This article—based extensively on the research by Professor Shai Secunda—explores aspects of the cultural, legal and spiritual background to the Babylonian Talmud. The title of this Talmudic corpus, ‘Babylonian Talmud’ is in itself interesting because it was not produced in Babylonia as many assume, but rather in Sasanian Persia (modern-day Iran). The Babylonian Talmud, or Talmud Bavli, is most often studied in yeshivot, where the cultural context of this foundational work of Jewish literature is usually overlooked. In yeshiva environments, the importance and extraordinary authority of the Babylonian Talmud is frequently regarded as Divine and sometimes accorded a status equal to or above the Torah itself (Secunda 2018: at 2 min).
Secunda builds and expands on the work of his teacher—who also happened to be a Chassidic rabbi—Professor Yaakov Elman (1943-2018), and who was a professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University (see links below for more on Elman’s research). I may be mistaken, but if I read Secunda correctly, he seems to be a little more cautious in his findings than his teacher.
Babylonia and the Sasanian Empire
The reason why the Babylonian Talmud (10 CE-586 CE)[1] could not have been written in Babylonia is that Babylonia fell to Persian rule in 539 BCE (under the Achaemenid Empire). This was about 1 000 years before the Babylonian Talmud was completed [or even 1 500 years, see: Kotzk Blog: 084) EVERYONE KNOWS WHEN THE TALMUD WAS WRITTEN DOWN:].
Later, between 224-651 CE, the Sasanian Empire ruled over Persia, which corresponded almost to the year, to the post-Mishnaic period (the Mishna was redacted around 210 CE), also known as the Gemara or Babylonian Talmud period (210-586 CE). Thus the Babylonian Talmud was the product, not of Babylonia, but the Sasanian Persian Empire (in today’s Iran). Technically, the term ‘Babylonia’ is anachronistic, although the Jewish communities living under the Sasanians continued to refer to that land as ‘Babylonia,’ which remained their traditional name for that region.
Cultural parallels
The dominant religion of Persia was Zoroastrianism. It is one of the world’s oldest organised religions, founded around the 6th century BCE by the prophet Zoroaster. The founding date, however, is debatable, with some suggesting an earlier origin between 1500-1000 BCE. It is essentially a monotheistic religion with aspects of dualism, as it emphasises the cosmic struggle between good and evil. It incorporated belief in angels, demons, satan, heaven and hell. Its adherents believed in the purity laws, an afterlife, a final judgement, ultimate resurrection and eternal bliss for the worthy.
Zoroastrianism adopted a pronounced dialectical style of reasoning and law-making. Scholars of what today is called Irano-Talmudica—the study of the Babylonian Talmud in its Sasanian context—observe that Jewish law, theology and cosmology appear to have absorbed, other times resisted, or simply reinterpreted elements of Zoroastrian thought. Again, this occurred throughout the period of Late Antiquity (3rd to 8th century CE, which corresponds to the Talmudic and immediate post-Talmudic period). The Zoroastrian Zand was produced between the 3rd -7th centuries, which corresponds even more exactingly to the time frame of the Babylonian Talmud. The geography, material, style and even the social class of the writers of both Zoroastrian and Talmudic literature exhibit profound similarities:
“[V]irtually all the sources available to us for reconstructing late antique Zoroastrianism consist of Middle Persian texts that were composed by a priestly elite. As is the case with Babylonian Judaism, which is almost entirely known via a compilation composed by an intellectual elite [i.e., the Babylonian Talmud] (Secunda 2026:257).
Middle Persian (Pahlavi) was the language of the Sasanians. It is called Middle Persian because it straddled Old Persian of the earliest Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BCE)[2] founded by Cyrus, and Modern Persian (eighth century to present times).
Most of the Zoroastrian teachings were committed to writing around the ninth century, but they reflected the earlier oral teachings of the Sasanian period. The Babylonian Talmud followed a similar trajectory, with the teachings remaining in oral form also from earlier periods and then redacted later, around the same time, in written form.
Caution against overstating the reach of ‘influence’
Secunda acknowledges significant parallels between the Babylonian Talmud and Zoroastrian texts from the same period of Late Antiquity, but he cautions scholars not to leap to definitive conclusions about influence or origin. In general, the term ‘influence’ “has come to be seen as a problematic mode of thinking about religious interaction” (Secunda 2016:270). Correlation alone is not always sufficient evidence of causation. In 1962, Samuel Sandmel coined the term parallelomania to describe the uncritical assumption that whenever two things resemble each other, one must have copied the other. It is, however, equally true that the idea that Jewish literature was never affected by other cultures is similarly an uncritical assumption.
Some scholars, therefore, have adopted a more exacting methodology by focusing on specific texts that are distinctly ‘Babylonian,’ or more accurately, Sasanian, as opposed to clearly Palestinian texts that emerged in Eretz Yisrael, like the Palestinian Talmud, or Talmud Yerushalmi:
“[S]cholars have suggested that unexpected myths, beliefs, ideas and other such shifts in the talmudic sources reflect interaction with Zoroastrianism. As is often the case, some of these claims are stronger than others; yet in the aggregate, they suggest that Babylonian Jewish beliefs, myths, and rituals were in some ways shaped by a prolonged and powerful encounter with Zoroastrianism” (Secunda 2016:271).
For this reason, we shall keep this analysis more grounded in textual evidence than speculation, and the readers can form their own conclusions. It should be borne in mind that, in the Talmud—where interreligious interaction is generally discouraged—we cannot expect to find explicit references to such encounters, even if they did occur.
As mentioned, scholars have adopted a methodology to first identify and isolate clear and overt Sasanian-like texts in the Babylonian Talmud, and then to compare them to similar Zoroastrian texts. Unfortunately—and perhaps precisely because we will examine a few examples drawn from this distinctively “Babylonian strata” of the Talmud—the following test cases are not always taken from the most savoury or intellectually stimulating sections of the Talmud. The purpose of this study, however, is not to foreground the often coarse subject matter of those texts but to examine the confluence and fluidity between the textual traditions of Talmudic rabbis and their Sasanian hosts.
Conflicting Zoroastrian rituals
Significantly, the Jews appear to have lived in safety and security in Persia during the Sasanian period “with little evidence of sustained Zoroastrian religious persecutions of Jews during this or later periods” (Secunda 2026:232). The Talmud (b. Shabbat 45a) does record a case of Zoroastrians confiscating Chanukah lamps (which, as we shall discuss, had recently been reemphasised despite their Hasmonean origins). On certain days, they would not allow non-Zoroastrians to use fire in religious rituals. This seems to have been more about fire being the proclivity of the Zoroastrian fire priests (חַבָּרֵי) and their ‘ownership’ of fire in ritual ceremonies, and not a targeting of Judaism.
Similar cases are found in the Talmud (b. Yevamot 63b). They banned kosher meat (Zoroastrians reserved cattle for themselves and strangled the animals instead of slaughtering them). They closed the bathhouses (water, like fire, was sacred to them), and exhumed Jewish bodies to not contaminate the earth. Again, these do not seem to have been directed against Jews as Jews, but their own Zoroastrian communities had precedence. The Talmud claims that the Jews were, in any case, lax within these three areas of Jewish observances, so Heaven sent the punishment through the Zoroastrians.
Rabbinic interaction with Zoroastrian priests
Although the Babylonian Talmud (b. Avodah Zara 11b) prohibited interaction with their non-Jewish neighbours (presumably the Zoroastrians) on the day of their festivals, in other instances, we find that the Amoraim (Talmudic rabbis) actually sent gifts (korbana) to them on their festivals. In one case, Rav Yehudah sent a gift to Avidarna. The reason given is that they are not considered idolators:
רַב יְהוּדָה שַׁדַּר לֵיהּ קוּרְבָּנָא לַאֲבִידַרְנָא בְּיוֹם אֵידָם,
אָמַר: יָדַעְנָא בֵּיהּ דְּלָא פָּלַח לַעֲבוֹדָה זָרָה
(b. Avodah Zara 65a)
The afterlife
Conceptualisations about the afterlife represent one area where there appears to be much overlap between Zoroastrianism and the Babylonian Talmud. This goes back earlier to Second Temple times—before the Sasanian period—where, arguably, there was already a Zoroastrian impression on the Jewish view of the afterlife. Early Jewish texts are concerned with reward and punishment after death, resurrection and eternal heavenly bliss. In the later Babylonian Talmud, these ideas are sharpened and become more graphic and vivid.
The Babylonian Talmud dramatically describes the punishment of the biblical spies for slandering the land:
מְלַמֵּד שֶׁנִּשְׁתַּרְבֵּב לְשׁוֹנָם וְנָפַל
עַל טִיבּוּרָם, וְהָיוּ תּוֹלָעִים יוֹצְאוֹת מִלְּשׁוֹנָם וְנִכְנָסוֹת
בְּטִיבּוּרָם, וּמִטִּיבּוּרָם וְנִכְנָסוֹת בִּלְשׁוֹנָם
“Their tongue was elongated and fell to their navel, and there were worms issuing from it and entering their navel, and exiting from their navel and entering their tongue” (b. Sota 35a).
Zoroastrian tradition describes a similar form of punishment in store for slanderers:
“I saw the soul of a man whose tongue was drawn out from his mouth and the noxious creatures were chewing it” (Ardā Wīrāz Nāmag 29).
Heavenly erotic rewards
According to Zoroastrian texts, after death, the soul is met by “an erotic hypostasis of its worldly deeds” (Secunda 2026:271). A hypostasis is an abstract quality or attribute that is imagined or personified as if it had its own concrete or bodily form—essentially, an idea made into a distinct being. In the afterlife, a person comes face to face with the hypostasis they themselves have shaped during life. In Zoroastrian thought, this hypostasis is usually an erotic being:
“Depending on one’s righteousness or wickedness in the world, this female figure is either beautiful or ugly, making the union between soul and its heavenly counterpart either blissful or baneful” (Secunda 2026:272).
Scholars maintain that the Islamic idea of the houris, or virgins that await the righteous in heaven, is rooted in this Zoroastrian belief.
The Babylonian Talmud similarly describes how the biblical Joseph, after his death, would have been “קְשׁוּרָה בּוֹ כְּכֶלֶב, sexually bound to [Potiphar’s wife] like a dog” had he given in to her temptation (b. Sota 3b).
Another astonishing pericope from the Babylonian Talmud also presents a sexualised vision of the afterlife:
רָבָא אַמְטִי לֵיהּ קוּרְבָּנָא לְבַר שֵׁישַׁךְ בְּיוֹם אֵידָם. אֲמַר: יָדַעְנָא בֵּיהּ דְּלָא פָּלַח לַעֲבוֹדָה זָרָה. אֲזַל אַשְׁכְּחֵיהּ דְּיָתֵיב עַד צַוְּארֵיהּ בְּוַורְדָּא, וְקָיְימָן זוֹנוֹת עֲרוּמּוֹת קַמֵּיהּ. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: אִית לְכוּ כְּהַאי גַּוְונָא לְעָלְמָא דְּאָתֵי? אֲמַר לֵיהּ: דִּידַן עֲדִיפָא טְפֵי מֵהַאי. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: טְפֵי מֵהַאי מִי הָוֵה
“Rava brought a gift to Bar Shashakh [the Persian] on the day of his festival. [Rava] said: I know that he does not worship idolatrously. [Rava] went and found [Bar Shashakh] sitting up to his neck in a bed of roses, with naked prostitutes in front of him. [Bar Shashakh] said: Do you have like this in the World to Come? [Rava] responded: Better than this one and that one!” (b. Avoda Zara 65a).
As to be expected, this text is refined—most likely by a redactional layer in the time of the Savoraim, or Talmudic editors, and ‘corrected’—to refer to matters relating to the government instead [see: Kotzk Blog: 198) WERE THE EDITORS OF THE BAVLI MORE POWERFUL THAN ITS WRITERS?].
Talking during mealtimes
The Babylonian Talmud (b. Taanit 5b) prohibits talking during mealtimes. This appears to reflect the cultural and ritual connotation attached to mealtimes in Zoroastrianism. For similar reasons, it requires sitting while relieving oneself (b. Berachot 40b), possibly reflecting Zoroastrian ritual norms, even though it offers justification for these unusual laws.
Chanukah Menorah
Secunda cites Geoffrey Herman (2012), who suggests that the Chanukah lights—as well as other Hasmonean festivals—had diminished in later Jewish practices. However, many of these previously neglected customs were revived during the Sasanian period, reflecting the Zoroastrian importance attached to fire rituals.
“Jews gained a renewed appreciation for the ‘holiness’ of the Hanukkah lamp and came to the festivals’ ritual kindling of the fire with renewed interest and commitment” (Secunda 2026: 274).
Tzitzit
According to Yishai Kiel (2014), the Babylonian Talmudic pericope requiring Jewish males to constantly wear a four-fringed garment, Tzitzit,[3] may have reflected similar injunctions to Zoroastrians to constantly wear their Kustig, or tasselled ritual belt. This ‘holy cord’ comprised six interwoven strands, each made up of twelve white threads of lamb's or, less frequently, goat's wool, making a total of seventy-two threads, and then tied with two square or reef knots, one in the front and then one at the back. Each strand had a specific religious significance and served as a boundary to protect the body against the forces of evil. The purpose of this belt was also to demarcate the two clean and unclean parts of the body (Encyclopaedia Iranica, entry Kustig). Interestingly, this is remarkably similar to the ‘gartel,’ or belt worn during Jewish prayers, and for similar reasons.
Dialectical style
Perhaps the best example is the general and pervasive dialectical writing style typical of Talmudic discourse. The Zoroastrian Zand (3rd- 7th centuries CE) is a discussion, interpretation and commentary on the older Avesta. The second millennium BCE), which is the sacred text of Zoroastrianism. The Zand (like the Talmud) is particularly concerned with purity laws. The following section of the Zand—which is written in Middle Persian (Pahlavi) and represents the scholarly and priestly language of the Sasanian period:
“[a] If she knows today that “yesterday
or last night I became a menstruant” then what is the law? Direct contact
[conveys impurity] from the moment that she knows it.
[b] The school of Pēšagsīr says: Other
matters are from its beginning.
[c] There is one who says that the
waiting period (tāyag) is from the beginning (i.e., retroactively, back to
yesterday), while other matters are from when she knows it.
[d] Mēdyōmāh [says]: A person who comes
into direct contact with her, (or) clothing that came into contact with her,
(or) pure things within fifteen steps [of her]: not even one of them becomes
impure [retroactively].
[e] Abarg said: I hold that one also regathers barsom (Zoroastrian ritual twigs) [as they have become contaminated through her]” (Zand ī Fragard ī jud-dēw dād, MS TD, folio 570, translation by Secunda).
Fascinatingly, this appears remarkably similar in dialectical style and content to any typical passage in the Babylonian Talmud, in this case, to sections of tractate Nidda. Reading this, with only a word or name altered, one is transported directly into the archetypal writing milieu, common between Zoroastrians/Sasanians and ‘Babylonian’ rabbis.
It is interesting to see that later, a similar case was made
against the dialectical style of argumentation, this time found in the writings
of the Baalei haTosafot (11th-14th centuries). The
adaptation of dialectics as a study methodology was referred to as ‘Dialectica
shel Goyim,’ or dialectics of the non-Jews [see: Kotzk
Blog: 254) TOSAFOT – DIALECTICS OF THE NATIONS?].
Further Reading
Kotzk
Blog: 197) BABYLONIAN INFLUENCES ON THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD:
Kotzk
Blog: 149) REVENGE OF THE TALMUD YERUSHALMI:
Kotzk
Blog: 199) ASTROLOGY – IGNORED BY THE YERUSHALMI, EMBRACED BY THE BAVLI:
Kotzk
Blog: 200) “THE TALMUD OF PERSECUTION” vs “THE TALMUD OF EXILE”:
Bibliography
Secunda, S. 2018, From Black Hat Yeshiva to the Secular Academy. Online source: https://www.google.com/search?q=professor+shai+sekunda&oq=professor+shai+sekunda&gs_lcrp=EgRlZGdlKgYIABBFGDkyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yBwgCEAAY7wUyBwgDEAAY7wUyCggEEAAYgAQYogQyBwgFEAAY7wUyCggGEAAYgAQYogTSAQg3MTQyajBqMagCAbACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7072f9c6,vid:rE0rd_NYugM,st:0. Retrieved on 2 May 2026.
Secunda, S., 2026, ‘The Bavli and Zoroastrianism’, in What
is the Talmud? The State of the Question, Edited by Jay Harris and
Christine Hayes, Harvard University Press, 256-277).
[1]
The period of the Savoraim or Talmudic Editors, is included in
this dating.
[2]
After the Achaemenid (550-330 BCE), came the Hellenistic/Seleucid period
(330-247 BCE), and the Parthian (Arsacid) period (247 BCE-224 CE), followed by
the Sasanian period (224-651 CE).
[3]
The Torah, of course, does speak about the Tzitzit on the four corners
of the garment, but does not prescribe wearing Tzitzit constantly.
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