Introduction to the Text

The Babylonian Talmud (“study, learning”) is a roughly 1.8 million-word compendium of Jewish tradition. It was composed orally, from the 3rd century C.E., at rabbinic academies near today's Fallujah and Najaf, the heart of the Sasanian Empire. It is divided by legal topic into tractates. Each tractate synthesizes discussions (Gemara, study-as-“completion”) of 3rd-century-and-later rabbis, and is structured as commentary on a c. 200 C.E. rabbinic work, the Mishnah (study-as-“repetition”). The Mishnah, in turn, systematizes rabbinic oral traditions related to the Bible, extending as far back as the Second Temple period (ending 70 C.E.) The Mishnah is arranged into 63 tractates and 6 Orders. Only 36.5 Mishnah tractates have a corresponding Gemara in the Babylonian Talmud. Some Babylonian Gemara was lost but has been reconstructed; other Mishnah tractates may never have been studied as such in Babylonia. There is also a Palestinian Talmud with the same format, redacted mainly in Tiberias and Caesarea, under the Roman/early Byzantine empires (c. 425 C.E.)

The Gemara proceeds by commenting on short quotes (lemmas) from the Mishnah, in linear order. Either the Gemara is anonymous (stam), or it uses oral formulae to cite traditions of early rabbis: the Tannaim (“reciters”), contemporary with the oral tradition of the Mishnah, or the Amoraim (“speakers”), of the 3rd through late 5th centuries. The Gemara also incorporates traditions from other rabbinic works: collections of legal exegesis (midrash halakhah) on Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, roughly contemporary with the Mishnah; the 3rd-century Tosefta or “Supplement” to the Mishnah; the Palestinian Talmud; 3rd-through-6th-century Palestinian rabbinic works of non-legal exegesis (midrash aggadah), organized around biblical books or framed as homilies on the liturgy; and collections like the Tosefta of loose oral traditions (baraitot, sg. baraita), organized by theme or by attribution to rabbis and their circles. In sum, on the surface, the Babylonian Talmud is a compendium of the 2nd to early 6th centuries. With virtually no exceptions, it only cites Scripture or rabbinic sources, although it absorbs many non-rabbinic and non-Jewish sources that are not cited.

Below the surface and between the lines, however, the Babylonian Talmud is very much a medieval work. Three later phases witnessed substantial changes in its form, content, and its circulation in society. First, scholars now tend to agree that much of the anonymous (stam) material is later than much of the attributed material, dating this layer to the 6th and 7th centuries. It seems to stem from a period when scholars in the academies dramatically rearranged and supplemented the inherited Gemara of the Amoraim: connecting the dots of debates, adding new material, and interpolating independent collections on special topics like dream-interpretation and medicine. If that is indeed when this Talmud acquired its distinctive voice and form, it is hard to recover earlier layers. Indeed, where parallels do exist, especially to sections of the Palestinian Talmud, they often accent the creativity of these later editors. One cannot be sure how long this creative process extended, given the gap between the last named rabbis (early 6th century) and the beginning of the next rabbinic generation, the Geonim (“Geniuses”), whose original works of responsa, annals, philosophy, and other genres begin to appear in the mid-8th century.

Second, the text of this Talmud was gradually stabilized under the Geonim, who directed it to be copied and sent to diaspora communities. Yet it continued to be studied and transmitted orally in their academies until the 11th century. They also conducted text-criticism orally, resulting in variant formulations. Sources were transmitted in parallel versions, reflecting different branches of tradition and methods of study. These Geonic oral traditions were incorporated into the early annals of Talmudic literature, and some of the material–as well as other scholastic material, e.g. rules for assigning provenance to sources and sorting out chains of tradition–made its way back into the Talmud text, in the form of notes, lists, and glosses. Further varia arose in the course of the Talmud's use as a companion to Geonic literature, where it was a source for works of law, history, customs, etc.

Third, from the 11th century to the advent of printing, Talmud commentary flourished in Iberia, North Africa, and the Rhineland. The Talmud was incorporated into an encyclopedia, the Arukh of Nathan ben Jekhiel of Rome (d. 1106), and became the basis for legal codes by, e.g., Alfasi (d. 1103) and Maimonides (d. 1204). In these new settings, the text continued to mutate: for example, marginal glosses or comments were incorporated into local versions. The Talmud remained a formative canon for new literatures and was remolded in light of their exegetical, homiletical, and jurisprudential aims. It remained bound to both oral and scribal contexts. Extract, gloss, paraphrase, commentary, and anthology shaped the transmission of the text, no less than study of whole tractates of Gemara. Not until printers standardized and democratized access to the text was “the” Babylonian Talmud a stand-alone canon. Even in prints, it remained encircled by a garland of medieval varia and commentaries.

The Talmud's medieval quality comes through particularly well in translation, because one cannot even present the text without supplying explanations in notes and brackets. These explanations reflect either parallel rabbinic traditions or medieval commentators in the margins of printed editions: foremost among them, Rashi (an acronym for "RAbbi SHlomo YItshaqi of Troyes, d. 1105.)

Introduction to the Source

This selection of the Babylonian Talmud is from the tractate on the rite of a woman suspected of adultery (sotah). In the Bible, the rite already forms a well-scripted literary unit at Numbers 5:11-31. The rabbis' commentaries on it, the tractates Sotah, are located in the Order of Women (Nashim) in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and both the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. In the latter works, the Gemara, reflecting oral debates in the Amoraic and later academies, forms thematically distinct but not explicitly divided blocs of argumentation (sugyot, sg. sugya.)

This selection is comprised of two loosely connected sugyot, Parts I and II in the translation. Each sugya covers one stage in the priestly rite of sotah, as reimagined by the Mishnah. Part I covers the inquisition of the sotah by the judges of the High Court in Jerusalem. It stipulates what is to occur if this elicits a confession of adultery from her: her marriage is dissolved, and she forfeits any rights under her marriage-contract. That possibility was not envisioned by Numbers. Rather than allow that a wife might say, “I am defiled” (Mishnah Sotah 1:5), in Numbers, the husband's “spirit of jealousy” automatically triggers the rite (even if “the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be not defiled,” Num. 5:14 KJV, emphasis added.) Part I is thus devoted to exploring this alternative rabbinic scenario: the priest, or a member of the court, might force a confession out of the woman–either by warning that she will violate the sanctity of the divine name when it is dissolved in water during the rite, or by inspiring her with confessions of the biblical patriarchs. Unlike in Numbers and other early rabbinic sources, the sotah is generally presumed guilty in the Mishnah. Forced confession is presented as one way to redress the social consequences of her guilt. 

But confession would halt the rest of the ritual. That option is not the focus of either the Mishnah or the Gemara. Rather, Mishnah 1:5-1:6 and its Gemara (Part II) each present new rabbinic versions of the rite, focusing on the exposure and degradation to which a sotah will be subjected if she does not confess. These are among the most violent scenes in rabbinic reimaginations of the ritual. It is hard not to read them as partly motivated by a misogynistic desire to humiliate the sotah and make an example of her for other women; even as men are said to take a prurient interest in her exposed body. Although this ritual was likely never practiced in the rabbinic period–a fragment from the Cairo Genizah suggests, at most, that it may have become a new kind of magical rite–its discourse remains troubling.

All three aspects of the textual tradition–variants, parallels, and commentaries–affect the reading that one selects for any location, and therefore, both the translation and the interpretation offered. In this translation, only textual cruxes in the Mishnah (cited at the beginning) are presented in the notes as it would be prohibitively long and complex to do so for the Gemara as well. This offers the English reader a sample of the issues which arise in presenting a rabbinic text. For biblical verses, the translation uses the King James Version and its verse-divisions, with modifications as noted.

About this Edition

The selection appears on folia 7a-8b in the standard edition of reference, Vilna: Widow & Brothers Romm, 3rd ed., 1880-1886. a: recto; b: verso. It has been translated into many languages, including English. Tractate Sotah has 48 folia; numbering begins with 2. In the Vilna edition, the text is surrounded by references to parallels and biblical verses; textual variants from other witnesses; and commentaries, including Rashi's, which is a source for many choices in the translation and in the bracketed comments. The original text is also that of the Vilna edition. Textual variants in the notes to both the original and the translation are drawn from the critical edition of the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Sotah. Avraham Liss, ed. Jerusalem: Institute for the Complete Israeli Talmud. 2 vols. 1977.

Further Reading

Few studies, especially in English, focus on the Babylonian Gemara of this tractate, as opposed to earlier rabbinic versions of the sotah rite, or synchronic theories of its role in Judaism writ large. As for the rabbinic interpretations of the sotah in general, scholars have advanced feminist critiques; ventured apologetic interpretations; and offered nuanced textual and cultural analyses of its early evolution among the Roman-era Tannaim. A comparable statement about the significance of these sugyot for gender, sex, and sensuality in later rabbinic culture in Sasanian Iran, where this Talmud was produced, would weigh such options against the backdrop of a literary analysis, towards which this translation is but a step.

Destro, Adriana. The Law of Jealousy: Anthropology of Sotah. Brown Judaic Studies, 2020 [1989].

• Chapter 4 includes our text in a holistic view of the rabbinic ritual, from the Mishnah through Maimonides. Applies structural-functionalist theory in arguing for the essential unity of the rite in all its phases (jealousy; confession; ordeal; sacrifice; purification) so as to maintain the ideal social order.

Ebner, David. "The Composition and Structure of Mishnah Sotah." Yeshiva University, 1980, PhD Dissertation.

• Rigorous analysis of the text of the ritual in the Mishnah (chapters 1-6), focusing on editorial decisions and their basic principles; relation to parallels (especially the Tosefta); and chronology.

Grushcow, Lisa. Writing the Wayward Wife: Rabbinic Interpretations of Sotah. Brill, 2006.

• Chronologically organized overview of interpretations of the rite in rabbinic and other ancient sources with helpful appendices, including annotated translations of a variety of primary sources.

Hasan-Rokem, Galit. Tales of the Neighborhood: Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity. U of California P, 2003.

• Chapter 3 examines a Palestinian rabbinic parallel to the earlier Palestinian Gemara of our text that is not, however, preserved in the Babylonian Talmud. This parallel contains a complex story that is read as an internal critique of the rabbinic sotah ritual.

ben Maimon, Moses. The Code of Maimonides. Book Four: The Book of Women. Translated by Isaac Klein. Yale UP, 1972.

• Maimonides' code of Jewish law offers a new rendition of the rite based on his implicit interpretation of the Babylonian Gemara.

Rosen-Zvi, Ishay. The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual: Temple, Gender, and Midrash. Translated by Orr Scharf. Brill, 2012.

• Combines philological and cultural perspectives in a careful study of the Tannaitic phase of the rite. Uses the Gemara to clarify this earlier literature, but also shows how it diverges.

Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers. Random House, 2015.

• Both popular and erudite commentary guided by midrash and psychoanalysis. Chapter 2 ventures an original interpretation of the rabbinic rite in light of later Jewish commentaries and another legal narrative concerning women in Numbers, the Daughters of Tselofḥad (Num. 26-27).

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