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The Tale Type of the Repenting Prostitute: Between Rabbis and Church Fathers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2018

Tali Artman-Partock
Tali Artman-Partock*
Affiliation:
Cambridge University
*
a378@cam.ac.uk

Abstract

This paper compares rabbinic and patristic stories of repenting prostitutes from late antiquity, showing that while some narrative structures remain fixed in both traditions, namely, the prostitute's story framed within that of a man, a competition between the man and the prostitute over the leading role, the perpetually open path to repentance, and more, other structures vary or take a different meaning. These include the gender identity of the desiring subject, the spiritual principle behind the story, the gender of the repentant, and his/her fate. The article offers a definition of “the repenting prostitute” as a tale type, as well as close readings in its rabbinic ecotype, in order to understand if, how, and why the Jewish and Christian traditions take different paths of meaning-making using similar narrative forms.

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Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , April 2018 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2018 

This article will describe and analyze the different poetics of early rabbinic literature and eastern monastic literature in their literary treatment of repenting female prostitutes, showing how one culture plays with the conventions of another, and thereby providing a clearer literary definition of the tale type of the repenting prostitute.Footnote 1 By examining one rabbinic story in two variants, dating from before and after the rise in the popularity of the Christian stories, the article will unravel the cultural and religious differences in the adaptations of this tale type.

Introducing the Problem: Prostitution in Comparative Perspective

As it is for other topics, it is counterproductive to speak of a monolithic “Jewish” or “Christian” view of prostitution. Yet, differences can be perceived between the Jewish sages of late antiquity and their contemporary church fathers over the issue of prostitution and the figure of the prostitute. This is manifested most clearly in hagiography, and especially in stories that link prostitution and repentance (teshuvah), and which supposedly identify prostitution with sin. The Christian texts have been studied much more than the rabbinic stories of prostitution, which were mostly studied separately, and almost never from a literary perspective. Only four or five stories in rabbinic literature tie together prostitution and repentance, yet through their examination vis-à-vis the tale type, we can identify some of the dividing lines between Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity: namely, their relationship with sexuality, penance, sin, and subjectivity.

The very concept of prostitution may vary dramatically between ancient rabbinic and patristic literature and that of our own time. In rabbinic literature, the word for “prostitution” and the Hebrew root z- n-h cover a vast semantic field.Footnote 2 Zenut, “prostitution,” does not often refer to a professional or a stable identity. There is no doubt that both men and women who prostitute themselves exist in rabbinic literature, but mostly they do so only for a short time—out of necessity, confusion, or coercion.Footnote 3 The majority of the uses of the root z-n-h in rabbinic literature denote a large range of extranormative sexual practices that do not necessarily involve payment.Footnote 4

Moreover, the attitude of the rabbis toward the practice of having sex with professional prostitutes is decidedly complex. While rabbinic literature generally condemns fornication, it nonetheless condones the male use of prostitutes as long as these women are not bound by the laws of ‘arayot.Footnote 5 This starting point alone should seemingly establish the stories discussed below as a world apart from their famous contemporary Christian narratives. This is, however, not always the case.

The (Christian) Tale Type of the Repenting Prostitute: Setting the Stage

One of the methodological problems inherent to this study is how to draw a comparison between what seems to be a widespread, well-attested, and developed story line in one culture with a less common but quite similar narrative in a neighboring culture. While drawing a comparison between one specific tale and another specific tale may seem like a more justifiable treatment of the details of each text and the meaning their culture ascribes to them, it may indeed stand in the way of historical analysis instead of supporting it. The proverbial trees in the forest may obscure the unity of the forest as such. If one wishes, for example, to compare a specific Bollywood romantic comedy to Hollywood films of the genre, it would be futile to compare it to only the plot line of When Harry Met Sally, for example. In comparing one ancient tale from rabbinic literature to what is a widespread genre of tales in the Christian East in late antiquity, it is the category of tale type, borrowed from the study of folktales, that may be more useful.

The concept of tale type was initially used by Antti Aarne to refer to the abstractions of internationally recurring plots of folk narratives that he catalogued in his classic index, The Types of the Folktale.Footnote 6 A detailed definition of the concept was offered by János Honti much later than the index itself: “Honti proposed three different ways of considering a tale type as a viable unit of analysis. First, it consisted of a specific binding together of motifs; second, any one tale type could stand as a unique entity in contrast with other tale types, e.g., Cinderella is not the same story-plot as Little Red Riding Hood; and third, a tale type could be perceived as a kind of cookie-cutter Platonic form or model which manifested itself through multiple existence (such multiple instances being termed versions or variants).”Footnote 7

A tale type named “the repenting prostitute,” however, is not to be found in any of the editions of The Types of the Folktale.Footnote 8 This does not indicate that the type should not or does not exist. The absence of this type from Aarne and Thompson's classification is indeed consistent with one of the many criticisms leveled at the book: Thompson's (and Aarne's) avoidance of sexual content.Footnote 9 Despite this lacuna in the literature on folktales, below I will describe the Christian tale type of the repenting prostitute, and discuss one of its rabbinic variants as an ecotype of it.Footnote 10

While stories of prostitutes as agents of spiritual change have existed in the Near East as early as the third dynasty of Ur (ca. 2100 BCE),Footnote 11 and tales of prostitutes who managed to escape their fate by marriage to an important man circulated in classical Athens (Naira and Aspasia are paradigmatic), it is only with the rise of the ethos of “care of the self,” characteristic of late antiquity,Footnote 12 that the soul of the female prostitute became an object of interest, and the tale type as we know it today could have been formed.

A number of stories of repentant prostitutes appeared in monasteries of the Roman provinces of Palestine, Syria, and Egypt in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. These stories quickly spread to the whole of Christendom, some even becoming part of church liturgy.Footnote 13 These stories, which have prompted wide research interest, can be roughly divided into two groups, which can be considered two variants of the same tale type. The first comprises stories about women who were actresses or courtesans, who, after meeting a holy man, usually a bishop or monk, convert, repent for their sins, and become ascetics and nuns. This group includes Mary of Egypt, Pelagia, and Thaïs.Footnote 14 The second variant of the repentant prostitute tale type tells of women who grew up in the monastic circle and went astray. When their fate becomes known, a brave monk goes to the brothel, saves them, and they return to the bosom of the church; such are Maria the Niece of Abraham and Paësia.Footnote 15 There are, naturally, other cases, but these are the two models that became dominant in the Christian tradition. Both variants of the tale type reinforce a similar spiritual principle: anyone can find God and repent. These narratives had many qualities that contributed to their wide reception in monastic circles and beyond. They celebrated the monastery and the monk, the man whose spiritual power and pure soul brings salvation to both women and the world. They built on the foundation of shared patriarchal views that held women responsible for sex and seduction, and appealed to all audiences as they supplied erotic amusement devoid of guilt.Footnote 16

One defining attribute of this tale type is that the repenting prostitute's narrative is always framed by a male saint's life story. The male saint is the one who leads the harlot from sin to salvation and, in the process, learns something himself. Pelagia meets Nonnos, Thaïs meets Paphnutius, a nameless courtesan meets Abba Serapion, and Paësia meets Father John the Dwarf; Mary of Egypt receives a vision independently in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but her whole story is framed by that of Zossimsa’s. The story of Mary the Niece of Abraham, who sentenced herself to the brothel because she was seduced or raped, is a perfect example. Her uncle, who places her in a cell outside his own monk’s cell, realizes that she is gone only after a week of having vivid dreams of a serpent swallowing a dove. It takes him two more years to find his niece and rush to her rescue. To do so, he dresses up as a soldier and visits the brothel disguised as a client. He is very much committed to the role: “When they had rested and drunk a little, this amazing man began to fondle her; he got up and put his arms around her neck and stroked it with his lips.”Footnote 17 At this point, she smells “the sweet smell of asceticism coming from his body,” which reminds her of her own days as an ascetic.Footnote 18 The mixture of prostitution and monastic life fills her with horror and she bursts into tears. Despite this focus on her regret, the story ends with a eulogy not of Mary, but of Abraham.Footnote 19

Virginia Burrus distinguishes between androcentric and gynocentric texts, texts with a masculine versus a feminine perspective.Footnote 20 She shows how the concepts of virginity and celibacy serve in the androcentric narratives to enforce gender hierarchies by sexualizing and textualizing women's bodies. Gynocentric narratives, however, use the same concepts to release women from men's and society's control. Given that stories about prostitutes are a part of the same continuum Burrus discusses, it would be difficult to call any of these stories purely gynocentric. Yet, in many of these narratives, there is a competition between prostitute and monk over who is the protagonist, and it seems that, at times, and despite the authors’ efforts, the prostitute takes over as the heroine of the stories.

Another important aspect of the “repenting prostitute” tale type is that it places seduction at its center. Seduction may be a positive or a negative force. On the one hand, seduction is what enables the projection of desire and in its wake, evil, onto the woman and the whore, and away from the man. This displacement is supported by interpretations of the second creation story, which blames the fall of humankind completely on Eve.Footnote 21 Ephrem of Syria actually describes Eve as a whore and as Satan's collaborator.Footnote 22 The idea that all women are guilty of Eve's sin indeed manifests itself not only in early and later Christianity, but also in sayings in the name of some rabbis in late antiquity.Footnote 23 This doctrine was internalized to such an extent that when Melania visits the holy virgin Alexandra in the desert and asks her why she spent the last ten years buried alive, Alexandra answers: “There was a certain man who was infatuated with me, and so as not to seem to despise him or cause any ill will, I preferred to shut myself up in this tomb, rather than cause offense to anyone created in the image of God.”Footnote 24 There is no need for the woman to do anything for her to be seen as the agent of seduction. Her mere existence is sexual, and, therefore, sinful, or in Tertullian’s famous phrase—“the devil’s gateway.”Footnote 25 In this respect, all women are equal: “normative women,” young girls, ascetics, saints, and prostitutes.

And yet, the stories of harlots make subversive use of this misogynic convention. Even if a woman equals temptation, the power of temptation may still have positive uses. Prostitute and saint have something in common, Burrus argues―most importantly they are both masters of seduction and devotion. Abba Pambo, for instance, meets a prostitute and bemoans that “he is not as concerned to please God as she is to please wicked men.”Footnote 26 The prostitute, as one who is accustomed to satisfying others, has a better starting point when attempting to satisfy a new master, Christ. Furthermore, the harlot can more easily seduce God into grace by her faith.Footnote 27 Paradoxically, life as a prostitute trains her to be a woman of God. In this tale type, much like in our own time, passion is projected onto its object, be it a prostitute, or any other victim of sexual violence, from sexual harassment to rape.Footnote 28 This projection distances such desire from the self to such an extent that the subject is no longer conscious of himself as its source. The aggression towards the other is justified by the other’s imagined pleasure or imagined control.Footnote 29 In this respect at least, it is the androcentric perspective that governs these stories.

Finally, a third, distinct aspect of the tale type is that the prostitute's conversion leads her to a new ascetic life in which sexuality is forsaken altogether. Other characteristics of the tale type of the repentant prostitute are shared with other types of Christian conversion and repentance stories, such as reverence for the instant change of heart and conversion, a complete break with the impious past, and often, renunciation of wealth.Footnote 30 Contemporary rabbinic stories, naturally, do not correspond completely to the different variants of the Christian tale type.Footnote 31

At the Heart of Darkness, a Heart of Gold

The earliest story about a sage visiting a prostitute found in the rabbinic literature tells us of a figure who lived in the third century.Footnote 32 The following chart presents the earlier Palestinian version of the story, compared with the version that circulated in Jewish Babylon after the Christian tale type was already established.Footnote 33

At first sight, this story conforms to the classic eastern monastic tale type. It's a story about religious conversion and repentance in which a man of faith meets a fallen woman, an encounter that leads to her instant conversion, repentance, and the pious distribution of her tainted wealth. It also ends well for the man. But this is a biased depiction of the story. First, it is primarily a story about the repentance of a man, a student of the rabbis and possibly a rabbi himself. The prostitute's repentance is almost a byproduct of his repentance. Secondly, its aim is not necessarily to exemplify that repentance is always possible, but rather to show that each mitzvah (Jewish religious decree) is important.Footnote 41 Beyond that, visiting a prostitute does not, per se, constitute a transgression of any biblical or rabbinic precept. In the story itself the sexual encounter between the prostitute and the man is described by his rabbi as “illicit,” in contrast to postnuptial sex, which is considered “lawful.” It is not clear if what is illicit in the man's action is sleeping with a “single,” woman, a woman in the state of ritual impurity, or a gentile. In any case, the prostitute herself does not represent evil in the story. The monastic equation woman = whore = temptation = sin does not manifest itself here. Last but not least, this story likely predates some of the aforementioned Christian narratives.Footnote 42

The protagonist of the story is not exactly a saint, but neither is he a sinner. After the visit, neither he nor the prostitute become saints. The man is presented as “one man,” and only as the story unfolds do we learn that he is a member of the inner rabbinic circle, and most likely a bachelor.Footnote 43 The structure of desire in this story is very clear―it is men's desire, not women's, that is depicted as a cause of trouble. Our man is filled with a faceless desire, one triggered by the mere rumor of the existence of a prostitute. In the beginning of the story, we do not know anything about her or her wiles, aside from the enormous sum he pays for the pleasure of her company. She appears in the story because it is in her home that this dweller of the rabbinic house of study (beit midrash) discovers the profound meaning behind the mitzvah of wearing fringes (tzitzit) and the hypocrisy that governs his own life. The fringes fulfill their biblical destiny—to stop the Israelites from following the lust of their own hearts and eyes for fornication (Numbers 15, 39). The scene that takes place in reaction to the man being slapped by his tzitzitiyot, metaphorically or nor, is quite dramatic: he himself “slips off” (nishmat), a term that might indicate a fall from the bed, but also the loss of an erection. The prostitute takes offense. She makes him take an oath by the body of Rome (as we would be expecting from her)Footnote 44 that he will tell her the reason for his sudden loss of interest. He takes the oath (as is proper for him) by the temple service that she is the most beautiful woman in the world. Their interaction becomes emotional and intimate. It is in this setting he also reveals to her his sudden realization that the Lord might punish him for what he was about to do to her. Only in her presence, not when he had paid the enormous sum for her future services, nor when he planned his long-distance journey, nor when he waited for the time set by her, did he realize that what he is about to do is morally reprehensible.Footnote 45 I find it hard to accept that it is the power of the man’s biblical exegesis that excited the prostitute to such an extent that she demanded his address, or, as Alon Goshen-Gottstein argues, that she realizes that there exists greater monetary profit to be made in a life adherent to the laws of the Torah.Footnote 46

The story might also be read, for a moment, from a gynocentric point of view, from the prostitute's perspective, and using the scholar’s empathy as a key to interpretation. What peeks from behind the tzitzit is not only the face of God but also recognition of the existence of the woman’s soul and of her subjectivity. The student is able, even if just for a moment, to see the evil of objectifying and commodifying women. When they are both on the ground, they are but a man and a woman, not characters playing the role of the lustful man and the magnificent whore. He compassionately assures her that there is nothing wrong with her. When the prostitute hears the word of God through the mouth of the pupil, she interprets it as an acknowledgment that frequenting a prostitute is wrong, not because it is a “sin” in a religious system she is unfamiliar with, but as an acknowledgment of her suffering. A religion and a man that can see her as a human being and not as an object prompt the prostitute to look for a new path, a new life. From the prostitute's perspective, it is the moral deficiency in the commodification of women, of her, that suddenly becomes evident to the man, and is a precept set by his God.

Mira Balberg sees the fall to the ground as the moment in which the power relations between sage and prostitute are reversed; from that moment on in the story, the man has the upper hand.Footnote 47 I believe the prostitute remains the central and more complex figure throughout the story. Her experience here actually empowers her. Not only is she able to change her own world, but also, after the search is over, the man’s world. The moment after sexual failure and spiritual and humane triumph marks a spatial reversal—the prostitute will travel the same route the student did in order to see him at his metaphoric home―the house of study.Footnote 48

The prostitute's behavior after the encounter with the rabbi is quite peculiar if we read the story from an androcentric point of view. It is unclear what the distribution of her wealth is supposed to symbolize. The way she divides her capital into three is marked by a verb with a slightly critical nuance: “wasted” (bizbezah).Footnote 49 She gives a third to the kingdom, which hardly seems a good cause, she keeps a third for herself, and only a third goes to the poor, as opposed to the dramatic renunciation of wealth of the Christian converts of the fourth century as advertised by Augustine.Footnote 50 The reason for her voyage is unclear at first. But based on the conventions established by the Christian “repenting prostitute” tale type, a medieval or modern reader would assume that she wished to repent for her sexual sins.

Reading the story again from the woman's perspective and from a Jewish perspective on penance, the details make more sense. If the wrongdoing of the man lay in his relating to (a foreign) woman in a problematic way, her wrongdoing is linked to her relationship to money, sexuality, and God.Footnote 51 Her repentance should rectify all of those broken or twisted relationships.Footnote 52 The change in her attitude towards money is reflected in the way she splits it, paralleling the use of money by the righteous, which shows equal respect to self, state, and God.Footnote 53 She recognizes the Jewish God, and seeks to convert. Her sexuality becomes no longer a commodity, but a part of her, which will find its proper place in marriage. It is not by abandoning sexuality altogether, just like it is not through the total renunciation of wealth, that she must repent, but by properly channeling that which was once her weakness. The path to repentance from commodifying sexuality is, therefore, not found in abstinence, since the problem is not sex itself. Her sexuality must now be part of a marriage, a Jewish marriage, sanctioned by God.

The insightful Rabbi Ḥiyya sees the connection between her conversion and marriage. His immediate response to her expressed wish to convert is to assume that she wants to marry. In later rabbinic literature, proselytes are often tested, which is meant to confirm that one wishes to convert out of pure faith and not for any worldly gain.Footnote 54 Our story is confusing: the woman's conversion is suspected as only a means to an end (marriage), but nevertheless it is approved by Rabbi Ḥiyya and considered valid. Why? It is because he recognizes that she had already repented and that her marriage to his pupil is a part of her spiritual process as much as her conversion to Judaism. When she shows him the note, we must assume she also tells him her story.Footnote 55

The last scene of the story offers a happy ending with a bitter twist. Since we do not know much about what happens to the pupil after he leaves the prostitute's house, the story must generate for us a sort of talion principle that will govern his life too. Just as the prostitute did not choose her client, so too did the student not choose his wife. Rabbi Ḥiyya’s action holds a thin irony and is woven, much like the woman's penance, measure for measure. I agree with Ze'ev Harvey that this is a manifestation of the comic topos where “all ends well” for the hero without his knowledge or involvement.Footnote 56 However, there is also a troubling side to this resolution. Even if “all” is labeled good, it undermines the pupil as an active subject and agent: someone else's consciousness and will are in action, not his.

The expression “go and enjoy your acquisition”Footnote 57 adds a new layer of irony that has eluded most readers of this narrative.Footnote 58 This ritual formula, uttered by a beit din, Jewish court, marks the rejection of a husband’s claim that he was deceived and found his wife not to be a virgin on their wedding night.Footnote 59 The irony in the use of this expression when the bride is a harlot is self-explanatory. This ancient Jewish tale exemplifies the importance of performing all the mitzvot and indeed, how a person may find revelation in the most unexpected of places. It is a story of both a man’s redemption and a woman’s.

The Great Whore of Babylon: The Talmud Meets Christianity

The Babylonian Talmud, reworking the story after the advent of the Christian model, changes only a few crucial sentences that may indicate awareness of Christian stories,Footnote 60 but undermines some core aspects of the Christian genre, mainly the feminine seduction, the break between the old life of sin and the new life of piety, and the ambiguity about the identity of the story's true hero.

There are four important changes in the Babylonian variant of the story: it further eroticizes the prostitute; indicates that the sum the pupil paid was outstanding; further emphasizes the element of seduction; and Rabbi Ḥiyya refers to the prostitute as “the one who got what she bargained for” (and may go and enjoy her acquisition) and the scholar as the one who is rewarded.

Those minor changes draw the story nearer to the Christian model of the repentant prostitute. First, the eroticization element creates a rivalry between holy and erotic, one which we have learned to identify as more typical of early Christianity than of Judaism.Footnote 61 This dichotomy reaches a high point with the description of the sage and the prostitute sitting naked opposite each other, jumping from bed to bed: “When he came in she prepared for him seven beds, six of silver and one of gold; and between one bed and the other there were steps of silver, but the last were of gold. She then went up to the top bed and lay down upon it naked. He too went up after her in his desire to sit naked with her.” The repetition of the Hebrew letters dalet and zayin (d, z) seven times within this sentence brings back the discussion from the verbal to the physical, as it resonates with the Hebrew for prostitute: zonah.Footnote 62 The prostitute becomes much more seductive, as she creates an ascending ladder of pleasure and splendor in the beds, a crescendo implying a move towards a sublime sexual union.Footnote 63

Sexual obsession and excess desire are also highlighted, but those are clearly the man's. The Babylonian version of our tale seems to reveal that the pupil was willing to pay much more for the woman’s hire than anyone else. We learn this from the way his arrival is announced: “the man who sent you 400 golden coins.”Footnote 64 If the maid identified the man before her lady by the sum of money he paid, we must assume it was extraordinary. This appears contrary to Roman custom; it was he, not she, who named the exceptional sum of money, thus reflecting the depth of his desire. The Sifre version, on the other hand, merely has the trivial “the man you set a time for has come.”

Akin to the Christian stories, the encounter with the “saint” (the scholar), and hearing “the Word” (an exposition of Scripture), are what lead to the prostitute’s repentance. But here, too, a small yet significant variance shows that awareness of the tale type does not necessarily entail adherence to its values. When the prostitute distributes her wealth, she keeps not only funds sufficient for herself but also a “dowry”—linen and beddings. “The bed clothes, however, she retained,” as the story has it. Unlike the repentant Christian prostitutes, she does not leave her old life completely behind her. The same linen that served her as a prostitute will now cover her marriage bed. If the Christian harlot brings from her old life seduction skills she now aims towards God, the Jewish one continues to seduce men, albeit only one.Footnote 65

The marriage scene, which carried a thin irony in the Sifre version, in the Bavli becomes the ground on which the question of the protagonist is settled. Rabbi Ḥiyya functions as the father of the bridegroom, who negotiates the marriage of his metaphorical son in his absence, gives him away in marriage, and sanctions the union with the famous “go and enjoy your acquisition,” which in this version of the story is addressed to the woman. The former prostitute is a suitable match for the formerly sexually obsessed scholar, who takes the role of the bride here, and a bride against whom no virginity claim can be brought―firstly, because he is a man, and secondly, because we know of his sexual history. In his statement, Rabbi Ḥiyya ritually and ironically restores the scholar’s virginity, giving the woman the place of the man in the Jewish wedding ritual. It is the whore who makes an acquisition, not the other way around. When Rabbi Ḥiyya treats her as “the man” in a Jewish marriage and his pupil as the woman, he becomes no less a protagonist in the story than the prostitute and the pupil. In fact, as the one who endows meaning on the actions of both the man and the woman, he becomes the saint to whom the story relates.

The scholar's newly found former-prostitute wife is nevertheless presented in the story as his this-worldly reward granted for keeping the law of tzitzit. It is also suggested that he will be rewarded in the world to come, not for repenting, nor for bringing his future wife to repentance, but for keeping the precept of the fringes.Footnote 66 There is still another lesson to be learned here—that is, if one adheres to all laws of the Torah, however insignificant they may seem, even the wildest fantasies may be transformed into legitimate acts. The pupil gets to fulfill his desire for the glorious woman for the rest of his life.

Reading Rabbis in a Christian Matrix?

The rabbinic and patristic stories that bind together repentance and prostitution, despite their formal and thematic similarities, differ in their view of practical and spiritual ideals of repentance, sex, and desire, and in the way they play with gender roles. The figure of the repentant harlot, which in Christianity represents the near-universal potential for salvation, does not represent exactly the same principle in the rabbinic story. The focus of the story changes further with a multiplicity of problems and ideals: for one, this variant of the tale type is a story about the importance of wearing fringes. Moreover, Rabbi Ḥiyya suspects that matrimonial self-interest is at the heart the harlot’s wish to convert.

The road to salvation is also very different, as it depends on the question of what sin one is repenting from. The rabbinic story redeems its characters through normalizing and “correcting” inappropriate relations: to women/men, to sex, to money, to God. Conversion and matrimony are the licit, sanctioned variants of desire and ecstasy. The woman's division of her money and the man's acknowledgment of her as an agent, a sentient human being, are remedies for the commodification of sexuality by both of them. In the monastic tales, on the other hand, it is not the reworking of old pattern of using one's body and mind that takes central stage but a different ideal: that of the total break from the past, self-punishment, and the avoidance of temptation. If the body is what led the woman to sin, the road to salvation must be to relinquish it: either by death or ascesis, a form of “death in life.” Redemption from a state of sexual sin is found in abstinence, not marriage.

The different paths to salvation lean on a different conceptualization of both sex and the feminine. Since in rabbinic Judaism there is nothing in sexuality or in sex itself that is sinful and requires repentance,Footnote 67 it makes sense that the repentant prostitute does not relinquish sex, or her own sex. Repentance is embodied as a return to the patriarchic order in its Jewish variant: “For R. Ḥiyya taught: A wife [should be taken] mainly for the sake of her beauty; mainly for the sake of children.”Footnote 68 Women give Jewish men visual and sexual pleasure, and heirs. As long as they stick to the roles ascribed to them, there's nothing innately wrong with their womanhood or their sexuality. The prostitute is only circumstantially linked to sin and to the metaphorical realm of Satan, not immanently; her sexuality only incarnates the fall when she is out of the normative order. Should she choose to leave her profession, she may become someone’s wife, and a “good” woman. Women's marital sex and femininity are generally not regarded as closer to Satan or sin.

The fate of the monastic repentant whores is based on a different world view, which becomes most evident in the stories of Pelagia and Mary of Egypt, who live as men in the desert after their conversion and repentance. The cross-dressing element, the motif of the repentant whore living in the desert as a “female man of God,” ironically reinforces the idea that spirituality and purity can only exist in the masculine body. The prostitute seems to repent not for sin or excessive sexuality, but for being a woman. It seems that not only harlots’ bodies, but all women's bodies are tainted by Eve’s sin, and that only by transcending the female body can a woman find a spiritual path.

This is linked also to the different way the monastic tales and the rabbinic tales think about desire, or who they ascribe it to. The rabbinic story does not conflate the object and subject of desire. It focuses on the man's excessive desire. The monastic stories, however, blame the prostitute for being lustful and seductive while the desires of the men who sleep with her are left unspoken. They are presented almost as unintentional derivatives of the woman's desire.

Monastic literature, and even more so rabbinic literature, does not very often represent women as model figures, as religious subjects, or as spiritual climbers. In this sense, the tale type does represent an innovation, although both the tale type and its rabbinic variant are hardly beacons of feminism. While the woman in the rabbinic story is exonerated from becoming evil incarnate, as the passion is not all hers, at the same time, she cannot transcend traditional gender roles in the way the Christian prostitute-turned-ascetic can.Footnote 69 Her redemption depends on the good will of two men: the rabbi who accepts her as a convert, and the man who accepts her as a wife. A woman outside male patronage is no less a break to the rabbinic system than a woman of God in the monastic one. The monastic and ascetic life offer the repentant whores in the monastic tales a path to personal growth, spiritual development, and even leadership. However, it robs them of their femininity, their sexuality, and often their lives. Paësia dies the night of her repentance, and the miracle of Pelaguis/a and Mary, the fact that they are indeed women of God, is eventually revealed only as they face death.

Reading both the Christian and the Jewish tales from the harlots’ matrix reveals they are not an all-too-happy set of tales. However, when Nonnos can see in Pelagia's beauty a parable, and in her spirit, a spark of what he lacks; when our student makes the effort not to hurt a woman's feelings, and shares his spiritual realization with her; when Abraham feels the horror of his niece Mary's despair, something happens in the world. We learn how a moment of human intimacy, of intersubjectivity and of rethinking the box may lead to a short, yet definitive glimpse at the face of God.

But what happens when the client and not the prostitute repents? Or if a man plays the role of the prostitute? What happens in stories that parallel the other variants of the Christian tale type: the fallen Christian woman? I hope I might answer these questions somewhere else.

Footnotes

I thank the Max and Bella Guggenheim Fund for the Study of Jewish Ethics, the Lafer Centre for Women and Gender Studies at the Hebrew University, the Center for the Study of Relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims at the Open University, Israel, and the Israel Institute for supporting this research.

References

1. I use the term here as used by folklorists, and borrowed from Aarne, Antti and Thompson, Stith, The Types of the Folktale (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961)Google Scholar. On later explanations of the term, its function, and meaning: Uther, Hans-Jörg, “Tale Type,” in Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales, vol. 3 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008)Google Scholar. On the usefulness of folk narrative research in the study of ancient texts, and specifically of ancient rabbinic literature and in comparative religion, see Hasan-Rokem, Galit, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, Hasan-Rokem, , Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar, and her many articles on the subject, of which “The Snake at the Wedding: A Semiotic Reconsideration of the Comparative Method of Folk Narrative Research,” ARV - Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore 43 (1987): 73–87Google Scholar, explains the difference between motif, theme, and tale type and their relationship to the social realm. See also Ben-Amos, Dan, “Jewish Folklore Studies,” Modern Judaism 11, no. 1 (1991): 22–26Google Scholar.

2. There are several meanings to the root. It is versatile already in the Hebrew Bible. See Riegner, Irene, The Vanishing Hebrew Harlot: The Adventures of the Hebrew Stem ZNH (New York: Peter Lang, 2009)Google Scholar. Bird, Phyllis, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, Women and Gender in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997), 219–36Google Scholar, and the literature mentioned there.

3. Forced prostitution was one of the ways the Romans punished the rebelling Jews. This is evident in Eikha Rabbah, E ikha, par. 1:45 to Lamentations 1:17 (ed. Buber, 81–82); E ikha, par. 4:18 to Lamentations 4:15 (ed. Buber, 150–51; ed. Vilnius 29a); B. Avodah Zarah 17b; and B. Gittin 58b. For examples of prostitution both as a profession and as a short-term practice see Y. Taʿanit 1:4 (5b). On prostituting unknowingly see Bereshit Rabbah, Bereshit, par. 18:24 to Genesis 2:24 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1:166) and its parallels.

4. In tannaitic literature we find fifty-eight occurrences of the word zonah, of which only fourteen refer to an actual person: twelve to Rahab, one to the prostitutes that King Solomon judges, and one to an unnamed prostitute who lived in the rabbis’ time. The other forty-four use the root z-n-h or the word zonah in discussion of different sexual laws and norms and their hypothetical transgression. Simcha Fishbane makes the same point about the Babylonian Talmud, but this is true about the entire rabbinic corpus, as Tal Ilan argues. Fishbane, Simcha, “Go and Enjoy Your Acquisition: The Prostitute in the Babylonian Talmud,” Approaches to Ancient Judaism 13 (1999): 71Google Scholar. Ilan, Tal, Jewish Women in Graeco-Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 115–214Google Scholar. Michael Satlow refers to the term beʿilat zenut as a rabbinic term for nonmarital intercourse or nonprocreative intercourse. This shows, once more, that the word zenut does not refer to paid sex or to a profession in rabbinic literature. Satlow, Michael, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1995), 121–26Google Scholar. Similar, but not identical problems are shared by the legal and hagiographical Christian texts, especially as words such as the Latin meretrix refer to both professional prostitutes and to those whose sexual morals are questionable. See Karras, Ruth Mazo, “Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 1, no. 1 (1990): 5Google Scholar.

5. The fundamental laws of ‘arayot, forbidden sexual relationships described in the Bible and in rabbinic literature, can be found in Leviticus 18. Visiting prostitutes is not forbidden anywhere in the Bible or in early rabbinic literature, but according to Deuteronomy 23:18, an Israelite man or woman should not prostitute themselves. Moreover, according to rabbinic law, a father must not prostitute his daughter (B. Sanhedrin 76a).  See also the debate between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai in B. Gittin 81b on the intentions and practices of the Jewish male in nonmarital/marital sex.

The practice of visiting prostitutes and “marriage for one night” is not uncommon in the Talmud. The most famous passage is this context is found in B. Yoma 18b and in B. Yevamot 37a–b, “Whenever Rab came to Darshis, he would announce: ‘Who would be my wife for a single day?’ Whenever R. Naḥman would come to Shekunzib he would have it announced: ‘Who will be my wife for a single day?’” If two of the most distinguished rabbis of Babylon did not shy away from the practice, we must assume it was not considered a serious sin. See also Elman, Yaakov, “Marriage and Marital Property in Rabbinic and Sasanian Law,” in Rabbinic Law in Its Roman and Near Eastern Context, ed. Hezser, Catherine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 247–48Google Scholar, where he makes the point that the ethical aspect of such “marriage” is not even briefly discussed. Others who wrote on the custom of marriage for one night also wondered why there are discussions only of technical but not of moral aspects of the phenomenon. See Gafni, Isaiah, “The Institution of Jewish Marriage in Rabbinic Times,” in The Jewish Family: Metaphor and Memory, ed. Kraemer, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13–30Google Scholar; Gafni, , Yehude Bavel bi-tekufat ha-talmud: Ḥayye ha-ḥevrah ve-ha-ruaḥ (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1990), 268–73Google Scholar; Calderon, Ruth, Ha-shuk, ha-bayit, ha-lev (Tel Aviv: Keter, 2001), 65–72Google Scholar; Herr, Moshe David, “Ha-nissu'in mi-beḥinah soẓiyo-’ekonomit lefi ha-halakhah,” in Mishpeḥot bet Yisra'el: Ha-mishpaḥah bi-tefisat ha-yahadut (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, 1984), 37–46Google Scholar. The use of marriage for one night to legitimize prostitution also stands at the heart of a split between the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam, and in various Karaite and Jewish discussions of the practice. See Friedman, Mordechai A., “Ha-halakhah ke-ʿedut le-ḥayye ha-min 'eẓel ha-yehudim she-be-’arẓot ha-’Islam be-yeme ha-benayim,” Pe'amim 45 (1990): 99–104Google Scholar. I thank Zvi Stampfer for referring me to this important paper.

6. Aarne and Thompson, Types of the Folktale.

7. Dundes, Alan, “The Motif-Index and the Tale Type Index: A Critique,” Journal of Folklore Research 34, no. 3 (1997): 195Google Scholar. Dundes acknowledged Honti's definition as the clearest. Honti, János, “Marchenmorphologie und Marchentypologie,” Folk-Liv 3 (1939): 307–18Google Scholar.

8. Including the latest, Uther, Hans-Jörg, The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography; Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2004)Google Scholar.

9. Dundes, “Motif,” 198.

10. The concept of ecotype was formulated by Carl von Sydow, Wilhelm, “Geography and Folk-Tale Oicotypes,” Béaloideas 4 (1934): 344–55Google Scholar; Sydow, von, Selected Papers on Folklore (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1948), 44–59Google Scholar, and further developed by Honko, Lauri, “Four Forms of Adaptation to Tradition,” Studia Fennica 26 (1981): 19–33Google Scholar. It became an important analytical concept not only in folklore scholarship; see Hasan-Rokem, Galit, “Ökotyp,” Encyclopädie des Märchens (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000)Google Scholar; Hasan-Rokem, , “Leviticus Rabbah 16, 1: ‘Odysseus and the Sirens’ in the Beit Leontis Mosaic from Beit She'an,” in Talmuda De-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine, ed. Fine, Steven and Koller, Aaron (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 159–89, esp. 183Google Scholar.

11. Namely in the tale of Shamḥat in tablet one of the Gilgamesh epos.

12. Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 138–40Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, “About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self,” in Michel Foucault: Religion and Culture, ed. Carrette, Jeremy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 158–81Google Scholar; Bowersock, Glen, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 42–47Google Scholar.

13. The eastern church still celebrates the day of Saint Mary of Egypt by reading her story; see Ward, Benedicta, Harlots of the Desert (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1987), 26Google Scholar. See also Brock, Sebastian and Harvey, Susan A., Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 40–41Google Scholar; Coon, Linda, Sacred Fiction: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 84Google Scholar; Burrus, Virginia, The Sex Lives of the Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 147–59Google Scholar.

14. Cloke refers to this model: Cloke, Gillian, This Female Man of God (London: Routledge, 1995), 199–200Google Scholar.

15. Most such stories were collected and translated by Ward, Harlots.

16. Burrus, Sex Lives, 128–29.

17. Ephrem, Life of Marian the Harlot, 7, as translated by Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 96. Brock and Harvey, however, translate the Syriac as if it is she who kisses him. Brock and Harvey, Holy Women, 33.

18. Ward, Harlots, 97.

19. Ibid., 100

20. Burrus, Virginia, “Word and Flesh: The Bodies and Sexuality of Ascetic Women in Christian Antiquity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10, no. 1 (1994): 45Google Scholar.  These terms enable her to evade the question of whether the authors of the texts were men or women.

21. For a survey of Jewish Hellenistic and rabbinic views of primal sin in comparison to Augustine and Paul see Cohen, Samuel S., Essays in Jewish Theology (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1987), 219–72Google Scholar.

22. Ephrem, De ecclesia 47.3.2; 11.10.1 (CSCO 199: 117, 32). More on Ephrem and Eve and the fall in Kronholm, Tryggve, Motifs from Genesis 1–11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (Uppsala: GWK Gleerup, 1978), 81–84, 94–106Google Scholar. A different, somewhat apologetic interpretation of Ephrem's view of Eve and the fall can be found in Botha, P. J., “Original Sin and Sexism: St. Ephrem's Attitude towards Eve,” Studia Patristica 33 (1997): 483–89Google Scholar.

23. Tertullian, De cultu feminarum 1.1 (ANF 4:25); De patientia 5 (ANF 3:1585–86); Origen, Leviticum homiliae 12.4; 8.3 (Barkley 223–24; 156); Clement, Paedagogus 2.2 (ANF 2:246). Even Augustine is a proponent of this doctrine: Augustine, De civitate Dei 13.14 (NANP1 2:581), but the origin of this tradition is within Judaism: David Flusser. “Motivim mi-parashat beri'at ha-ʿolam be-gilgulam ha-gashmi ba-nazrut,” Maḥanayim 74 (1963). Ilana Pardes summarizes feminist readings of the creation story and the motif of Eve's guilt in Countertraditions in the Bible, a Feminist Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 13–38.

24. Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 5 (ACW 34:36–37). A very similar text is found in B. Sotah 21b, where we find a virgin praying that man would not sin because of her. However, the talmudic text is ambivalent about this woman and her actions.

25. Tertullian, De cultu 1.1.

26. Ward, Benedicta, ed., The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, rev. ed. (London: Penguin Classics, 1983), 196Google Scholar; PG 65, col. 369.

27. Burrus, Sex Lives, 158–59.

28. Questions about what the victim of harassment or rape wore, what she was doing alone on the street late at night, or why she invited a stranger into her home (an invitation that supposedly implies consent to sex) are all too familiar. Women's friendliness and “feminine” dress were used to justify countless cases of sexual harassment and violence that have come before the courts in the United States and Europe, as shows, Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (London: Vintage Books, 1991), 37–48Google Scholar.

29. The outstanding manifestations of this perspective include the assumptions that prostitutes choose their profession because they are “nymphomaniacs” or “frigid,” enjoy the job and have found an “easy” way to use foolish men. The women are the ones who supposedly set the rules, name the price, and decide on the “allowed” sexual acts. Such perceptions can be found even in Simone de Beauvoir's work. She sees these rules as a coping mechanism, which enables the high-class prostitute to mediate between her work at night and her life during the day. See de Beauvoir, Simon, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 567–86Google Scholar; Roberts, Nickie, Whores in History: Prostitution in Western Society (London: Grafton, 1993), 300–302Google Scholar.

30. Brown, Peter, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Brown, , Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (London: Hanover, 2002)Google Scholar.

31. Four traditions or variants on the theme of prostitution and repentance can be found in rabbinic literature. Three can be classified as variants of the first Christian tale type (B. Avodah Zarah 17a, B. Bava Meẓiʿa 85a, and the story discussed here). The second type, the rescue of a fallen woman of the elite may find its parallel in B. Avodah Zarah 18a–b, and in B. Gittin 58a. Here, I shall confine myself to the discussion of the first example, and I hope to discuss the other stories elsewhere.

32. The dating is based on the fact that he was a student of Rabbi Ḥiyya, who belongs to the last generation of Tannaim and taught the sages of the first generation of the Amoraim.

33. On the story discussed here see Berkowitz, Eliezer, “The Ethics of Sex,” Tchelet 11 (2002): 166–92Google Scholar; Berkowitz, , Crisis and Faith (New York: Sanhedrin, 1976), 64–70Google Scholar; Harvey, Ze'ev, “The Pupil, the Harlot and the Fringe Benefits,” Prooftexts 6 (1986): 259–64Google Scholar; Goshen-Gottstein, Alon, “The Fringes, the Prostitute and the Homiletical Story,” Jerusalem Studies in Rabbinic Literature 1 (1990): 45–58Google Scholar. Kosman, Admiel, Maseḥet nashim (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007), 141–64Google Scholar; Fishbane, “Go and Enjoy Your Acquisition,” 71–90; Hevron, Ido, “A Prostitute and a Robber in the Study House,” Tchelet 31 (2008): 73–89Google Scholar; Balberg, Mira, “Between Heterotopia and Utopia: Two Rabbinic Narratives of Journeys to Prostitutes,” Meḥkare Yerushalyim be-sifrut ‘ivrit 22 (2008): 191–214Google Scholar; Kahana, Menachem, Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2015), 4:851–61Google Scholar.

34. Sifre Bamidbar, Shalaḥ, pis. 115 to Numbers 15:41 (ed. Kahana, 1: יט-כ)

35. I follow the printed edition as there are no major variants in the manuscript tradition of this page. In fact, variances occur mostly regarding the identity of the person enjoying the acquisition.  In MS Munich 95, the man is clearly the subject and the woman the object, MS Vatican Ebr. 120–121 uses an intermediate version in which Rabbi Ḥiyya tells the woman (specifically, 'amar lah) “go” (in the masculine form of the verb, leḥ) and enjoy (in the feminine form of the verb, zeḥi) your acquisition. Other variants will be addressed in footnotes when appropriate.

36. Deuteronomy 22:12 says “You shall make tassels on the four corners of the cloak with which you cover yourself.” See also Numbers 15:38, “Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner.”

37. All MSS have golden coins and not denars here.

38. This sentence is either wholly or partially missing in most of the manuscripts of the Sifre, and is added based on MS Berlin-Tübingen, OR. 4 1594 33. See Kahana, Menahem, to, introduction Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2011)Google Scholar, xx.

39. The MSS have here an oath identical to that which appears in the Sifre―“By the Temple Service.”

40. Only in MS Munich 95 is there an ambiguity regarding the feminine form seḥara, which could refer either to the woman or to the commandment (which takes the feminine form in Hebrew).

41. In fact, as Alon Goshen-Gottstein shows, the question concerns not the relative importance of mitzvot, but the financial loss involved in adhering to them. Wearing fringes is not very costly, and is therefore referred to here as miẓvah kalah, i.e., that which is easy to pay for, but not necessarily unimportant. Goshen-Gottstein, “Fringes,” 51.

42. The traditional dating of Sifre Numbers is circa 300 CE. See Kahana, Menahem, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages, vol. 2, ed. Safrai, Shmuel (Assen: Fortress, 2007), 3–105Google Scholar.

43. Bigamy was forbidden in Rome, of which the Jews became citizens after the year 212. Prominent rabbis of the third century like Rabbi Ami also thought bigamy was forbidden. See Elman, Yaakov, “Babylonian Echoes in a Late Rabbinic Legend,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Society 4 (1972): 15Google Scholar.

44. Some read the text as an oath in the name of Isis or some other love goddess. See Lieberman, Saul, Yevanit ve-yavanut be-’Ereẓ Yisra'el (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1962), 108Google Scholar.

45. Ze'ev Harvey, “Pupil,” 262. This view of the man's realization is more convincing than Goshen-Gottstein's assessment of the character's recognition of worldly rewards, which argues that sinning is more expensive (literally) than observance; Goshen-Gottstein, “Fringes,” 51.

46. Or we can assume with Goshen-Gottstein that all the woman is interested in is money, that is, even she realizes that sin does not pay and that real money lies in observance (“Fringes,” 51).

47. Balberg, “Between Heterotopia,” 191–214.

48. Visotzky has lately suggested that this story should be read as an allegory for the marriage between Judaism and Hellenism. Visotzky, Burton, Aphrodite and the Rabbis: How the Jews Adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism as We Know It (New York: St. Martin's, 2016), 127–30Google Scholar. He also mentions that most rabbinical students he taught thought the tale was fictional because of the stupidity displayed by the man who gave her his true contact details. So much for his repentance, then.

49. This is not only the modern sense of the word in Hebrew but also in rabbinic literature. See for example T. Ketubbot 10:4, T. Pe'ah 2:10 and many other places. It is connected with renunciation of wealth by a convert also in the story Monobaz (alt. Monbaz/Monobazos), King of Adiabene in Y. Pe'ah 1:1 (3a). The ambivalence embedded in the use of the verb reflects the gap between the convert's new and old worlds. On the charity of the converted royal house of Adiabene see also Gray, Alyssa, “Redemptive Almsgiving and the Rabbis of Late Antiquity,” JSQ 18 (2011): 144–84Google Scholar; Gardner, Greg E., “Competitive Giving in the Third Century CE: Rabbinic Approaches to Greco-Roman Civic Benefaction,” in Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians and the Greco-Roman World, ed. DesRosiers, Nathaniel et al. (Copenhagen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 81–92Google Scholar; Brown, Peter, “Treasure in Heaven,” Lapham's Quarterly 8, no. 3 (2015)Google Scholar, http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/philanthropy/treasure-heaven.

50. On almsgiving and renunciation of wealth of Christian converts see above, and also Brown, Peter, The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

51. Clearly not being born Jewish does not constitute a sin, but in the codes of the Talmud it is better to be a Jew and to follow the laws of God.

52. Moshe Beer commented on a sort of measure-for-measure principle in the Jewish penance narratives contemporary or slightly later than our story. “On Penance and Penitents in the Literature of Ḥazal,” Zion 46, no. 3 (1981): 169, 172, 180–81Google Scholar. Facing the same challenge but making a better choice symbolizes the truthfulness of the penitent's penance.

53. As Balberg, “Between Heterotopia,” 203, noticed, the distribution of wealth in three parts appears in the story of Simon Stylites, but there, it is not Simon, but a righteous farmer, who parts with his daily wages in such way―with a third he pays his taxes, a third he gives as alms, and a third he keeps for himself.

54. Especially in the rather late tractate Gerim 1:3: “Anyone who converts on account of a woman, on account of love, or on account of fear is not a convert.” And likewise, in Y. Kiddushin 4:1 (32a), “Anyone who converts on account of love, and a man on account of a woman, and a woman on account of a man … they are not accepted.” In B. Yevamot 24b, the same question is raised again, and an ongoing discontent with conversion for “love” is expressed. Shaye Cohen expresses dissatisfaction with both the acceptance of this convert for the sake of matrimony and the lack of any instruction on Judaism offered to her by Rabbi Ḥiyya. Both stand in opposition to the standards for conversion set by the Babylonian Talmud. Cohen, Shaye J. D., The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 164–65Google Scholar. However, in both Talmudim we find a “halakhah” according to Rav that those who convert on account of love should be accepted. Since Rav was the nephew of Rabbi Ḥiyya, this halakhah may be later than our story. On reading later Babylonian practices of conversion back into Palestinian sources, see Lavee, Moshe, “The ‘Tractate’ of Conversion—BT Yeb. 46–48 and the Evolution of Conversion Procedure,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 4, no. 2 (2010): 169–213Google Scholar.

55. As touching and beautiful as Berkowitz's description of the series of “silent agreements” is, it is hard to believe that all the abundance of meaning he finds in the story was intended by the narrator, who, most likely, found no need to repeat information already given to the listener/reader. Berkowitz, Crisis, 68–69.

56. Harvey, “Pupil,” 261.

57. On the ambivalence of the subject of this sentence see Kahana, Sifre, 4:857.

58. Harvey, “Pupil,” 263.

59. B. Ketubbot 10a.

60. While clearly we do not possess hard evidence for the familiarity of the composer(s) of the talmudic tale with the specific aforementioned Christian tales, it is also hard to believe that a tale type that took the East by storm stopped at the gates of the study house. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal argues that the author(s) of the story of Ben Dordia (B. Avodah Zarah 17a), which also ties prostitution and repentance, was familiar with at least some of the stories I named, an argument she bases on the resemblance between the model of repentance found in his story and that found in the Christian tales. Siegal, Michal Bar-Asher, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 171Google Scholar. I do not see why B. Menaḥot should be ignorant of what B. Avodah Zarah knows. For the conclusion I wish to draw, however, there is no need to resolve this question.

61. Boyarin, Daniel, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

62. The Hebrew phoneme z is normally represented in Aramaic as d. While this is a Hebrew text, the oral natural of the language represented in the Talmud, and the constant state of diglossia within the rabbinic circle make the two sounds very close. On the importance of alliteration in literature and on its use in Aggadah specifically see Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life, 22–25. She builds a new layer on top of that presented by Hershuvski, Benjamin, “Ha'im yesh la-ẓelil mashma'ut? Liveniyat ha-’ekspresiviyut shel tavniyot ha-ẓelil ba-shirah,” Ha-sifrut 1, no. 2 (1968): 410–30Google Scholar.

63. In most of the manuscripts of the Sifre, the bed-hopping element is missing, as is the symbolic spatial move upwards. These appear in all the manuscripts that we have of the Babylonian Talmud's version. On the “correction” of the Sifre here using the Babylonian story, and a description of the manuscript tradition of the Sifre lacking the additional ladders and possibly cups see Kahana, Sifre, 4:853.

64. Again this is consistent in the manuscript tradition. The number 400 may be typological; what's important here is that it seems that he, not she, names this price.

65. Ironically, he is figured himself as a female virgin. Boyarin stresses the strong links rabbinic literature creates between the figure of the female virgin and the Jewish male in the Roman Empire. Boyarin, Daniel, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 67–92Google Scholar.

66. Kosman, Maseḥet, 143.

67. This religious difference has been studied by Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Boyarin, Carnal Israel; Biale, David, Eros and the Jews: from Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1992)Google Scholar.

68. B. Ketubbot 59b.

69. That is to say, that the complex situation described by Patricia Cox Miller does not come into being. According to Miller, Pelagia, even after her conversion, continues to act as a free agent and disrupts male norms of subjectivity. Miller, Patricia Cox, “Is There a Harlot in This Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33, no. 3 (2003): 429Google Scholar. We cannot say the same about the protagonist of this story. Once she converts and becomes a wife, she will take on conservative gender roles.