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Space, Place, and the Race for Power: Rabbis, Demons, and the Construction of Babylonia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2017

Sara Ronis
Sara Ronis*
Affiliation:
St. Mary's University, Texas
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Extract

The late antique world was filled with demons. These demons were constantly present and always at the ready to attack unsuspecting humans. Like almost everyone else in late antiquity, the rabbis of Sasanian Babylonia were aware of demonic threats and took steps to protect themselves and their communities from harm. But while demons were a danger, they were also an opportunity for creativity, identity formation, and community building for the rabbis. In fact, some Babylonian rabbis “thought with” demons in order to organize their environment and imbue their world with larger spatial meanings.

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Articles
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 110 , Issue 4 , October 2017, pp. 588 - 603
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2017 

The late antique world was filled with demons. These demons were constantly present and always at the ready to attack unsuspecting humans. Like almost everyone else in late antiquity, the rabbis of Sasanian Babylonia were aware of demonic threats and took steps to protect themselves and their communities from harm. But while demons were a danger, they were also an opportunity for creativity, identity formation, and community building for the rabbis. In fact, some Babylonian rabbis “thought with” demons in order to organize their environment and imbue their world with larger spatial meanings.

Since the “spatial turn,” many scholars have attempted to understand how space is produced and experienced. Scholars such as Massey and De Certeau have recognized that space is not an independent entity, existing outside of human beings and human relationships; rather, space is a contested event that must be continually created and negotiated through diverse interrelationships and imaginations.Footnote 1

In the third through seventh centuries CE, the rabbis of Babylonia lived in both urban and rural environments that were shared with Zoroastrians, Manicheans, Christians, communities worshiping ancient Mesopotamian deities, and non-rabbinic Jews. These spaces were heterogeneous, with multiple peoples living together with contesting narratives about their world and how they moved through it. Not simply collections of homes and fields, these environments were central to rabbinic identity formation and to the formation of a rabbinic community that included not only elite rabbis but perhaps even intermediary beings such as demons.

Understanding rabbinic spatial discourse through the texts that the rabbis produced thus sheds light on how and why the rabbis laid claim to, integrated, and abstracted their environment. For scholars such as De Certeau, space as a meaningful entity is produced through narrative discourse—the stories we tell about our spaces.Footnote 2 In the following pages, we will see that the rabbis also produced space and imbued it with meaning through halakic (legal) discourse. Rabbinic space was not static but had to be constantly negotiated and produced in order to remain meaningfully rabbinic. Rabbinic law writ large is replete with ways of constructing the environment in which its writers lived. From the ‘eruḇ, the fictive designation of a geographic Sabbath limit, to the applicability of certain laws only in the Land of Israel, rabbis imagine, designate, and implement ways to shape their physical world along rabbinic lines. And for some rabbis, demons were a significant part of this encounter with their world.

The rabbis used both stories and legal discourse about demons to produce a rabbinic space that was not simply overlaid onto their Mesopotamian environment but shaped and constructed their encounter with it. Within this system, the demonic falls within the scope of the wider rabbinic halakic project. Demons help define the way humans move through space, and rabbis define what it means to be a demon at all. In other words, the rabbis produce space in part through demonic discourse. My argument is not that the rabbis take spatial ideas and superimpose demons onto them, but rather that, for the rabbis, space is constructed by demonic discourse at the same time as spatial concerns contribute to the making and sustaining of demonic discourse. Demons are interwoven into the actual physical spaces that the rabbis inhabited at the same time as they are interwoven into rabbinic discourse. As we will see, using the demonic to construct rabbinic space results in a rather messy, but fruitful, map of the rabbinic world.

This article presents four case studies in the Babylonian Talmud that shed light on how the Babylonian rabbis constructed their landscape by means of visible and invisible demons that only they were qualified to constrain. These case studies move from micro-spaces to macro-spaces, from particular buildings and fields to domestic and educational settings, and finally expand outward to the entire province of Babylonia. I argue that the Babylonian rabbis used demonic presence and absence in order to help define the spatial boundaries of their world, mark their own rabbinic spaces as the center, and construct themselves as the true experts in dealing with demons—in opposition to their Palestinian rabbinic colleagues. Though the demons are often only discussed implicitly, their presence undergirds how the rabbis construct and legislate their world. “Thinking with” demons gives these rabbis control: control over their shared physical world through rabbinic law, control over the competition with their Palestinian counterparts, and control over non-rabbinic groups through claims to elite status and insider knowledge on the danger zones of the late antique world.

Ruinous Demons and Demons in Ruins

The Babylonian Talmud integrates demonic discourse into its larger project from its very beginning in tractate Ber. 3a–b.Footnote 3 This first encounter with demons demonstrates the geographic emplacement of demons, the use of sophisticated legal discourse in constructing the relationship between demons and space, and the problems that emerge when humans and demons attempt to share space. The subject of the passage is abandoned buildings. The passage begins by first quoting a baraita (an ostensibly earlier teaching):Footnote 4 “Our rabbis taught: There are three reasons that one does not go into a ruin: because of suspicion [that he is turning aside for an immoral purpose], because of falling debris, and because of demons.”Footnote 5

The anonymous voice (the stam) of the Talmud then undertakes a legal exegesis of this teaching that aims to prove that none of the three different reasons for the prohibition of entering ruins is extraneous. The rhetorical formula used repeatedly here, “would it not have been sufficient to say,” is a common halakic term in the Babylonian Talmud that suggests that a legal ruling could have been derived from a more obvious or simpler source than the one actually used—a suggestion that is subsequently defeated. The form is the first in a two-step rhetorical move designed to demonstrate that all the pieces of the argument are necessary to achieve the specific legal outcomes of the text.

Using this legal formula, the anonymous interpreters examine each of the three reasons for the prohibition of entering a ruin—suspicion of immorality, falling debris, and demons—to understand what each rationale uniquely brings to the discussion. The anonymous voice of this textual unit arrives at the conclusion that, in order to justify the blanket avoidance of ruins, the rabbis need the demon rationale (to cover old ruins as well as new ruins for which the debris rationale cannot do); that they still need the suspicion rationale (to cover a case of two licentious people entering the ruin—since demons will not attack two and therefore we might think that two are permitted to enter);Footnote 6 and finally, that the rabbis need the falling debris rationale to include two persons of upstanding moral character (as demons will not attack people in pairs, and each will serve as a deterrent on the other for suspect immoral behavior) in the prohibition against entering ruins. It is to protect these morally upstanding individuals that the rabbinic teaching includes falling debris as a reason to avoid ruins. All three rationales are thus necessary in order to prohibit all types of people from entering all types of ruins in all types of locations.

Both medieval and modern readers have often sought to see the demons in the Talmud as metaphors, signifiers of more rational dangers.Footnote 7 However, the authors of this passage make clear that the demonic danger found in ruins is not a metaphor for falling debris or room for licentious behavior. Instead, those dangers are explicitly listed as distinct and demarcated. The concluding sentence makes clear that demons are also not a metonym for female power or female harm. When the rabbis speak of and legislate concerning demons, demons are the actual subject under discussion.

The demons in this passage are not rapacious and uncontrolled. In fact, the demons are bound (by whom is unclear) to avoid people in pairs. Thus we begin to see the ways in which demonic behavior is limited, and individuals protected, through rabbinic jurisprudence.

The discussion of the dangers of ruins here articulates a connection between the demonic and certain places: ruins old and new and distant fields. The end of the source assumes that demons are commonly found in distant fields. That demons dwell in the fields is an image well-attested in the Babylonian magic bowls.Footnote 8 Written during the late Sasanian period by a cross-religious class of scribal/ritual experts, these bowls provide an important contemporaneous data-set for comparison and context.Footnote 9 Demons are associated with abandoned and empty places, and yet these places are abandoned by the rabbis in part because of their location as the home of demons.Footnote 10 Reading this source, we might think that demons are located only on the outskirts of the rabbinic world. And indeed they are. They serve to create a border, a periphery. On one side is safety and on the other, danger. Yet the majority of the text supposes that the ruins could be anywhere—a city, a town, anywhere buildings can be abandoned. And as we will see in the next source, demons are even found at the heart of the rabbinic home.

Demons at Home

The demonic danger inherent in abandoned buildings exists equally in both fields and cities. However, according to the rabbis, demons do tend to prefer certain locations over others. These locations are the inverse of what one might expect to see.

b. Pesaḥ. 111a

R. Isaac said: What is meant by the verse, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no harm [for You are with me (Ps 23:4)]?” This refers to one who sleeps in the shade of a single palm tree or in the moon's shadow.

“The shade of a single palm tree” applies only when the shadow of its fellow tree did not fall upon it, but if the shadow of its fellow falls upon it, then no [it is not harmful]. “The moon's shadow” applies only in the West [Palestine], but in the East [Babylonia], it is not harmful. And these words [regarding the palm tree] apply only in the field, but in the courtyard, even if the shadow of its fellow falls upon it, it is still harmful, as it says in a baraita: One who sleeps in the shade of a single palm tree and he is in a courtyard, his blood is upon his head. In a courtyard, yes, but in a field, no. From this we learn that even if the shadow of its fellow falls upon it [in a courtyard], it is still harmful.Footnote 11

The third-generation Palestinian Amora R. Isaac exegetically explains that the “shadow of death” in the well-known verse from Psalms refers to sleeping in the shadow of either a palm tree or the moon. The subsequent discussion concludes that one who sleeps in the shade of a single palm in a courtyard is taking his life into his own hands. In this case, only God's protection will save the sleeper from death.

The text geographically emplaces different types of harm. On the more local level, human beings are susceptible to danger in the shade of a single palm tree in a courtyard but not in a field. On a global level, in the Palestinian West, people are susceptible to the danger of being in the moon's shadow. In the Babylonian East, however, people are not susceptible to the moon's harm; instead, they can be harmed when found in the shadow of a palm tree.Footnote 12 Human beings are susceptible to single palm tree shade in Babylonia but—surprisingly—not in the western land of Israel. The self-conception of the rabbinic communities of Palestine and Babylonia and their diverging attitudes toward the demonic will be discussed further below.

Why the act of sleeping in the shadow of a palm tree is so dangerous, particularly in a courtyard, is at first glance opaque. However in this case, the literary context can illuminate how the talmudic redactors, at least, understood this danger. This text appears in the middle of a much longer passage in tractate Pesaḥim that articulates many of the ways that human beings become vulnerable to a demonic attack. The passage as a whole (b. Pesaḥ. 109b–112a) is structured chiastically, with concerns about demons and liquids and demonic taxonomies enveloping an extended discussion about demons and physical space. The discussion about demons and physical space begins with a discussion of demons who harm people at night. This passage is immediately preceded and followed by explicit discussions about particular demons and the specific demons who live in palm trees. The center of this discussion of demons and physical space is the text cited above.Footnote 13 Contextually, then, for the redactors, the implied danger in palm trees here is also demonic.

The demonic danger implicit in palm trees, and the ways that the rabbis construct demons in order both to heighten and to limit that danger, are elaborated in another text from the same long passage about demons in tractate Pesaḥim, this time on b. Pesaḥ. 111a. There, R. Shimon b. Lakish states that “one who turned aside [to relieve oneself] between a palm tree and a wall, [and] one who passes between two palm trees” takes his life into his own hands. The anonymous voice of the Babylonian Talmud glosses this statement thus:

The statement “One who turns aside between a palm tree and a wall,”Footnote 14 applies only if there were fewer than four cubits between them, but if there were four cubits between them, then no [it is not harmful]. And even if there were fewer than four cubits, this applies only if there was no other path, but if there was another path, then no [it is not harmful].

Understanding the danger inherent in palm trees as demonic, the anonymous redactors limit R. Shimon b. Lakish's statement in two ways. First, the rabbis state that if one leaves four cubits between the tree or wall and oneself, one does not encroach on the space of a demon and will be unmolested. But if one enters that space or even urinates within the demon's personal space, the demon will react negatively and possibly even forcefully eject the intruder. In this case, the halaḵah constructs demons as rather more defensive than aggressive beings. We will come back to this phenomenon.

Second, the rabbis deploy the legal concept of “another road.” The availability of another road in legal passages in the Talmud functions primarily to increase the culpability of the actor. Thus, in b. B. Bat. 57b, in a discussion about avoiding the stimulating sight of women washing clothes, the anonymous voice states that, “if there is another road and he does not take it, he is wicked, but if there is no other road, then he is seen as compelled [and he is not deemed wicked].” In this text from a different tractate, positing the existence of an alternative road is a legal strategy that makes the choice of the “compromised” road more dangerous and/or more culpable.

In contrast to the dominant use of the “other road” in the Babylonian Talmud, in b. Pesaḥim, it is only when there is a road not taken that the human actor stays safe from demonic harm. Here, the legal device of another road decreases the actor's liability, which is opposite to the way it normally works! Thus, in b. Pesaḥim, the rhetoric of another road must not be about human liability at all. Instead—and quite uniquely—the other road functions as an escape route for the demon. When a demon is boxed in and has nowhere to escape to, encroaching on demonic territory is harmful. When the demon has some room to breathe, one can pass through his territory unharmed. Demons are relatively passive and neutral but have a strong sense of personal space that they safeguard fiercely.

Let us now return to the case of the shadow of the palm tree in a courtyard. If we presume that the shadow of a demon-possessed palm tree is dangerous because one is entering the demon's personal space, then having other palm trees around might mean that the demon has an escape route.Footnote 15 In a place where demons live in palm trees, when one gets too close to a palm tree among many, the demon will simply flee to another tree and leave the person unharmed. But if there is nowhere for the demon to go, then he will lash out and protect his territory.

If, for the redactors, demons are so central to this passage, the fact that they are only mentioned implicitly must still be addressed. Perhaps demons are so ubiquitous and well-known that the rabbis did not feel the need to make the demonic threat explicit. But it is also possible that the rabbis feared that explicitly invoking demons in their legal discussions might itself be a provocation to demons.Footnote 16 In b. Pesaḥim, the anonymous voice of the Talmud presents the following general rule: “Anyone who is particular [about the demonic dangers inherent in even numbers], [the demons] are particular about him. Anyone who is not particular, they are not particular about him.”Footnote 17 Though all the literary cues point to the demonic subject of the discussion of sleeping in the shadow of a palm tree, through only implicitly naming the demonic threat, the rabbis avoid undue demonic attentions and control when and where they interact with these intermediary beings.

Why then do demons not just avoid urban space entirely and instead live on the periphery where their space is less likely to be encroached upon and their lives less interfered with by the rabbis? Perhaps demons want to be in the same space as the rabbis. They want to be in their homes and in their region. Perhaps not right on top of them but close enough.

Demons at the Kallah

My contention that demons want to be around the rabbis is strengthened by another passage from tractate Beraḵot in which demons are explicitly placed at the geographic and temporal center of the Babylonian rabbinic world.

b. Ber. 6a

It was taught in a baraita: Abba Benjamin said: If the eye had been given permission to see them, no creature could withstand the demons. R. Joseph said: They are more numerous than we are, and they stand around us like a mound to a furrow. R. Huna said: Each of us has one thousand to his left and one thousand to his right. Abaye said: The pressure at the kallah (the periodic rabbinic public study session in Babylonia)Footnote 18 is from them, and the wearying of one's knees is from them, and the wearing out of the garments of scholars is from [the demons’] rubbing, and the bruising of one's feet is from them.

In this text, demons are located in the heart of the rabbinic world, those spaces in which rabbinic teachings are taught and sages are found. The “we” in R. Joseph's statement are scholars, a fact that locates the demons in the kallah and places of Torah study. They are so embodied and present, though invisible, that they literally crowd the rabbis during public lectures. Unlike in the case of the palm tree, where demons will flee human encroachment when given the option, here demons are found at the most densely-packed periodic rabbinic convention.Footnote 19

The presence of demons at the kallah can be interpreted in two distinct ways. One interpretation assumes the common conception of demons as malevolent beings out to do evil. This reading would suggest that their presence at the kallah is intended to inflict physical harm and discomfort upon the assembled Torah scholars.Footnote 20 However, a second interpretation emerges when the text is read against the background of texts like the palm-tree passage, which suggests that demons are somewhat shy and reticent and would rather flee than fight. In spite of their shy nature, however, demons seem magnetically attracted to the Babylonian rabbis and their Torah. In several other places in the Babylonian Talmud, demons are actually cited as tradents, teachers of rabbinic teachings,Footnote 21 and narratives tell of demons who are pious and learned allies of the rabbis.Footnote 22 Thus, for example, in b. ‘Eruv. 43a, Joseph the demon is portrayed as traveling from the rabbinic center at Sura to that of Pumbedita in order to teach in both rabbinic centers on the Sabbath. If demons are a part of the broader rabbinic community, then their presence at the kallah may be interpreted as an expression of their interest in learning from and with the rabbis.Footnote 23 According to this interpretation, the physical effects of the demonic presence at the kallah are an unfortunate by-product of their interest in learning Torah, rather than an intentional attack on the rabbis and their followers.

For some rabbis, then, demons mark both a periphery—abandoned space at the edge of the rabbinic world—and the center—the rabbinic convention that gathered all those who studied rabbinic teachings in Babylonia. This center, however, was itself contested within a rabbinic world that included a vibrant rabbinic community centered in Babylonia, a province of the Sasanian Empire, and another vibrant rabbinic community in Roman Palestine. Here, too, Babylonian rabbis used the demonic as part of their construction of their most rabbinic space.Footnote 24

Demons between Babylonia and Palestine

Demons’ magnetic attraction to the Babylonian rabbis also plays out in rabbinic space writ large, on the level of empires. Demons apparently behave differently in the two opposing empires. The first text cited from b. Pesaḥim sets up a distinction between the land of Israel and Babylonia. This distinction is mirrored and expanded upon in rabbinic texts from both regions. One famous example comes from the same tractate of b. Pesaḥim and, indeed, from the same extended demonic discourse. The relevant background of the statement is that the Babylonian rabbis believed that performing certain activities an even number of times—for example, drinking an even number of drinks and writing down an even number of marks—somehow provokes a demonic attack.Footnote 25

b. Pesaḥ. 110b

In the West [Roman Palestine], they are not particular about even numbers. In Nehardea [a city in northwestern Babylonia], they are particular about even numbers. R. Dimi from Nehardea was particular even about the marks on a jug; it once happened that a jug burst [when an even number of marks was placed on it]. The general rule on the matter is: Anyone who is particular [about even numbers], [the demons] are particular about him. Anyone who is not particular, they are not particular about him. Nevertheless, one should take care.Footnote 26

In a moment of self-reflexivity, the anonymous voice of the Babylonian Talmud recognizes that there is a fundamental difference in the approach of the two rabbinic communities in Palestine and Babylonia toward the demonic. And in fact, the redactors are right—the Palestinian Talmud and the Palestinian midrashim are not particularly concerned with legally constructing and understanding the demonic. While demons do appear in a few narrative stories in the Palestinian literature, there is no accompanying body of law meant to manage the demonic. Footnote 27 With this statement, the anonymous voice in the Babylonian Talmud identifies and emphasizes the apparent western disinterest in a topic that was so important to the eastern rabbinic community.Footnote 28 The rabbis implicitly admit that because they have expended energy managing demons in Babylonia, they have become susceptible to demonic harm. Thus a map of the demonic world has been drawn: in some locations (“the west”), people are not overly invested in the demonic (and thus demons are not overly invested in them); and in others (“the east,” and particularly in the rabbis’ own Nehardea), the demonic occupies the intellectual energies of the learned elite.Footnote 29 Demons, like rabbis, belong to particular geographic spaces over which they have power. The differences in traditions, interpretations, and halaḵah between these two rabbinic communities are made manifest in their regulation of, and susceptibility to, the demonic. Rabbinic interest in demons creates demonic interest in rabbis and heightens the importance of rabbis in controlling and channeling that interest. It further differentiates them from their Palestinian colleagues, setting them up as the only true experts, in part because of the mutual interest of demons and the Babylonian rabbis.

Interestingly, the Babylonian rabbis are not the only ones who noticed this distinction. The Palestinian Talmud also recognizes a geographic difference in rabbinic approaches to the unseen actions of intermediary beings. Yerushalmi Šabbat 14:3, 14c records a dispute between the rabbis Rav and Ḥiyya, on the one hand, and R. Ḥanina and Shmuel, on the other. The intermediary being under discussion is the hypostasized Evil Eye. Rav and R. Ḥiyya both say that, out of every one hundred deaths, ninety-nine people die because of the evil eye, and one dies by the hand of Heaven. R. Ḥanina and Shmuel both argue that, out of every one hundred deaths, ninety-nine die of cold and one dies by the hand of Heaven. According to the initial dispute, each position is represented by both a Babylonian sage (Rav and Shmuel) and a Palestinian sage (R. Ḥiyya and R. Ḥanina). The anonymous redactors of the Palestinian Talmud resolve the apparent dispute by restricting each opinion to a distinctive geographic region and ignoring evidence to the contrary: “Rav followed his opinion and R. Ḥanina follows his opinion. Since Rav was living there, where the evil eye is prevalent, he used to say that ninety-nine die because of the [evil] eye and one by the hand of heaven. Since R. Hanina was living in Sepphoris, where it is cold, he used to say that ninety-nine die because of cold and one by the hand of Heaven.” The “there” in which Rav lived is Babylonia, either Nehardea or Sura depending on when this statement was made.Footnote 30 Regardless of the exact city, the Palestinian rabbis mark it as other with the distancing adverb. The evil eye is not a demon and does not act in demonic ways. But this passage illustrates that its author understood unseen malevolent forces to be active in Babylonia and less active and even inert in Roman Palestine.

These differences between the Babylonian and Palestinian rabbinic approaches are not hard and fast rules but rather general tendencies.Footnote 31 Nevertheless, both rabbinic communities were engaged in differentiating between themselves and their colleagues in the other Empire, and both used the role of intermediary beings as a locus of this differentiation in their legal discourse.Footnote 32

Conclusions

The four talmudic texts discussed here in depth and the questions they raise point to two ways that the rabbis thought with demons in order to turn place into space—geography overlaid with what De Certeau called “a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities.”Footnote 33 The spaces of Babylonia were shared and negotiated across religions and ethnic groups. Though the rabbis were at times silent about their interactions with these populations, they used demonic discourse to stake out their claim to a particular spatial experience of their world and to construct themselves as those most qualified (and perhaps the only ones qualified) to deal with demonic danger. Demons demarcate the danger of the periphery of the rabbinic world, of abandoned buildings, empty spaces, and dark corners. But they also prioritize the center: demons reflect the value that the rabbis see in their own spaces: the home, the house of study, and the Babylonian rabbinic center as a whole. That rabbinic concern about demons is mirrored in demonic interest in rabbis. Demonic interest validates the rabbinic project and the rabbis as the teachers of the Torah.

The rabbis integrate demons into their expansive world organized through rabbinic law. The demonic is mapped onto rabbinic spaces in ways that give both more structure and more meaning. This is space at its smallest—a single structure, a tree—and at its grandest—Roman Palestine and Sasanian Babylonia. The rabbis use discourse about demons to produce spaces that are more meaningful, and more rabbinic, than they would be if they were only used by humans. Instead, these spaces are meaningful in part because of the unseen entities who use them. Yet it is the very unseen nature of these demons that makes moving through these spaces so fraught. Every moment thus becomes one in which calculations of distance and consciousness of rabbinic teachings must be remembered in order to survive.

Contra De Certeau, the rabbis produce this meaningful space not only through narratives but also through legal discussions. This move should not surprise us, given that the rabbis’ primary mode of discourse in Sasanian Babylonia was legal. But the rabbis’ legal discourse about demons points to a Babylonian rabbinic attitude that demons exist not in contrast to organized religion—not as some non-normative “magic” or folktale—but as part of the broader legal system.

Many scholars have pointed to the Babylonian rabbis’ cultural context to explain their belief in and regulation of demons and other invisible forces, in contrast to their Palestinian confreres. Already in the nineteenth century, Alexander Kohut and Heinrich Graetz dismissed the demonology of the Babylonian Talmud as the product of assimilation into a Persian milieu. More recent scholars have pointed to Zoroastrian and ancient Mesopotamian parallels to explain the rabbis’ interest in the demonic.Footnote 34 It is clear that the Babylonian rabbinic attentiveness to demons was part of much broader cultural trends in Sasanian Babylonia. However, this broader cultural context cannot entirely explain the shape that rabbinic interest took.

Scholars have noted that the rabbis’ move to treat demons legally is paralleled by the Zoroastrian elite's legal treatment of demons.Footnote 35 But, though rabbis and Zoroastrians share a common form, the content of their beliefs about demons is substantially different. Zoroastrian texts discuss a wide range of dews (the Pahlavi word for demons). These demons are presented as the malevolent servants of the evil god Ahrēman.Footnote 36 When benevolent or neutral beings appear in Zoroastrian literature, they are not marked as demonic. The rabbis incorporate demons into their world—spatially, legally, and textually—and in so doing, they neutralize and rabbinize demonic danger at the same time as they establish themselves, the Babylonian rabbis, as those religious figures best able to deal with the unseen forces that govern their world.

The phenomenon of the Babylonian sages thinking with demons to construct rabbinic space has two major consequences for our understanding of the worldviews represented in the Babylonian Talmud. First, it demonstrates the complexity and multivalence of the way the rabbis think about demons. They are both markers of boundaries and danger and markers of center and value. This complexity reflects the rabbinic approach to the potential theological problem of malevolent intermediary beings. For the Babylonian rabbis, demons are not servants of an evil god or fallen angel. They do not exist in contrast to the organized good religion but as part of the broader, complicated rabbinic understanding of Judaism and the Jewish people. The perceived conflict between monotheistic religion and the pantheon of angels and demons who populate rabbinic law and narrative is resolved by the rabbinic integration of these beings into Jewish law. Late antique rabbinic monotheism was far messier and expansive than later readers might have imagined. This integration changes the very nature of what it means to be a demon. Constructing demons as attracted to rabbinic spaces and rabbinic Torah is one part of this rabbinic conception of demons as capricious but also neutral—somewhat shy or reticent beings who prefer to live in places where humans are absent, except when it comes to Torah. Demons are able to overcome their reticence to be around rabbinic spaces and teachings. Demons are not opposed to Torah; they want to study it with its authorized teachers. The rabbis domesticate the threat of multiple super-human beings by subsuming them within the rabbinic system.

Second, it constructs the Babylonian rabbis as the elite group most qualified to deal with demonic threats in Babylonia. Evidence from the contemporaneous Aramaic magic bowls and Zoroastrian legal discussions in texts such as the Vīdēvdād shows that control over demons was a hotly contested area in Sasanian Babylonia. A wide range of ritual specialists claimed the ability to prevent demonic harm and deal with demonic attack, and clients appear to have gone to the most effective specialist even across religious and ethnic lines.Footnote 37 By arguing that demons are ultimately attracted to the Torah and its teachers, the rabbis claimed the ultimate authority over demons. The rabbis have what demons want. This makes rabbinic space more fraught, as it valorizes the rabbinic project itself. Rabbinic discourse about demons constructs the demons as it constructs the rabbis who are their targets. This claim functions, at least for the rabbis, to situate the rabbis as an elite group distinct from, and empowered over, the non-rabbinic Jews of Babylonia and possibly over non-Jews as well. By “thinking with” the demonic, rabbis become masters of the law, masters of the demonic, and masters over their world.

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism” Section of the SBL Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, 2014. I would like to thank Christine Hayes, P. Oktor Skjærvø, Yonatan Miller, Elizabeth Davidson, Natalie Polzer, the conference attendees, and the anonymous HTR reviewers for their critical eyes and valuable feedback. All mistakes remain my own.

1 Certeau, Michel De, The Practice of Everyday Life (trans. Rendall, Steven; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) 117–30; Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space (trans. Nicholson-Smith, Donald; Oxford: Blackwell, 1974, 1991); Massey, Doreen, For Space (London: Sage Publications, 2005); Sheldrake, Philip, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, and Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Tuan, Yi-Fu, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977); idem, “A View of Geography,” Geographical Review 81 (1991) 99–107. Most scholars map the spatial world by differentiating between space and place, using these terms in relationship with each other to distinguish meaningful lived spaces from mere points on a map. These are generally referred to as “space” and “place,” though the specific hierarchical relationship between the two differs from scholar to scholar.

2 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 117.

3 This passage follows a baraita (an ostensibly earlier teaching, see n. 4 below) in which R. Yose veers off the road to pray in certain ruins in Jerusalem and there meets Elijah the Prophet. This narrative highlights three specific laws that R. Yose learned from Elijah that day: “that one should not enter a ruin; that one should [instead] say the prayer on the road; and that when one prays on the road, one should say an abbreviated prayer.” The fact that these teachings are voiced by Elijah the Prophet—himself a liminal figure with a complicated and at times contradictory character—suggests that, at times, Elijah himself takes on the role of intermediary being and thus has special insight into these figures. The rabbis, however, do not make this connection literal, perhaps because doing so would undercut their own claims to rabbinic authority and supremacy over intermediary beings such as demons. My thanks to Yonatan Miller for pointing out this connection.

4 The dating of particular quotations and texts within the rabbinic corpus is very contested. This text uses the citation formula appropriate to 2nd- or 3rd-cent. CE rabbinic texts; however, scholars have argued that the 4th- through 6th-cent. CE rabbis at times framed their own teachings in antique terms for a variety of reasons. See Jacob Nahum Epstein, מבוא לנוסח המשנה [Introduction to the Text of the Mishnah] (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Y.L. Magnes, 1948, 1999) 1:171–77; Friedman, Shamma, “‘Wonder Not at a Gloss in Which the Name of an Amora Is Mentioned’: The Amoraic Statements and the Anonymous Material in the Sugyot of the Bavli Revisited,” in Melekhet Mahshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature (ed. Amit, Aharon and Shemesh, Aharon; Ramat-Gan, IL: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011) 101–44, at 103; Louis Jacobs, “Are There Fictitious Baraitot in the Babylonian Talmud?,” HUCA 42 (1971) 185–96; Rubenstein, Jeffrey L., Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 262 .

5 All translations are my own, taken from the Vilna print edition of the Talmud, unless otherwise noted. Significant textual variants are discussed in the notes. The Babylonian Talmud has three terms that it unsystematically uses to refer to demons, שידים (demons), מזיקין (harmers), and רוחות (spirits). The use of the word מזיקין here to refer to demons appears only four times in the earlier 2nd- and 3rd-cent. Tannaitic materials, three times in the Tosefta (t. B. Qam. 3, 7, and t. Soṭah 4) and once in m. ’Abot 5:6, whose date is difficult to ascertain. The rarity of the term in the earlier materials, all of which appear in these early Palestinian corpora, serves to strengthen my contention that this citation of an ostensibly earlier text is actually itself a later pseudonymous text dating to Babylonia in the 4th through 6th cents. CE.

6 The rabbis believed that demons avoid attacking human beings in pairs or larger groups. See, e.g., b. Ber. 62b, b. Qidd. 29b, b. Pesaḥ. 112b.

7 Thus, for example, in Moreh Nevuḵim, Maimonides metaphorically defines “demons” as referring to evildoing humans who never fully developed a rational mind and therefore seek to harm others (1.7). Much more recently, Adin Steinsaltz has explicitly followed the model laid out by Rashi and Maimonides, by explaining many of the demonic references in the Babylonian Talmud as symbols of medical phenomena familiar to the modern scientific community. See Adin Steinsaltz, “The Demons of Our Creation,” Shefa, http://www.hashefa.co.il/home/doc.aspx?mCatID=68636.

8 Bo 38:3, ib 67:5, 100:5, 129:4, 130:2 in Sokoloff, Michael, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan, IL: Bar Ilan University Press, 2003) 313 . This concept may also be attested in b. Pesaḥ. 114a, which, according to ms. NY JTS 1623/2 Enelow Manuscript Collection 271 and ms. Columbia X893T14a, states: (One who eats of the sea rocket of the field will sit on the garbage dumps of the town). This statement may suggest a demonic response to a provocative action.

9 For a discussion of the Babylonian incantation bowls and their relevance to the study of the Babylonian Talmud, see Gideon Bohak, “Babylonian Incantation Bowls—Past, Present and Future,” Pe'amim 105–6 (2005–2006) 253–65; M. J. Geller, “Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud,” Max-Planck-Institut Für Wissenschafsgeschichte Preprint (2004) 1–60, https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/ P259.PDF; Rebecca Lesses, “Exe(o)rcising Power: Women as Sorceresses, Exorcists, and Demonesses in Babylonian Jewish Society of Late Antiquity,” JAAR 69 (2001) 343–75; Levene, Dan, “‘This Is a Qybl’ for Overturning Sorceries’: Form, Formula—Threads in a Web of Transmission,” in Continuity and Magic in the Magical Tradition (ed. Bohak, Gideon, Harari, Yuval, and Shaked, Shaul; JSRC 15; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 219–44; idem., A Corpus of Magic Bowls: Incantation Texts in Jewish Aramaic from Late Antiquity (London: Kegan Paul, 2003) 1–30; Avigail Manekin Bamberger, “Jewish Legal Formulae in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls,” SBLAS 13 (2015) 69–81; Naveh, Joseph and Shaked, Shaul, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985) 1–20 ; Shaked, Shaul, “Bagdana, King of the Demons, and Other Iranian Terms in Babylonian Aramaic Magic,” in Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce (ed. Duchesne-Guillemin, Jacques and LeCoq, Pierre; Hommages et Opera Minora 15, ACTA Iranica 24; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 511–25.

10 See also b. Pesaḥ. 112b–113a. This belief is found in the Hebrew Bible as well. See Lev 17:7; Isa 34:14; Jer 15:37; 2 Chr 11:15. And see Schmitt, Rüdiger, “Demons, Demonology. II. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” Encyclopedia of Biblical Reception (ed. Klauck, Hans-Josef et al.; Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2012) 537 ; Janowski, B., “Jackals,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. Toorn, Karel van der, Becking, Bob, and van der Horst, Pieter W.; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 459 .

11 The manuscript tradition of this passage is divergent. My translation follows ms. Vatican 125.

12 An alternative reading might suggest that the danger of palm trees can be found across the Jewish world, where the danger of the moon can be found only in Roman Palestine. This reading seems unlikely to me, given that the importance of the danger of palm trees can be found only in the Babylonian rabbinic corpus and there only in reference to the Babylonian community.

13 On the redactional organization of this text as a whole, see Ronis, Sara, “‘Do Not Go Out Alone at Night’: Law and Demonic Discourse in the Babylonian Talmud” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2015) 33–34, 164–69.

14 Vilna Print edition. Mss. Vatican 109, Vatican 125, Columbia X893T14a, NY JTS 1623/2 Enelow Manuscript Collection 271, and Munich 6 all add, “and one who passes between two palm trees.”

15 This reading has already been noted by the medieval commentator Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi), on b. Pesaḥ.111a, s.v. , and is adopted by his grandson Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam), on b. Pesaḥ. 111a, s.v. .

16 A similar phenomenon can be noted in talmudic reports of rabbinic magic use. See, e.g., b. Sanh. 68a, b. Šabb. 81b; y. Sanh. 7:13 25d, 7:19 25d, 10:2. See also Becker, Hans-Jurgen, “The Magic of the Name and Palestinian Rabbinic Literature,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture (ed. Schäfer, Peter; TSAJ 93; 3 vols.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002) 3:391–407, at 398.

17 The Venice and Vilna print editions end this general rule with ומיהו למיחש מיבעי (nevertheless one should take care). This clause is not found in any of the earlier manuscripts.

18 For discussions of the kallah, see Goodblatt, David, “The History of the Babylonian Academies,” in Cambridge History of Judaism (ed. Katz, Steven T.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; 2008) 821–39; Brody, Robert, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) 43–45 .

19 Several scholars have read this passage as a parody or satire of demonological beliefs. See, e.g., Elman, Yaakov, “The World of the ‘Sabboraim’: Cultural Aspects of Post-Redactional Additions to the Bavli,” in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada (ed. Rubenstein, Jeffrey L.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005) 383–415 . I hesitate to dismiss this passage as satire because (1) determining tone in ancient written works is difficult in the best of circumstances, and (2) scholars of satire and parody have noted that humor is deployed in critical cultural work precisely around issues that are important and relevant to specific audiences. See, e.g., Dentith, Simon, Parody (London: Routledge, 2000) 1–54 ; Gilbert, Joanne R., Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender, and Cultural Critique (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004) 1–72 ; Palmer, Jerry, Taking Humour Seriously (London: Routledge, 1994) 57–92 . Rather than dismissing this passage as humorous, then, I leave the question of tone open and assume that, regardless of whether or not this passage is meant to be humorous, it is examining issues of relevance and importance to a rabbinic audience in Late Antiquity.

20 This interpretation is supported by a single talmudic account of a malevolent demon in a rabbinic space, found at b. Qidd. 29b. However, this narrative is anomalous in the broader scope of rabbinic discourse, in which demons appear as learned followers of the rabbis and perhaps even rabbis themselves, though they remain powerful and at times capricious. See Sara Ronis, “A Seven-Headed Demon in the House of Study: Understanding a Rabbinic Demon in Light of Zoroastrian, Christian, and Babylonian Textual Traditions” (forthcoming from AJS rview), for an extensive treatment of this story.

21 See, e.g., b. Pesaḥ. 109b–112a. Statements cited in the name of demonic teachers also appear at b. ‘Eruv 43a and, possibly, at b. Yevam. 122a. In b. ‘Eruv. 43a, Joseph the demon is portrayed as traveling from Sura to Pumbedita in order to teach in both rabbinic centers on the Sabbath. While the demon in b. ‘Eruvin appears to be the same Joseph as here in b. Pesaḥim, b. Yevamot may introduce us to another demonic teacher, Jonathan or Yoḥanan. The identity of this demon remains uncertain because the manuscript tradition is extremely corrupted.

22 See, e.g., b. Me‘il. 17a–b, where the demon Ben Thamalion aids the rabbis in overturning an anti-Jewish decree by the Roman Caesar. See also the case of the demon who is a member of Rav Papa's household in b. Ḥul. 105b–106a and discussion in Ronis, “A Demonic Servant in Rav Papa's Household: Demons as Subjects in the Mesopotamian Talmud,” in The Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud and its Cultural World (ed. Geoffrey Herman and Jeffrey Rubenstein; Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, forthcoming).

23 See also b. Ḥul. 106a, which contains a narrative of a demon who is taken to rabbinic court and found liable for causing unintentional harm. There the demon expressly admits his subordination to the rabbis and their rabbinic courts.

24 Gafni, Isaiah M., The Jews of Babylonia in the Talmudic Era: A Social and Cultural History (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1990) 169 n. 103 (Hebrew), following Uziel Fuchs, has suggested that a noted distinction can be drawn between the rabbinic community of Nehardea/Pumbedita, to whom most of the talmudic teachings about demons are attributed, and the rabbinic community of Sura, which is less prominent in talmudic teachings about demons. Determining the regional identities of the anonymous redactors, however, is more complex, and more work must be done before an internal Babylonian rabbinic geography can be mapped.

25 See n. 34 below for a discussion of scholarly explanations of this belief in its historical and cultural context.

26 This clause is found only in the Vilna and Venice Print editions. See above, n. 17.

27 Moreover, almost all of the Palestinian Talmud's references to demons are found in the Palestinian tractate Šabbat. The reason for this localization of the demonic is unclear. The minimal and extremely local evidence does not allow us to create a complete picture of the Palestinian legal approach to these intermediary beings.

28 Elman, “World of the ‘Sabboraim,’” 403, has argued that this clause is a later insertion into the passage based on manuscript evidence that the placement of the clause was not certain. However, though it does appear in a slightly different location in ms Munich 95, it always appears in this passage as part of an earlier discussion, and the other eleven manuscripts this author examined are consistent in their location of the clause. Given the spatial discussions that follow it, I argue that it seems to have been part of the redactor's original redaction of the passage, functioning to focus the reader's attention on the importance of location in the ensuing discussion.

29 See above, n. 24. Note, however, that the Babylonian Talmud records many statements by Palestinian sages about demonic issues. I have argued above that many of the baraitot about demons cited by the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Pesaḥim are in fact pseudo-baraitot. What can account for the appearance of Palestinian Amoraic memrot (short declarative statements attributed to the sages of the 3rd and 4th cents. CE) about demons in the Babylonian Talmud, though they do not appear in the Palestinian rabbinic corpus? This phenomenon can be explained most convincingly by pointing to the function of the stam as redactor of the talmudic sugya. For discussions of the role of the anonymous redactor in the composition of the Babylonian Talmud, see, e.g., Elman, “World of the ‘Sabboraim,’” 383–415; Yaakov Elman, “The Beginning of Tractate Pesahim in the Bavli and Yerushalmi: Questions of Redaction and Formation,” in Melekhet Mahshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature (ed. Aharon Amit and Aharon Shemesh; Ramat-Gan, IL: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011) 9–26; Halivni, David, Mevo'ot Limqorot Umasorot: ‘Iyyunim Behithavut Hattalmud (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009) 11–87, 339–60; Hauptman, Judith, “Development of the Talmudic Sugya by Amoraic and Post-Amoraic Amplification of a Tannaitic Proto-Sugya,” HUCA (1987) 227–50; Kalmin, Richard, “The Function and Dating of the Stam and the Writing of History,” in Melekhet Mahshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature (ed. Amit, Aharon and Shemesh, Aharon; Ramat-Gan, IL: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011) 31–50 ; Rubenstein, Jeffrey L., The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). The stam functions to knit together diverse traditions into a general worldview and legal approach. The rhetoric created by the stam points to particular discursive moves and interests and sheds light on the world that the stam sought to create in its organization of rabbinic tradition. The individual named sayings take on new meanings and valences in the contexts in which the stam places them. The stam has been most recognized and characterized in the Babylonian Talmud. Yet the Palestinian Talmud has an anonymous voice as well, along with a redactor or redactional layer that pulls together the disparate sources and organizes them coherently to make particularly discursive and legal points. It is the stam in both Talmuds that distinguishes between the land of Israel and Sasanian Babylonia in their approaches to intermediary beings. Thus it is possible that the Palestinian redactors intentionally excluded demonic discourse from their text and did not record existing Palestinian rabbinic teachings on the matter. Alternatively, or perhaps complementarily, it is possible that the Babylonian rabbis pseudepigraphically attributed Babylonian rabbinic sayings to their Palestinian colleagues. Some combination of these approaches is most likely.

30 See y. B. Bat. 15a, b. Yoma 20b, for a discussion of the locations in which Rav lived during his lifetime. See also Strack, H. L. and Stemberger, Gunter, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (trans. Bockmuehl, Markus; 2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1996) 85 .

31 A similar tendency has been noted in relation to the Evil Eye by Kalmin, Richard, “The Evil Eye in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” in Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome: Jews in Antiquity (ed. Isaac, Benjamin and Shahar, Yuval; TSAJ 147; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012) 111–38, at 131.

32 In the Babylonian Talmud, these trends cannot be distinguished according to the linguistic and historical layers of the text's composition. Instead, rabbinic interest in demons, and resistance to that interest, is consistent across the compositional layers.

33 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 117.

34 On the subject of the rabbinic belief in the danger of doing things in pairs, see, e.g., Gafni, Jews of Babylonia, 169; Elman, “World of the ‘Sabboraim,’” 383–415; Michael Baris, “‘For I Am the One in Nega'im, I Am the One in Ohalot’: Dualism and Monism in Aggadic Conceptualization of the Law,” (paper presented at the Annual International Meeting of the Jewish Law Association, Antwerp, 16 July 2014) who attribute it in different ways to Zoroastrian dualism; and Geller, “Akkadian Healing Therapies,” 56–57 who attributes it to ancient Mesopotamian extispicy. Note, however, that none of these cultures associated doing things an even number of times with danger or with demons. In fact, this iteration of such a belief appears only in Babylonian rabbinic literature.

35 See, e.g., Pahlavi, Vīdēvdād 7.2C–E in Moazami, Mahnaz, Wrestling with the Demons of the Pahlavi Widēwdād (Iran Studies 9; Leiden: Brill, 2014) 185 . For scholarship on the Zoroastrian use of legal discourse to treat demons, see Elman, Yaakov, “The Other in the Mirror: Iranians and Jews View One Another: Questions of Identity, Conversion, and Exogamy in the Fifth-Century Iranian Empire,” BAI 19 (2005) 15–25 ; Kiel, Yishai, “Gazing through Transparent Objects in Pahlavi and Rabbinic Literature,” BAI 24 (2014) 27–38 .

36 These demons mark a transformation of earlier Indic and Iranian deities (daēva) into malevolent intermediary beings (dēw) with the development of Zoroastrianism. See, e.g., Yarshater, Ehsan, “Iranian Common Beliefs and World-View,” in The Cambridge History of Iran (ed. Yarshater, Ehsan; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 341–58; Jong, Albert De, “Going Going Gone! The Fate of the Demons in Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Zoroastrianism,” in Démons iraniens: Actes du colloque international organisé à l'Université de Liège les 5 et 6 février 2009 à l'occasion des 65 ans de Jean Kellens (ed. Swenson, Philippe; Liège, BE: Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2015) 163–70. Many intermediary beings in Zoroastrian tradition are benevolent, but these beings are never referred to as dēw. See Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism: The Early Period (HO1 8/1; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 85–92. One exception to this general rule may be found in the Pahlavi descriptions of the being Vāyu (Wāy) who is apparently dual natured, both malevolent and benevolent. However, this being is never referred to as a demon (Prods Oktor Skjærvø, personal correspondence, 2 Aug 2016). For more on the nature of Vāyu, see William W. Malandra, “Vāyu,” Encyclopædia Iranica (2014); online edition, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/vayu.

37 For an extensive discussion of late antique approaches toward demons and of the types of conflict these approaches could engender, see Ronis, “‘Do Not Go Out,’” 272–376.

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism” Section of the SBL Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, 2014. I would like to thank Christine Hayes, P. Oktor Skjærvø, Yonatan Miller, Elizabeth Davidson, Natalie Polzer, the conference attendees, and the anonymous HTR reviewers for their critical eyes and valuable feedback. All mistakes remain my own.