The Babylonian Talmud, the Aramaic Incantation Bowls, and Babylonian Jewish Textuality

Abstract: Scholars have extensively used the Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls to illuminate the language, history, religion, culture, and social setting of Babylonian Jewry and the Babylonian Talmud. Yet despite a growing number of parallels identified between the bowls and the Talmud, scholars have not extensively explored what these correspondences can teach us about the circulation of texts in Jewish Babylonia and their incorporation into the Talmud and the incantation bowls. This essay closely examines three talmudic texts paralleling material in the bowls: a spell recorded at bPes 110a, an invitation formula appearing at bTan 20b, and a divine exaltation at bBer 10a. Instead of reflecting straightforward processes of quotation and citation, these texts exemplify the creative dynamics through which Babylonian Jewish texts were distributed and reworked inside and outside of the Babylonian Talmud.