Rabbinic Portrayals of Persia: A Study of Babylonian Rabbinic Culture in its Sasanian Context

This dissertation examines the ancient Iranian context of the Babylonian Talmud, the vast compendium of Jewish law and lore that the rabbis produced while living under the Persian Sasanian Empire (224--651 C.E. ) whose official religion was Zoroastrianism. While for decades scholars in Rabbinics have written prolifically on the Greco-Roman and early Christian contexts of Palestinian Rabbinic Literature, by comparison the study of the Persian context of the Babylonian Talmud has been relatively understudied. My dissertation contributes to Talmudic Studies by exploring aspects of Babylonian rabbinic culture from a comparative perspective that draws heavily from primary and secondary sources in Ancient Iranian Studies. The overarching question that I explore in this work is what role the ancient Persian Empire, as both a real socio-historical force and imaginary literary interlocutor, played on the Babylonian sages' constructions of a group identity and authority vis-a-vis "Persian others." With this basic problem permeating my dissertation, each chapter explores the representations of a different "Persian other" in the Talmud---namely, the Persians as an imperial ethno-class, the Sasanian kings Shapur I and II, and the Zoroastrian priests.;Chapter one in this dissertation outlines the methodology that I employ in the study of the Sasanian context of the Talmud. In this chapter, I situate my dissertation within the field of Rabbinics and describe both the prospects and inherent limitations in the integration of Ancient Iranian Studies into Talmudic Studies. Chapter two of this dissertation analyzes the generic representations of "Persia" or "Persians" in the Talmud in light of the question of to what extent the Babylonian sages possessed knowledge of Persian culture. After giving an overview of the Talmud's images of Persians as an imperial ethno-class, as well as the Middle Persian loanwords in the corpus, I evaluate three talmudic texts that shed light on the complex ways in which the rabbis discussed and absorbed Persian civilization. In chapter three of this work, I examine the ways in which the Talmud's depictions of the Sasanian kings Shapur I and II relate to Sasanian royal narratives and Zoroastrian historiographical trends that viewed the kings as icons of authority. In the final chapter of this dissertation, I explore the socio-cultural interface between the Babylonian sages and Zoroastrian priests. Through a detailed analysis of the administrative and religious functions of the Zoroastrian priesthood, I delineate the ways in which the Sasanian world impacted the Talmud's portrayals of Zoroastrian priests.