. 113b–114a reads as follows:
Rava, and others say Rav Huna, announced: To those who go upward (to Israel) and those who go downward (to Babylonia)—if a Jew knows of evidence against another Jew for (the benefit of) a gentile, and he goes and testifies regarding it in a gentile court, we excommunicate him [
]. What is the reason? Because gentiles seize money based on the testimony of one witness, we excommunicate him. But this refers to (a case) in a magista’, but in a be dawar they also administer an oath upon each witness.Footnote 64
According to this Amoraic law attributed to Rava or Rav Huna, a Jew who offers damaging testimony against another Jew in a gentile court is deserving of the šamta’ ban. One of the requirements for this ruling, however, is that it occurs in a magista’ court, which will confiscate penalties based on the testimony of a single witness, as opposed to the be dawar. In other words, some Persian courts require only one witness, heightening the stakes of a single coreligionist's testimony.Footnote 65 The passage goes on to lay out other conditions for excommunication. A recent study of this passage by Saul Berman has summarized the implications of this text as follows:Footnote 66
1. A Jew is subject to excommunication if he testifies in a non-Jewish court when all of the following conditions pertain:
(a) his testimony is against a fellow Jew,
(b) in the benefit of a non-Jewish litigant,
(c) the witness has not been subpoenaed,
(d) he is the sole witness, and
(e) the litigation takes place in a “Magista” court.
By contrast:
2. This constraint would NOT apply if ANY of the following conditions were present:
(a) his testimony is in the benefit of a fellow Jew
(b) the other litigant is also a Jew
(c) the witness has been subpoenaed
(d) there are two witnesses (even in a “Magista” court)
(e) the litigation is in a “Dawar” court (even as a single witness.)
As seen here, the presence of the Persian courts in Jewish Babylonia was a factor that the sages considered in their determination of when a šamta’ ban was required. According to the logic of scenario (1) in Berman's synthesis, a Jew is excommunicated for testifying against a coreligionist for the benefit of a non-Jew in a Persian court. By contrast, scenario (2) does not hold accountable a Jew who is subpoenaed to testify in a gentile court. In both cases being subpoenaed makes one exempt. This passage's conception of excommunication promotes the legal authority of the Jewish community against the option of gentile courts, stating that the punishment for helping to prosecute a Jew in a gentile court is a šamta’. This dictate was not only meant to prevent disloyalty, but it also ensured that cases involving Jews remained adjudicated in Jewish courts. In reality, however, the Jewish courts were only partially successful in implementing bans not only in cases of obstinacy but in other circumstances as well,Footnote 67 given the limitations of their status in both Jewish and Sasanian societies. In the end, the Babylonian rabbinic practice of excommunication was not entirely effective because of its simultaneous burdens of requisite communal acceptance by the public, as well as the imposition of Sasanian imperial courts into Jewish society.
This paper's analysis of Jewish excommunication can benefit from the exploitation of Middle Persian texts that offer information regarding the role of imperial contexts in its formulation and implementation. Regrettably, Middle Persian sources do not offer scholars much, if any, direct information regarding excommunication in Zoroastrian (or non-Zoroastrian) societies. It is difficult to identify in Zoroastrian literature any type of engagement with an analogous concept of excommunication, including in the apparent parallels to rabbinic law, such as a sinner's forfeit body (tanāpuhl),Footnote 68 corporal punishments and spiritual repentance,Footnote 69 or the refusal to act as a religious guide.Footnote 70 The Middle Persian texts on these topics neither promote nor address social bans. Yet despite these limitations of the evidence, Sasanian studies nevertheless offers scholars of Jewish Babylonia useful external data regarding the broader historical context in which rabbinic and magical bans were defined and implemented—and, in a similar manner to Roman Palestine, ultimately delimited. By emphasizing the historical context of Jewish bans in Babylonia, this article serves as one test case into a larger set of problems that I believe remain at the heart of the field of Irano-Talmudica—namely, the ties between Jewish, localized courts of law and Persian governmental institutions. Historians of the Sasanian period agree that the Persian Empire allowed local courts to govern their own communities, albeit within certain limitations that maintained its dominance.Footnote 71 This Persian policy, which treated the Jewish communities as relatively independent in their power to adjudicate cases in certain areas of law (e.g., rituals and marriage), can in part explain the rise of bans among the rabbinic masters, the sorcerers, and the Jewish courts. In other words, the rabbis utilized bans as a tool to compel followers to comply with a legal system that was voluntary, localized, and delimited in its authority to implement court rulings. In light of this, one way to interpret Middle Persian sources’ minimal interest in banishment is to conjecture that the Persian monarchy and Zoroastrian priests who managed imperial institutions such as fire temples and centers of Avestan learning did not wield such punishments because, simply put, they did not need to. Unlike the rabbis, the Sasanians did not establish their legal authority through voluntary communal acceptance, but rather through imperial political institutions, including a hierarchical web of judges.
Comparing Excommunication in the Babylonian Talmud and the Bowls
The Jewish Aramaic bowls provide additional insight into the shared discourses surrounding bans among Mesopotamian Jewry in the fifth through seventh centuries. In a fashion distinct from the boundary-building Talmud, the Aramaic bowls attest to popular and syncretistic religious beliefs wherein the social and intellectual boundaries among Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, and Zoroastrians are blurred yet nevertheless distinguishable.Footnote 72 Jewish sorcerers composed many of the personalized but formulaic incantations for Jewish and gentile clients with the apotropaic goals of warding off evil spirits, bodily diseases, and human rivals. For talmudic studies, the fact that the bowls betray linguistic, liturgical, scriptural, aggadic, thematic, and other affinities with the TalmudFootnote 73 offers the field an opportunity to cultivate polytheticFootnote 74 definitions of Mesopotamian Judaism that challenge common scholarly assumptions regarding the formation and essence of rabbinic culture and society.Footnote 75 When seen in totality, there is evidence supporting the notion that the rabbis and sorcerers inhabited overlapping sociocultural spheres of life. Demons were clearly a part of the rabbinic worldview, which elevated the Torah as the best antidote to metaphysical evils.Footnote 76 Given talmudic studies’ insufficient historiographical engagement with the incantations as comparative data, more research is required to map out the limitations and contours of the linkage between the Talmud and the bowls, including the value of probing whether magical traditions originated within the “masses” and were rabbinized.Footnote 77 This comparative field of inquiry will be further enriched by the recent and forthcoming publication of hundreds of new incantation bowls housed in the Schøyen collection in a multivolume series being spearheaded by Shaul Shaked.Footnote 78
As I showed earlier in this paper, the Talmud and magical incantations share language regarding vows,Footnote 79 bans, and divorce writs, all of which operate according to a collective presumption that specific words are efficacious and binding. In an introduction to magical divorce texts, Shaked highlights the concept of the “performative utterance,” which he defines as “a phrase that creates, by the fact that it is uttered in a specific situation and in a determined manner, a new social or legal status.”Footnote 80 In the case of bans, both rabbinic law and the magical incantations attempt to effect change to the status of the banned entity by utilizing bans as a means of preventing, via a threat,Footnote 81 a human violation or a metaphysical entity's evil intent. Bans are verbal curses that harm the body and change one's status in the community—but while for the Talmud bans lead to physical separation and symbolic death, exhibited through the rites of mourning, which inflict pain upon a sinner, for the Aramaic bowl spells the sorcerers use bans to repel from clients those demons that infect them with disease. In analyzing this evidence, comparativists should consider the social context of bans in an attempt to discern whether the bowls are specifically invoking halakhic terminology as a means of subverting Jewish courts.Footnote 82 For their part, based on our current knowledge, talmudic laws that ban illicit forms of magic do not appear to be geared specifically toward bowl practitioners, which suggests little social connection.Footnote 83 Still, the Babylonian rabbis must have been aware of the magical practices happening around them. To date, scholars have not mapped out the implications of the evidence regarding how the linguistic affinities between these corpora are or are not indicative of social interactions.
There are examples of the šamta’ and ḥerem bans appearing in the Aramaic bowls, including Mandaic and Syriac ones.Footnote 84 This is true, for example, in two aggressive Jewish bowls (VA.3381 and VA.3382Footnote 85) which were “joined together to produce one object—a qybl’ form.”Footnote 86 In the latter text, the sorcerer, writing a countercharm, threatens those who want to evade his charm by stating: “May there be sealed against him a ban [
] and decreed upon him a decree and that he die in astonishment.”Footnote 87 In VA.3381, which “is a charm to counter a wide variety of malign entities,”Footnote 88 the sorcerer invokes both types of bans as counteractive forces against other bans made against the client.
They will make void. . .. . . and ban and excommunicate all bands of marauders and. . ... and counter-charms and neck-charms, and curses and oaths and affliction. . . [. . .] all curses and horns and bans and broken sounds of the shofar and decrees and excommunications and afflictions of the synagogue. . .. [. . .] And may they ban and bind them and cancel them out [from] Kaspi son of Qaqi.Footnote 89
In this spell, magical bans are made to counter other magical bans, in some instances between two Jews. Another spell records a magical ban (šamta’) given by R. Yehoshua (Joshua) b. Perahia, the first-century b.c.e. sage who is known in rabbinic sources for his supernormal powers. The bowl begins:
Healing from heaven for the house, wife, children and property of Ab(u)-dimme is 1 word son of Daday. Sealed and double sealed by the signet-ring of yhwh Sabaoth, a hidden mystery. This is a mystery and a (decree) that Rabbi Joshua ben Peraḥ(i)a decreed against you. You have received the ban [šamta’] in order that you shall be banned. And may you be under the ban of Rabbi Joshua bar Peraḥ(i)a. And may you be under the ban by the name of Ashmedai, the king of demons. And may you be under the ban by the name of Rav Agzar bar Dibšata. And may you be under the ban by the name of Ram Šad, the king of demons. And may you be under the ban of Rav Joseph Šeda. And may you be under the ban of all demons and dark ones that are in Babylonia.Footnote 90
This bowl, which mentions the demons of Babylonia, heals the family of Abudimme son of Daday. After repeating the formula “and may you be under the ban of,” the incantation brings in a series of powerful and liminal figures who appear in multiple cultures in late antique Iran, such as Ashmedai and Rav Yosef (Joseph) Sheda. Similarly, in this next bowl, which contains a reference to nidduy and has near verbatim parallels to Hekhalot Rabbati,Footnote 91 the charm threatens a rebellious demon with banishment to the God of Israel.Footnote 92 This text, which switches between Hebrew and Aramaic, was produced to protect a pregnant woman named Mahlafta from evils that could harm her body:
And all lils and tormentors and every evil spirit, male and female who will obey and go out from Mahlafta daughter of Imai, and from her entire house. May he go on his way in peace. And whosoever shall not obey will be banished [
] to ṬA‘ṢŠ YHWH God of Israel. To him and to the crown of his head and to the throne of his glory and to the law court of above and to the law court of below and to all the host of the law court of heaven.Footnote 93
This incantation threatens to banish disobedient evils that refuse its adjuration, sending them to yhwh for judgment in the earthly and heavenly courts of law. In this and other incantations, the sorcerers connect the threat of a ban with courts of law. Indeed, one may conjecture that there were situations where a family would turn to a sorcerer in order to resolve or influence the outcome of a legal dispute.Footnote 94
Given the apparent linkage between law and magic, what can we learn about excommunication in Jewish Babylonia by comparing the rabbis and sorcerers in late antique Persia? In the case of excommunication there was discursive and social overlap between law and magic in Jewish Babylonia, and the boundaries separating rabbis, sorcerers, and gentiles were more porous than scholars typically presume. In the bowls and the Talmud, bans are used in adversarial circumstances, but whereas for the rabbis bans were tied up with the courts’ authority to discipline spiritual and social culprits, the Jewish sorcerers appealed to bans as verbal punishments against evil spirits that persecuted an individual's body. Mesopotamian Jewish discourses about bans, and by extension the boundaries of acceptable behavior that they promoted, extended beyond the elite scholasticism of the rabbis to include the syncretistic expressions of curses attested in the magical bowls. Yet, as recent studies by folklore theorists have rightly pointed out, there are flaws in scholarly interpretations that assume that the Talmud is a corpus representing the viewpoint of elite and influential rabbis, whereas the magical bowls reflect the marginalized masses.Footnote 95 To the contrary, the social circles of rabbis and sorcerers were not as separate as research in talmudic studies has assumed. Sorcerers may have derived social prowess from their ability to provide alternative, seemingly efficacious resolutions to common problems. It behooves Talmudists to turn to the bowls to help break down the dichotomy between the elite and the masses, while avoiding a privileging of rabbinic law as a more authentic or pure representation of Babylonian Jewish culture than the irrational, syncretistic, external incantations.Footnote 96 In researching these problems, one needs to pay close attention not only to the ways in which rabbis, sorcerers, and other groups expressed their ideologies toward both internal and external others in their respective corpora, but also to the extent to which they were able to enact their ideas in social reality.
Conclusion
The topic of excommunication among late antique Jews is at the center of scholarly dialogue regarding the extent and nature of rabbinic legal authority in Roman Palestine and Sasanian Babylonia. As I outlined in this paper, b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 14b–17b exemplifies how excommunication and bans in Jewish Babylonia were simultaneously dictated by multiple exegetical and sociohistorical factors. On the one hand, the textual precedents in the Torah (Deut 27–28), Second Temple literature (Ezra 7–10), and Tannaitic and Amoraic traditions (m. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 3:1) function as the hermeneutical underpinnings for the Babylonian rabbis’ discussion of bans. Having traced them throughout ancient Jewish literature, we can observe that the terms nidduy, šamta’, and ḥerem have idiosyncratic emphases in the Babylonian Talmud, especially in reference to the functioning of the courts (e.g., the refusal of a summons). As in Palestine, the court system in Jewish Babylonia was largely voluntary, and the rabbis used the threat of social exclusion to compel their coreligionists to follow the mandates of local Jewish courts instead of gentile ones. As we saw in b. B. Qam. 113b–114a, the Talmud states that excommunication is the appropriate punishment for a Jew who voluntarily bears witness against a fellow Jew in Persian legal institutions. In such texts, the rabbis grapple with their entanglement with the Persians on issues of judicial authority. Thus, alongside exegetical stimuli, the course of Sasanian history altered the Babylonian rabbis’ new interpretations of past textual traditions regarding Jewish bans.
One way that scholars can flesh out the role that sociohistorical context plays in the definition and implementation of Babylonian rabbinic legal practices is to utilize non-rabbinic sources from Sasanian Mesopotamia. In this article I focused upon two such corpora—namely, the Jewish Aramaic spells and Middle Persian literature—which offer Talmudists alternative types of data regarding Jewish excommunication. Tantalizingly, the terms nidduy, šamta’, and ḥerem appear in numerous Aramaic incantations, including ones that invoke R. Yehoshua b. Perahia and R. Hanina ben Dosa. In Sasanian Mesopotamia, different Aramaic groups invoked the same terms for diverse and competing purposes: for example, the Talmud's Jewish courts banned sinners, but the bowls’ clients and sorcerers banned evil spirits through words. While in the Talmud the sages qua judges use bans to punish sinners of twenty-four social and spiritual violations, the Aramaic sorcerers instead employ the same punishment against the demons and the evil spirits that infect their clients’ bodies with illness. In both the Talmud and the spells, then, the act of banning involves the symbolic death of the body, albeit in opposite directions: the rabbis’ bans cause a sinner to mourn and be excluded, whereas the sorcerers’ bans protect clients from ill health and disease.
In addition to the magical bowls, this paper also touched upon some of the benefit of turning to Sasanian studies and Middle Persian literature as a way of gaining further insight into rabbinic excommunication. As I noted above, the Babylonian rabbis discuss bans in the context of both Achaemenid and Sasanian imperial law. This is not surprising since in the rabbinic period the practice of excommunication was driven by the lack of Jewish judicial power in the face of imperial rule. Similar to courts in Roman Palestine, the Jewish courts in Babylonia depended upon the use of excommunication and bans to enforce social and ritual laws. The Talmud's anxiety over the presence of Persian courts thus corresponds to the historical realities of imperial delimitations of Jewish power. It is noteworthy that Zoroastrian texts do not espouse a concept of excommunication that is comparable to the rabbis’. The practice, it seems, was active among non-imperial religious groups whose rule of law functioned upon communal voluntary acceptance.
