Ethics and Identity Formation: Resh Lakish and the monastic repentant robber, in: L'identité à...

ETHICS AND IDENTITY FORMATION: RESH LAKISH AND THE MONASTIC REPENTANT ROBBER

Michal Bar-asher siegal

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 1

Introduction

When asking how religious groups define their identity vis-à-vis other groups, and the place of ethical matters in this definition, we, as scholars, are faced with some of what J. Z. Smith called “methodological entailments” of “mythic models.” 2 In his book Drudgery Divine, the study of the rela-tion of mystery religions to Early Christianity served Smith as a case study on research distorted by underlying assumptions and historical bias. Smith asserts:

What is required is an end to the imposition of the extra-historical categories of uniqueness and the “Wholly Other” upon historical data and the tasks of historical understanding. 3

At the same time, he observes, a “like them” rhetoric, which focuses on the similarities, often serves an apologetic purpose that “swallows up” the differences that render such a comparison valuable. And so, while the lan-guage of uniqueness attaches an “ontological meaning to an historical one,” and may attribute superiority to one religion over another, the language of “same” blurs the distinctive components of each religion. What is required, suggests Smith, is the development of a discourse of “difference,” a complex term which invites negotiation, classification and comparison, and at the same time avoids an all too plain discourse of “same.”

1. Beer-Sheva, Israel.2. J.Z. smith., Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions

of Late Antiquity, Londres 1990, p. 143.3. Ibid., p. 42–3.

Michal Bar-Asher Siegal

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While the collection of articles in this volume, under the title – “Identity through Ethics,” may imply that ethics have a role in shaping the unique iden-tities of religious groups, my article discusses ethics as the common ground between identities. Keeping Jonathan Smith’s caveats in mind, I will try to walk the perilous line between the two: identifying uniqueness in creating identities, while at the same time proposing that it is in the “sameness” of the ethical notions of disparate religious groups, where we can find the formation of central religious identities.

In other words, whereas one would expect to find unique ethical notions marking the borderlines between formed identities, in this case religious iden-tities, I wish to propose that sometimes distinct and discrete identities can still share central notions, which are ethically related. These shared ethical con-cepts stand at the intersection between different religious communities, while at the same time they are part of what differentiates these religious identities.

Taking the interactions between Jews and Christians in the Persian Empire as manifested in the Babylonian Talmud as a case study, I will argue that several examples demonstrate how similarities between rabbinic traditions and Christian ones are revealed in contemporaneous common ethical notions. These shared notions form part of the core values of both religions. Issues of repentance and the mythic early history of their leaders, expose shared ethical views, which make up the religious foundation of the group itself.

Elsewhere 4 I have claimed for an actual textual relationship between two literary traditions. The first is the Syriac translations of early monastic texts, among them the Apophthegmata Patrum, a monastic text redacted circa the mid-5th century in Palestine 5 (though containing earlier material), translated into Syriac in the course of the 5th century, which enjoyed wide and rapid cir-culation in the Syriac speaking milieu, including the Persian Empire. 6 The

4. M. Bar-asher siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud, Cambridge MA 2013; idem, Literary Analogies in Rabbinic and Christian Monastic Sources, Yale University Dissertation, New Haven 2010.

5. For a bibliography on the Apophthegmata Patrum see W. harmless Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism, Oxford 2004, p. 183–6; S. ruBenson, « Asceticism and Monasticism, I: Eastern », in A. Casiday, F.W. norris (dir .), The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 2: Constantine to c. 600, Cambridge 2007, p 637–68, at p. 649. For a Palestinian original redaction see L. regnault « Les Apophtegmes des pères en Palestine aux ve-vie siècles », Irénikon 54 (1981), p. 320–30, and the references in Graham gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, Oxford 1993, p. 9–17. Regnault asserts that the Palestinian origin of the collections may easily explain their rapid dissemination in all of the languages of Christendom.

6. A.H. BeCker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Philadelphia 2006, p. 173–4. I am also indebted to Prof. Sebastian Brock for the information on this topic with which he provided me in private email correspondence. On Syriac compilations of monas-tic writing see H.G.B. teule, « Les compilations monastiques syriaques », in R. lavenant

Ethics and Identity Formation: Resh Lakish and the monastic repentant robber

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second is the literary traditions in the Babylonian Talmud, redacted in the Persian Empire sometime in the 6th-7th centuries. 7 In this paper, however, I wish to claim that regardless of the actual historical connections between the composers of analogous paragraphs in both monastic and rabbinic texts, a comparison between the two texts, present in the same geographical location, around the same time, and in the same language (Aramaic), offers us a unique opportunity to examine questions of identity formation in contemporary and parallel religious societies.

Put differently, while I can, and did, make the case for historical connec-tions between rabbinic and monastic traditions, I do not wish to address his-torical questions here. The examples that follow offer insufficient information to this end, preventing us from presenting an historical claim regarding them. Instead, I will approach these analogical texts with a different set of ques-tions: If indeed two religious societies use the same ethical components in two distinct literary religious contexts, what can it teach us about their reli-gious milieus?

I will take as an example a topic which I believe represents this broader issue: the depiction of central leading figures of the religious movement.

The Repentant Robber

I wish to claim that the Talmud’s creation of the literary character of Resh Lakish features a constellation of literary elements found in monastic texts as well. Several scholars have remarked in recent years on the potential benefits of the comparison between the rabbinic literature and the Christian hagiog-raphical corpora. Gunter Stemberger commented: “The potential cross-links between biographical narratives in rabbinical texts and Christian hagiog-raphy merit closer examination.” 8 Stephen Gero argues that the study of the interconnection between biographical narratives in rabbinical sources and in Christian hagiography, “is potentially important for gaining a more informed

(dir.), Symposium Syriacum VII, Uppsala University, Department of Asian and African Languages, 11–14 August 1996 , Orientalia Christiana Analecta 256, Rome 1998, p. 249–4.

7. The time of the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud is still widely debated in scholarly circles. Dating vary from the late fifth or early sixth centuries (see for example Y. elman, « The Babylonian Talmud in its Historical Context », in S. lieBerman mintz, G.M. goldstein (dir.), Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein, New York 2005, p. 19–27, at p. 19: « it was composed… no later than c. 542 when the Black Plague appeared in Byzantium and proceeded to ravage the region for two centuries. ») to as late as the sixth to eighth centuries, D. halivni, « Iyunim be-hithavut hatalmud », Sidra: Journal for the Study of Rabbinic Literature 20 (2005), p. 69–117 (Hebrew).

8. H. L. straCk and G. stemBerger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, Minneapolis 1996, p. 62.


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understanding of the nature and function of Jewish literature of late antiquity.” 9 Along the same lines, Sebastian Brock points out the genre’s unique charac-teristics: “Hagiography was a literary genre in late antiquity where texts were particularly apt to cross, and sometimes, re-cross linguistic boundaries.” 10 I suggest that not only does hagiographical literature offer a rich corpus for a comparative study of Christian and rabbinic literature, it also provides a van-tage point for exploring both religious communities and their authors.

The rabbinic example I would like to examine is the decision to portray a prominent member of the rabbinic leadership as having led a sinful life prior to his rabbinical career. It demonstrates a moral ethos shared by the Christian writers, as will be demonstrated below. However, before we turn to an exam-ination of the texts I wish to address one possible methodological problem: the depiction of rabbinic protagonists in the different rabbinic sources. Daniel Boyarin described this problem: 11

Much of the source material analyzed [in his book]… consists of what are technically called “legends of the Sages” in the literary-critical and folklor-istic work on rabbinic literature. These represent scattered, frequently dis-jointed, and often contradictory episodic narratives with one or another of the Rabbis (or sometimes other figures in their world) depicted in a single inci-dent. We have no extended biographies or hagiographies in any of the classical rabbinic texts (virtually the only Jewish texts we have between the second and the sixth centuries A.C.).

When one attempts to “reconstruct” a rabbinic figure’s overall depiction in the rabbinic corpus, from various sources, from different geographical and chronological sources, not to mention the anonymous composers and their differing agendas, even within the single anthology that is the Babylonian Talmud, how should we treat the final outcome of this reconstruction? Historical reconstructions of this sort, popular in past research, no longer hold water, 12 but I agree with Boyarin that there is still value to the assemblage of this material:

Nevertheless, I believe that one can derive meaning by studying together the stories about a particular Rabbi or other figure because these named charac-ters are themselves a kind of sign or emblem, almost embodied complexes of

9. S. gero, « The Stern Master and His Wayward Disciple: A “Jesus” Story in the Talmud and in Christian Hagiography » JSJ 25 (1994), p. 310–11.

10. S. BroCk, « Saints in Syriac: A Little-Tapped Resource », Journal of Early Christian Studies 16.2 (2008), p. 181–96.

11. D. Boyarin, Dying for God: martyrdom and the making of Christianity and Judaism, Stanford 1999, p. 31–2.

12. See for example, Y. Frenkel, Iyunim be-ʻolamo ha-ruḥani shel sipur ha-agadah, Tel Aviv 1981.


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particular ideas or possibilities for thought (sometimes even impossibilities for thought) within the religious world of the Rabbis and the communities within which they were embedded. 13

The embodied complex that is represented in a name, as famous as Resh Lakish, I claim, is significant when compared to similar complexes in monastic literature.

Resh Lakish, a rabbinic sage from the second generation of Babylonian Amoraim (3rd century CE), is described in several rabbinic accounts as having a dubious past. One of the texts describes him also as a gladiator outsmarting his enemies, 14 while another describes him as a famous robber, leader of a band of thieves, before his encounter with R. Yoḥanan. 15 Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metz’ia 84a: 16

One day R. Yohanan was bathing in the Jordan. When Resh Lakish saw him he thought he was a woman and leapt into the Jordan after him. He planted his sword in the Jordan and jumped to the other side of the Jordan. When R. Yohanan saw him he said to him, “Your strength should be for Torah.” He said, “Your beauty should be for women.” Said he, “If you will repent I will give you my sister [in marriage], who is more beautiful than I.” He undertook [to repent]; then he wished to return and collect his clothes, but could not. Subsequently, [R. Yohanan] taught him Bible and Mishnah, and made him into a great man.

13. D. Boyarin, Dying for God, p. 32. But compare to Boyarin’s statement in idem., Socrates and the Fat Rabbis, Chicago 2009, p 151, dealing with halakhic statements, where texts are transformed to become examples of Bakhtin’s « dialectic »: « The point is not that there is no difference between Rabbi Abbahu’s and Rav Pappa’s views; the point is rather that there is no difference between Rabbi Abbahu and Rav Pappa (the sugya would suffer nothing if they were exchanged). » I thank Zvi Septimus for this reference.

14. Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 47a. The term used in the story is לודאי lwdʼy. For an exten-sive bibliographical discussion of the exact meaning of this term, see M.Z. Brettler and M. PoliakoFF, « Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish at the Gladiator’s Banquet: Rabbinic Observations on the Roman Arena » HTR 83.1 (1990), p. 95–6, n. 6.

15. For some of the vast choice of scholarly discussions of this story, see Fraenkel, Iyunim ba-Olamo, p. 73–7; e. segal, « Law as Allegory? An Unnoticed Literary Device in Talmudic Narratives », Prooftexts 8.2 (1988), p. 250–1; d. Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture,Berkeley 1993, p. 212–19; idem., Unheroic Conduct: the Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, Berkeley 1997, p. 128–30; R. kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity, Londres 1999, p. 1–5; I. hevroni, « A tale of two sinners » Azure 33 (2008), p 93–112; A. kosman, « R. Johanan and Resh Lakish: the image of God in the study hall, “masculinity” versus “femininity” », European Judaism 43.1 (2010), p. 128–45; S. greenField-gilat, The Mother Who Acts in Favor of her Son’s Destiny in Three BT Stories: Literary-Feminist Reading, Jerusalem 2010, (Hebrew University MA thesis).

16. The text is quoted according to Ms. Hamburg 165.


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In what follows I will introduce analogous monastic literary motifs to those present in this story. At the same time, bearing in mind the danger of lapsing into “sameness” discourse, I would like to stress that Resh Lakish is very much a “rabbinic sage”. As one of the most prominent sages of the second generations of Amoraim (3rd century CE), with multiple appearances in the rabbinic literature, he is depicted as an accomplished Torah scholar that “When he discussed halakhic questions it was as if he were uprooting mountains and rubbing them together.” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 24a) However, the story of his sinful youth and repentance, unique in rabbinic lit-erature, merits a closer examination in light of monastic literary traditions concerning the monastic repentant robbers Moses and Antiochus.

At this point, let me also stress that I will not be claiming here that they are the first to be depicted as such, or that one of their literary depictions was the source for the other. I only wish to point out their interesting resemblances in a synchronic analysis of shared motifs found in both religious hagiogra-phies of these repentant robbers-turned leaders (as opposed to a diachronic examination of the repentant robber motif in past traditions). Many of the sim-ilarities I will be pointing out can be satisfactorily gathered under the cate-gory recently proposed by Galit Hasan-Rokem, when she said: “Not only does Rabbinic literature of Late Antiquity lend itself to folkloristic study on many different levels, but I would argue that the textual philosophy of Rabbinic culture is deeply and comprehensively ethnographic.” 17 Hasan-Rokem offers a study of the Rabbinic texts “from a perspective of folk literature and eth-nographic writing”, which prefers “to look at interaction between cultures in terms of dialogue rather than ‘influence’”; to deal “with exchange rather than polemics”; to look “at the constant dynamics between them as represented in the interaction between oral/literal, religious/secular etc.” 18 Her approach, therefore, suggests looking at the texts “dialogically” since:

A dialogic approach to folk narrative transmission concentrates on the inter-face revealed in the existing versions rather than on conjecturing ‘missing links’, which we know are endless in number and mostly oral and therefore often not attainable by philological methods born out of studies of written texts… The fact that we are not able to establish unambiguously the direction of the movement of the narratives from one culture to another is regrettable but should not diminish the importance of the connection itself. 19

17. G. hasan-rokem, « Narratives in dialogue: a folk literary perspective on interreli-gious contacts in the Holy Land in rabbinic literature of late antiquity », in A. koFsky, G. G. stroumsa (dir.), Sharing the Sacred; Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, First- Fifteenth Centuries CE, Jerusalem 1998, p. 109.

18. Ibid., p. 127.19. Ibid., p. 126.


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Taking the ethnographic character of the sources in mind, assuming an oral transmission on both sides, as well as written traditions, I shall attempt to outline a general survey of close literary motifs in both corpora of texts, without attempting to decipher their relationship. The goal, as I said, is to demonstrate closeness and explore potential avenues in examining the two side by side, and not a description of the way it came about.

The literary motif of the repentant robber is common in Christian literature in general, and in monastic literature in particular. For example Paphnutius 2 (PG 65:380, ward, P. 202):

It was said of Abba Paphnutius that he did not readily drink wine. One day he found himself on the road facing a band of robbers who were drinking wine. The captain of the band was acquainted with him and knew that he did not drink wine. Seeing how weary he was, he filled him a cup of wine and holding his sword in his hand he said to him, ‘If you do not drink this, I will kill you.’ So the old man, knowing that he was fulfilling the commandment of God and in order to win the confidence of the robber, took the cup and drank it. Then the captain asked his forgiveness, saying, ‘Forgive me, Abba, for I have made you unhappy.’ But the old man said, ‘I believe that, thanks to this cup, God will have mercy on you now and in the age to come.’ Then the robber captain said, ‘Have confidence in God that from now on I shall not harm anyone.’ So the old man converted the whole band by giving up his own will for the Lord’s sake.

Famously present in Luke’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion (23:39–43), they are explicitly mentioned as exemplars, in stories of repentant robbers, turned holy men. For example, in the story of the robber-chief Antiochus, the decision of Simeon Stylite to not surrender the robber to his prosecutors is described thus:

The saint said to them, ‘With our master Jesus Christ were crucified two thieves, one of whom received according to his deeds while the other inher-ited the kingdom of heaven. If someone can stand against the one who sent him here, let him come and drag him away himself, since I, for my part, nei-ther led him here nor can I send him away.’ 20

Robbers were a common phenomenon in the Roman world, 21 and they were indeed major figures in Greco-Roman literary works, fictional and his-torical novels. 22 They were “undesirable role models for those wishing to

20. R. doran, The Lives of Simeon Stylites, Kalamazoo 1992, p. 95–7. I am grateful to Yishai Kiel for referring me to this source.

21. B. D. shaw, « Bandits in the Roman Empire » Past and Present 105 (1984), p. 5–52; idem, « The Bandit », in A. giardina (dir.), The Romans,.Chicago 1993, p. 300–41.

22. See K. hoPwood, « All That May Become a Man: The Bandit in the Ancient Novel » dans L. Foxhall, J. salmon (dir .), When Men Were Men: Masculinity, Power, and Identity in


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construct a socially sanctioned masculine identity.” 23 In a borderline status they “[m]enac[ed] the Roman state’s authority by replicating its use of organ-ized violence… yet removing the use of violence from a legal base.” 24 The repentant robber thus presents us with a literary protagonist who moves from the blurry fringes of society into the very heart of its spiritual elite.

According to Palladius, Abba Moses, known as “The Robber,” was an “Ethiopian by birth,” meaning he had ancestry from somewhere south of the Sahara. 25 He was a slave dismissed of his master’s services “because of his great recalcitrance and penchant for robbery.” He then led an outlaw’s life in Nitria and was leader of a band of seventy thieves. Only later in life did he become a monk. According to Palladius, he was trained by Isidore the Priest, was ordained as a priest himself, and became one of the great fathers of Scetis. 26 We are told that, “Abba Poemen said, ‘Since Abba Moses and the third generation in Scetis, the brothers do not make progress anymore’.” (Poemen 166, PG 65.361, Ward 190).

Antonius’s account of The Life of Simeon Stylites describes the repentant robber, Antiochus:

Hear another extraordinary wonder. There was a robber-chief (archilestes) in Syria named Antiochus, also called Gonatas, whose deeds were recounted throughout the whole world. Soldiers were frequently sent to catch him and lead him to Antioch, but no one could catch him because of his mighty strength. Bears and other beasts were kept ready in Antioch because he would have to fight the beasts, and the whole city of Antioch was in a commotion because of him.

This Antiochus was a head of robbers but also a gladiator fighting animals in his spare time. Much like Resh Lakish, a career in robbery goes hand in hand with the traits of gladiators. On the two traditions in the stories about Resh Lakish Daniel Boyarin wrote: 27

Resh Lakish, although “ethnically” Jewish, is clearly in the beginning of the narrative stereotyped as a follower of Roman cultural paradigms. The term used to describe him at this stage in his life is listes [in Greek lèstès], brigand, but he seems here to have been as much a soldier or a gladiator as a thief, and

Classical Antiquity, Londres 1998, p. 195–204.23. K. hoPwood, « All That May Become a Man », p. 195.24. E. thurman, « Looking for a Few Good Men: Mark and Masculinity », in S. D. moore,

J. CaPel anderson (dir.) New Testament Masculinities, Atlanta 2003, p. 141. And see there p. 137–162 for many bibliographical references on robbers in the Roman World and its lite-rature, as well as in Thomas grünewald, Bandits in the Roman Empire: Myth and Reality, Londres – New York 2004).

25. W. harmless, Desert Christians, p. 203–6.26. Palladius Historia Lausiaca 19, Ward, p. 138–43.27. D. Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, p. 128–9.


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a sexual libertine as well. Indeed, by the time that this story is being told, and in the eastern reaches of the Sassanian Empire where it is being told, these figures would probably have been conflated in the cultural imagination into a single image of violent, sexually aggressive masculinity.

Boyarin is making the point that the combination of the two descriptions, robber and gladiator, in the literary depiction of the figure of Resh Lakish is meant for the maximization of the “image of violent, sexually aggressive mas-culinity.” The same description can be applied to robber/gladiator Antiochus.

Interestingly, the portrayals of Resh Lakish on the one hand and Abba Moses and Antiochus on the other, bear additional similarities. One of the shared motifs is the physical strength manifested by the ability to cross a large river during their respective robber days. As can be seen from the pas-sage quoted above, before jumping into the river, Resh Lakish is said to have planted his sword in the Jordan. The description of the burly robber, sword in hand, conquering a river in pursuit of a beautiful woman is striking. 28 However, this display of potency heightens the loss of his strength that occurs when Resh Lakish agrees to enter the study house.

The famous story about the early, wicked days of Abba Moses is told in Palladius, and preserved in the Syriac version:

He had as an enemy a certain shepherd, against whom he remembered certain evil things, and he went to steal [sheep] from his flock. And the shepherd was told by a certain man, [who said], “Moses hath crossed the Nile by swimming, and he holdeth a sword in his hand, and his clothes are placed on his head; and he hath crossed the river by swimming ” 29

Like Resh Lakish, Abba Moses’ strength is demonstrated by his ability to cross the river with his sword on his way to commit the offense of stealing sheep. In comparison, while Resh Lakish’s intentions when jumping into the water are not explicitly mentioned, the reason for his actions was what he thought was the sight of a beautiful woman bathing. Therefore, Boyarin’s reading of this story seems apt: Resh Lakish is being depicted as a “sexual libertine,” described in “the image of a violent sexually aggressive mascu-linity” and as having “clear and aggressive sexual intent,” 30 in pursuing the bathing woman in the river. Therefore, both narratives, in the rabbinic and Christian hagiographical accounts, chose a shared literary motif to demon-strate the potency of two fearsome brigands: Resh Lakish and Abba Moses, on

28. A « phallic imagery which symbolizes Resh Lakish’s unbridled virility » (See Boyarin, Carnal Israel, p. 215–16).

29. Anan Isho, The Book of Paradise; Being the Histories and Sayings of the Monks and Ascetics of the Egyptian Desert. By Palladius, Hieronymus and Others, trans. and ed., E. A. wallis Budge, Londres 1904, p. 215–16.

30. Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, p. 128–30.


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their way to commit a crime, making a manly effort in crossing a river, sword in hand, in their “pre-sainthood” days.

In a similar, yet different story we read about Antiochus:

Now when they went out to catch him they found him drinking in an inn in some village and the soldiers surrounded the inn. When he learnt of this, [the robber] began to stage a scene. There was a river in the village and that rob-ber-chief had a mare he used to order about as if it were human. Rising up, he threw his clothes onto the mare and said to it, “Go to the river and wait for me there”. The mare left the inn biting and kicking, and when it got to the river it waited for him. Then the robber-chief also came out of the inn unsheathing his sword, crying out and saying to the crowd of soldiers, “Flee lest someone be killed”, and none of the soldiers could overpower him. Escaping all those sur-rounding him, he crossed the river with his mare and, mounting her, reached the enclosure of holy Simeon.

The robber escapes from his captors, sword in hand, crossing the river to the holy man, where he will repent. In this case, he is not swimming, but rather crossing it on his mare. He is not crossing it to commit a felony, but rather to escape punishment. But the virility of the scene is still apparent. The single man, the masculine robber, sword in hand, crosses a river, right before his humble repentance.

As noted above, the rabbinic story is preoccupied with sublimation and its role in the life of the scholar. 31 Resh Lakish becomes weak upon agreeing to join the world of Torah. This is a motif found elsewhere in rabbinic literature, where the study of Torah is manifested in the weakening of the body, most famously in the saying: “R. Hanina said: Why is [the Torah] called Tushiyah ,Because it weakens the strength of man.” (Babylonian Talmud ?(תושיה)Sanhedrin 26b, ms. Yad haRav Herzog). 32 In some cases, just the mention of the possibility of study has this physical effect, before the actual study takes place. 33 Resh Lakish’s physical strength is diverted to “rabbinically accept-able channels”: a passion for Torah study and devoted discipleship of his

31. See R. kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society, p. 4.32. See for example, the story about Elazar b. R. Shimeon who « was put in charge of pressing

men and animals into forced labor » (איתמני אנגרבטיס מפיק עבודה), and was taught by Elijah for 13 years, and then « once he was able to recite the Sifra he could not even carry his own cloak. » (Pesikta deRav Kahana 11:22, English translation according to Pĕsiḳta dĕ-Raḇ Kahăna: R. Kahana’s compilation of discourses for Sabbaths and festal days, William G. Braude, Israel J. kaPstein (trans.), Philadephia 2002, p. 294–5). I thank Tzvi Novick for this reference.

33. The next passage in Pesikta deRav Kahana 11:22, tells about the steward in Rabban Gamaliel’s house who « could carry as much as forty se’ah of corn to the baker. » However, upon simply hearing a suggestion to study Sifra « he could no longer carry even one se’ah. », p. 295.


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teacher. 34 He becomes a famous rabbi, a bright scholar who appears in many Talmudic sources. Similarly to Resh Lakish’s loss of physical strength as part of a spiritual transformation, later in the monastic story Moses’ repentance entails the weakening of his body by fasting and other ascetic practices, to the point of severe illness and the loss of physical strength. Unlike Resh Lakish, who loses his power by accepting the yoke of Torah, his loss of power is due to fasting and other ascetic practices:

He made a covenant with God that he would neither sleep during the whole night nor bend his knees, and he dwelt in his cell for seven years, and remained standing the whole of each night with his eyes open, and he never closed his eyelids… and he was ill for a long time, and he never thoroughly recovered from his illness, and he never again enjoyed the health of body which he had possessed formerly.” 35

In this way, through severe ascetic practices, Abba Moses completed his transformation from fearsome robber to holy man and became one of the most famous and revered Abbas of his day. In the Babylonian Talmud we find a rabbinic version of the loss of strength motif, connecting it to the study of the Torah, while in the monastic stories, severe ascetic practices. But in both cases, the protagonists’ transition to a life of holiness is accompanied by the loss of their previously-possessed, impressive physique. 36

Antiochus, on the other hand, dies within hours of his escape. When he is left alone with Simeon, he stretched out his hands towards heaven, and said ‘Son of God, receive my spirit in peace’, and then wept for two hours. “Then, placing himself in front of the pillar of the righteous one, he immediately gave up his spirit.” The story doesn’t mention an explicit loss of physical powers, but the rigorous crying and ultimate death stands in strong contrast to the muscular robber of a few hours ago.

After a fruitful career in rabbinic academic circles, Resh Lakish’s death is told in relation to a legal, halakhic argument with R. Yohanan, his teacher. During the argument, having to do with the purity of various knives and dag-gers, R. Yohanan, upset by his student’s disagreement with his own opinion, publicly humiliates Resh Lakish by saying to him: “The brigand knows his

34. See Boyarin, Carnal Israel, p. 215–16.35. The Book of Paradise, p. 216.36. Another example of the connection between ascetic practices and their contribution to one’s

spiritual advancement can be seen in the story from the Babylonian Talmud of R. Shimon bar Yohai, where he assigns his advances in Talmudic rhetoric to his prolong stay in the cave, and the physical difficulties he endured (bodily clefts and the likes). See m. Bar-asher siegal, « The Making of a Monk-Rabbi: the Background for the Creation of the Stories of R. Shimon bar Yohai in the Cave », Zion 76:3 [This is part 3 of Volume 76] (2011), p. 279–304 (Hebrew).


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trade.” 37 As a result of this argument Resh Lakish became very sick, and R. Yohanan’s sister, Resh Lakish’s wife, came to ask for his mercy in sparing his life:

His sister [R. Yohanan’s sister, the wife of Resh Lakish] came and wept before him: she said, “Forgive him for my sake.” He did not pay attention to her. “Forgive him for the sake of my son,” [she pleaded.] He replied: “Leave thy fatherless children. I will preserve them alive (Jer 49:11).” “For the sake of my widowhood,” He said to her: “And let thy widows trust in me (Jer 49:11).” Resh Lakish died.

Despite the horrendous implications of R. Yohanan’s argument with Resh Lakish for his sister and her children, he refuses to relent, even when con-fronted by her sorrowful pleas. R. Yohanan ignores the emotional aspects of his sister’s request and puts himself in the position of the biblical God from the verses, who feeds his followers. This way, he isolates the financial elements of her request, and addresses them only while rejecting the emotional ones. 38 In light of the rabbis’ healing powers that feature in several rabbinic narra-tives, R. Yohanan’s refusal appears especially cruel. 39 R. Yohanan’s refusal to answer to his sister’s pleas erodes his stature in the readers’ eyes since he causes pain to a widow and orphans, as the Torah repeatedly mandates com-passion for these poor and defenseless members of society. 40

Separation from one’s family is another common feature, emphasized in early Christianity, beginning with Jesus’ call to others to follow him and leave their parents, for example in Luke 14.25–27. As Elizabeth A. Clark writes:

Many verses in the Synoptic Gospels urge relaxation- or abandonment – of family ties in order to follow Jesus, often in the context of eschatological expectation. With the delay (or failure) of the parousia and the nonfulfill-ment of the eschaton, these verses were stripped from their context and read as timeless injunctions for ascetic living: the content was appropriated, if not the probable motivation. 41

37. See segal, Law as Allegory?, p. 255, n. 41.38. See greenField gilat, p. 27.39. Kalmin (The Sage, p. 3.) reads this story as critical of Palestinian rabbinic attempts to « win

disciples from among the non-rabbinic population, and protests against the inferior product produced by this outreach effort ». According to this reading, R. Yohanan is being criticized for recruiting Resh Lakish, the robber.

40. Ibid., p. 3. And see kosman, « R. Johanan and Resh Lakish », who puts the sister at the focus of this ironic story.

41. E. A. Clark, Reading renunciation: asceticism and scripture in early Christianity, Princeton 1999, p. 196. See there p. 196–203 for an extensive survey of ascetic use of NT verses to pro-mote defamilialization. But see for example C.T. sChroeder, « Child Sacrifice in Egyptian Monastic Culture: From Familial Renunciation to Jephatah’s Lost Daughter », Journal of Early Christian Studies 20 (2012), p. 269–302, at p. 280, who claims that « representations


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The desert fathers took this call to an extreme and some of their sayings testify to a complete severance of family relations. A certain story, Poemen 5 (PG 65.320, Ward, P. 165) tells of Abba Poemen’s cruel reaction to his sister’s distress:

The magistrate of that district once wanted to see Abba Poemen but the old man did not want to see him. So he seized his sister’s son and threw him into prison, under the pretext that he was a criminal saying, “If the old man comes to intercede for him I will let him go.” Then his sister came to weep at Poemen’s door, but he gave her no answer. Then she reproached him in these words saying, “Heart of stone, have pity on me, for he is my only son.” But he only said to her, “Poemen has not brought forth any sons.” At that she went away.

Even though the troubles of his sister and nephew resulted from the Abba’s relationship with the magistrate, he would not help his sister. She repeatedly asks for his mercy, pleading for the sake of her loved one, yet he refuses. As in the Resh Lakish story, the misery and cries of a stricken sister make no impression on the Abba. The protagonist is portrayed as stubbornly refusing to allow family considerations to affect his routine, be it a scholarly decision to sever ties with a student in the rabbinic story, or a holy man’s refraining from dealing with a magistrate to avoid interfering his chosen life of solitude. The sisters’ suffering and pleading, as well as the consequences of their brothers’ refusal to help, has no effect. Of course, in this case the literary topos paral-lels that of R. Yohanan in the Talmudic story, and not of Resh Lakish. Another difference is that Abba Poemen is being coerced by the magistrate, while R Yohanan is not presented with such circumstances. However, I think that the literary motif of both stories, according to which the protagonist’ heart is not affected by his sister’s misery benefit from this comparison, stressing the separation from one’s family consideration in favor of “purely” scholastic/monastic considerations.

Finally, we may note in connection with the figure of Resh Lakish that two passages in the Babylonian Talmud attribute to him rather extreme qual-ities of equanimity. In one passage he is ascribed abstinence from laughter (Berakhot 31a):

R. Yohanan said in the name of R. Shimeon b. Yohai: “It is forbidden to a man to fill his mouth with laughter in this world”…It was related of Resh Lakish that he never again filled his mouth with laughter in this world after he heard this saying from R. Yohanan his teacher.

of the ascetic life as a complete rejection of traditional family, however, are somewhat exag-gerated », based on evidence from Shenoute’s monastery.


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While another passage attributes to him a belief that anger distances one from God and prophecy (Pesachim 66b): Resh Lakish said: “As to every man who becomes angry, if he is a Sage, his wisdom departs from him; if he is a prophet, his prophecy departs from him.”

Both elements, especially the emphasis on laughter, are distinctive in rabbinic literature, but very common in monastic texts. The two are inter-estingly linked in both literatures, so in the Babylonian Talmud, both anger and laughter are coupled in the evaluation of a man’s character, Eruvin 65b (Ms. Vatican 109): “R. Ila said: By three things may a person’s character be determined: By his cup, by his purse, and by his anger; and some say: by his laughter also.” And one saying in the Apophthegmata connects laughter and anger together as undesirable to monks, when Abba Nisterus said: “Swearing, making false oaths, lying, getting angry, insulting people, laughing, all that is alien to monks.” 42

Monastic rules, famously critical of laughter, appear in many sources. 43 Already in the earliest surviving monastic rules, those of Basil, archbishop of Caesarea (370–379 CE), composed in Greek, laughter was prohibited. 44 Along the same lines, in the Sayings we find passages suggesting that laughter is not among the behaviors of admirable men. For example, we hear of Pambo 13 (PG 65.372, Ward, P. 197): “They said of Abba Pambo that his face never smiled.”

Similarly, in both literatures we find a negative view of anger in great men. Rabbinic literature in a few places cautions against anger, so Mishnah Avot 2:10 warns a man not to be easily provoked (אל תהי נוח לכעוס), and Babylonian

42. Nisterus 5 (PG 65:308, Ward p. 155).43. The Middle Ages historian Jacques Le Goff summarizes the view on laughter in medieval

western culture: « In Christian culture there are two fundamental kinds of laughter, derived from the Old Testament: a positive laughter, expressing the vital affirmation of the person laughing, and a negative, mocking laughter. This derisive laughter takes two major forms: derision or mockery, and subsannatio, the sniggering characteristic of malevolence. But even simple laughter, risus, is the object of ecclesiastical, and especially monastic, condemnation. In monastic ideology, laughter is the legacy of a hated paganism and linked to the diabolical expressions of the flesh: theatrical gestures, drunkenness, possession. In man, it is the devil who laughs. » (« Laughter in Brennu-Njals saga », in From Sages to Society: Comparative Approaches to Early Iceland, New York 1992, p. 161). This view, however, changes towards a « progressive liberation of laughter in the High Middle Ages » (Le Goff, there). See also idem., « Laughter in the Middle Ages », in J. Bremmer, H. roodenBurg (dir.), A Cultural History of Humour: From Antiquity to the Present Day, Cambridge 1997, p. 40–53; and idem., « Le rire dans les règles monastiques du haut Moyen Âge », in C. lePelley et al., Haut Moyen Âge: culture, éducation et société. Études offertes à Pierre Riché, Nanterre – La Garenne-Colombes 1990, p. 93–103.

44. Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments Volume 1, J. P. thomas, A. Constantinides Hero, G. ConstaBle (dir.), Washington DC 2000, p. 24; and references to later monastic rules in n. 13 there.


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Talmud, Shabbat 105b, equates between a man who acts in anger to a man who worship idols, since he is ruled by his evil inclination.

As Peter Brown 45 and Graham Gould 46 both pointed out, while we often imagine sexuality as the monk’s chief spiritual battle, in fact anger appears more frequently in the monastic sources as the utmost challenge. 47 Abba Poemen said: “A monk does not complain of his lot, a monk does not return evil for evil, a monk is not angry.” 48 Abba Isidore said, “One day I went to the market place to sell some small goods; when I saw anger approaching me, I left the things and fled.” 49 And Abba Ammonas said: “I have spent fourteen years at Scetis asking God night and day that he give me the grace to con-quer anger.” 50 Peter Brown has suggested a connection between these views on anger and those that promote isolation from human relations, on the one hand, and the desire of property owners to escape the socio-economic ten-sions of third and fourth century Egyptian villages. 51 This view was chal-lenged as not sufficiently sustained, 52 but for my purposes it is important to note that aside from the social function of these sayings, in promoting good relations between fellow men, in some sayings we have an explicit indication that anger actually distances one from God. Thus we read in Abba Agathon 19 (PG 65.113, Ward, P. 23): “The same Abba said a man who is angry, even if he were to raise the dead, is not acceptable to God.” According to both passages – the rabbinic view and this last one from the Apophthegmata – even when men have reached greatness, once they allow themselves to become angry, their greatness is no longer acceptable to God.

Following Boyarin’s recommendation to “derive meaning by studying together the stories about a particular Rabbi or other figure because these named characters are themselves a kind of sign or emblem,” it is therefore interesting to note that the two statement regarding laughter and anger are attributed to Resh Lakish.

45. P. Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity, Cambridge 1978, p. 88: « anger, a sin of human relations, bulked larger with the ascetics than did the “demon of fornication,” which lurked in their bodies. »

46. G. gould, The desert fathers, p. 11247. Anger and fornication are often connected. See for example Poemen 115 (PG 65:348, ward

p. 184): « A brother asked Abba Poemen, “What shall I do, for fornication and anger war against me?” The old man said, “In this connection David said: I will pierce the lion and I will slay the bear. (1 Sam 17:35); that is to say: I will cut off anger and I will crush fornica-tion with hard labour.” »

48. Poemen 91 (PG 65:344, Ward, p. 180).49. Isidore 7 (PG 65:221, Ward, p. 97); see also Isidore 2 there.50. Systematic collection 7.3, as translated in Harmless, Desert Christians, p. 236.51. P. Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity, p. 83–90.52. C. luiBhéid, « Antony and the Renunciation of Society », Irish Theological Quarterly 52

(1986), p. 304–14 and gould, Desert Fathers, p. 113.


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In conclusion, we may consider the following constellation of narrative as featuring in the portrayals of religious leaders: a) originally a repentant robber, with or without a gladiator past; b) his physical strength is demon-strated by crossing a river, sword in hand, with the intention to commit a crime; c) his conversion to spiritual life, following which he loses his brawn; d) and in the same story, the literary motif of a sister ignored in favor of the chosen spiritual path, analogous to monastic depictions of holy Abbas, such as Abba Moses. In addition to these we noted two additional sayings in rabbinic literature attributing to Resh Lakish “ascetic”-like views, present in monastic literature.

I wish to claim that such shared depictions of central figures in monastic and rabbinic texts are indicative of an overlap between the two religious com-munities as they are presented in their respective literatures. This overlap is found neither in explicit theological statements nor in dogmatic formulations of religious agendas. Rather, it lies in the ways in which both corpora choose to describe their leaders’ past, the physiological effects of spiritual advance-ment, and in the leaders’ moral choices in their familial relationships. In turn, these common ethic-related aspects become the focal points of key texts of both religious groups, which, ironically, each of them utilize these literary interactions in the discrete processes of identity construction.

While elsewhere I have claimed for an actual historical connection between the composers of other analogous paragraphs in the above corpora, here I would like to suggest that genealogical conclusions notwithstanding, the comparison between the two is enlightening in other ways. What can we learn about a society that chooses to portray its heroes as former villains: thieves, potential rapists or even murderers, leading bands of outlaws? I believe that it is the realization that persons possessing leadership qualities can be transformed from brigand chiefs to holy community leaders. As one may expect, the text uses the past to glorify even more today’s heroic holy leader by emphasizing the effort required of him to overcome his dubious biography.

However, at the same time, such a past also projects on the repentant’s cur-rent stature. In the Apophthegmata, the sayings about Abba Moses describe him as shaping his reformed behavior in light of his sinful past, as in Moses 2 (PG 65.281–3, Ward, 138–9):

A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, “Come, for everyone is waiting for you.” So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, “What is this, Father?” The old man said to them, “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I


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am coming to judge the errors of another.” When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him. 53

Abba Moses’ former experiences compel him to instruct his brothers to withhold judgment. His biography, in fact, is advantageous in his instruction of righteous behavior in situations where others find it more difficult to recog-nize the need for it. The protagonist’s past, however, also comes to haunt him. Abba Moses, of black skin, is often treated with contempt and abuse, due to his past and skin color, Moses 2 (PG 65.283, Ward, 139):

Another day when a council was being held in Scetis, the Fathers treated Moses with contempt in order to test him, saying, “Why does this black man come among us?” When he heard this he kept silence. When the council was dismissed, they said to him, “Abba, did that not grieve you at all?” He said to them, “I was grieved, but I kept silence.”

The sources dealing with the color of Abba Moses’ skin have received scholarly attention. They were examined not only in order to understand ancient attitudes towards the black-skinned men, 54 but also to look at them as “rhetorical strategies within ascetic discourse,” 55 and as attempts to “recon-struct the cultural logic that lay behind the image.” 56 David Brakke claimed that the “ambiguity of the Ethiopian” in monastic literature, where demons were often described as Ethiopians, “exemplified an ambivalence about the intractable yet reformable human self that lay at the heart of the monastic pro-ject.” 57 This is a manifestation of “the hybridity of a discourse”: Abba Moses who was able to repent and transform into a holy Abba by ascetic practice, was nevertheless “an Ethiopian,” a manifestation of wider cultural stereotype.

Not only is Abba Moses treated to prejudice because of his origin and skin color, he is also told to have seen his death at the hands of Mazices – a tribe

53. On this story as an example of a chreia K. E. mCvey, « The chreia in the desert: rheto-ric and the Bible in the Apophthegmata Patrum » dans A. J. malherBe, F. W. norris, J. W. thomPson (dir .), The Early Church in its Context: In Honor of Everett Ferguson, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 90, Leyde 1998, p. 245–55, at p. 248.

54. F. M. snowden, Jr, Blacks in antiquity; Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman experience, Cambridge 1970, p. 209–11; P. mayerson, « Anti-Black Sentiment in the Vitae Patrum », Harvard Theological Review 71, 1978, p. 304–11; L. CraCCo ruggini, « Intolerance: Equal and Less Equal in the Roman World » Classical Philology 82 (1987), p. 187–205; K. o’Brien wiCker, « Ethiopian Moses (Collected Sources) » dans V. L. wimBush, Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook, Minneapolis, 1990, p. 329–48; P. Frost, « Attitudes Toward Blacks in the Early Christian Era » Second Century 8 (1991), p. 1–11.

55. V. wimBush, « Ascetic Behavior and Color-ful Language: Stories about Ethiopian Moses », Semeia 58 (1992), p. 81–92.

56. D. Brakke, « Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self », Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (2001), p. 501–35; idem, Demons and the making of the monk: spiritual combat in early Christianity, Cambridge 2006, p. 157–81.

57. D. Brakke, « Ethiopian Demons », p. 507.


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of barbarian raiders who sacked Scetis in 407 CE, as connected with his past life:

One day, when the brethren were sitting beside him, he said to them, “Look, the barbarians are coming to Scetis today; get up and flee.” They said to him, “Abba, won’t you flee too?” He said to them, “As for me, I have been waiting for this day for many years, that the word of the Lord Christ may be fulfilled which says, ‘All who take the sword will perish by the sword.’ (Matt 26.52)”… They then came in and slew them. 58

As mentioned above, Resh Lakish’s past is also used against him. R. Yohanan, upset by Resh Lakish’s disagreement with his own opinion over a halakhic question involving knives, publicly humiliates Resh Lakish by saying to him: “The brigand knows his trade.” Resh Lakish replies: “And where have you benefited me: there [as a robber] I was called Master [=lit. rabbi], and here I am called Master.” Resh Lakish is confronted with his past at the study house, as it is used against him. Contrary to the monastic emphasis on Abba Moses’ meek tolerance for the abuses he is subjected to, Resh Lakish confronts R. Yohanan in such a way that leads to an inconsol-able rift between them, and ultimately to Resh Lakish’s untimely death. He replies by suggesting that if his sins come back to haunt him, then his refor-mation may not have been beneficial after all, and thus it was not worth the effort. With all these differences, I wish to stress the commonality of both tra-ditions: both literatures retain a sense that the past of its repentant leader is always a part of its present. There are ramifications, and even for great Abbas and rabbis, being once a robber, presents a challenge to the members of the society they now joined.

When discussing Abba Moses, David Brakke writes: “the taunting of Abba Moses in the Greek Apophthegmata may be read as the monks’ failed attempt to reassert the essentialized stability of ‘white’ and ‘black’ identities in the face of the ambivalence embodied in Moses’ mimicry.” 59 Brakke uses here Homi BhaBha’s famous analysis of mimicry. 60 BhaBha stresses that “the other”, when it mimics the colonizer, in fact threatens the gap between the two: “The ambivalence of colonial authority repeatedly turns from mimicry – a difference that is almost nothing but not quite – to menace – a difference that is almost total but not quite.” 61 In this case, Abba Moses presents to the other monks the ambivalence of a totally reformed man, supposedly like them, but

58. Moses 10 (PG 65:285, Ward, p. 140), though Palladius did not seem to know this account of Abba Moses’ death (Harmless, p. 205).

59. D. Brakke, « Ethiopian Demons », p. 530.60. H. BhaBha, « Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse », Discipleship:

A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis (1984), p. 125–33.61. Ibid., p. 132.


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whose past is literally staring at their faces, through the color of his skin. He is like them, but not quite. Therefore he is threatening. The ambivalence Brakke deals with is obviously a result of the contrast between “the black” and “the white,” where skin color plays a crucial role. However, BhaBha’s notion of mimicry is useful for this comparative look at the rabbinic material as well.

I think we can use Brakke’s observation, despite the lack of the phys-ical aspect, in reading Resh Lakish’s story to better understand R. Yohanan’s denigrating statement to him – “The brigand knows his trade.” Why would R. Yohanan, who dedicated time and effort into transforming Resh Lakish, until he became his partner in the study house, abuse his student by reminding him of his past wicked ways? If we read this part of the story à la BhaBha/Brakke, then we are dealing here with a classic case of mimicry threatening the boundaries between “the colonized man” and the “colonizer.” Supposedly R. Yohanan, a representative of the rabbinic “ruling class,” has “colonized” Resh Lakish, made him transform his powers to the use of Torah study, made him into a great rabbi. He has taken “the other”, the robber, and made him one of the “civilized,” cultural rabbinic elite. However, as this disastrous sit-uation reveals, he is not ready to give up the gap between him and this other. R. Yohanan is having a hard time dealing with the ambivalence embodied in Resh Lakish’ mimicry. As if he is saying to him: You are “like me,” a great scholar. But you’re not quite. I know where you came from. How dare you disagree with me as an equal. This built-in tension comes out bursting with tragic results.

Both protagonists are thus portrayed is such a way that they reach their current position as spiritual leaders from sinful lives, and this fact has all the same serious ramifications on their new personas. Both Abba Moses and Resh Lakish are a threat to their “colonizers,” and the cultural gap between their previous life and the one to which they transformed. This is why they are both, after all they achieved, still denigrated. As we attempt to compare rabbinic and monastic texts, in creating literary traditions about repentant leaders, the reactions of members of the original elite, now joined by the pro-tagonist, is thus interestingly analogous.

This literary motif corresponds with the topos of the repentant whore, in which the women’s stories exemplify the reforming powers of the desert fathers who could rescue them from their evil ways. 62 The cognate stories of repentant whore and repentant robber were very popular in the Middle Ages, forming part of a “literature of conversion” that was meant to serve as an encouraging illustration of the far reach of the grace of forgiveness. Just like the repentant whore, the repentant robber motif offers a lesson to potential listeners: regardless of how base one may come to be, one can always rectify

62. S. elm, Virgins of God: the Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity, Oxford – New York 1994, p. 258.


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one’s ways. Physical strength, however, is inconsistent with the new life of repentance. One cannot move from one world to the other and stay the same. Physical strength is incompatible with the study of Torah, or with the spiritual life aspired by the monks. And finally, when the stories are looked at care-fully, the past of the convert might never be so far behind for his fellow holy men. But most importantly, the above parallel literary motifs frame the shared narratives that form the basis of formative texts in both religions, offering a unique perspective on questions of identity formation in contemporaneous parallel religious societies.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have treated an example of literary analogies between rab-binic and monastic texts. It is important, I wish to claim, not only for their possible historical significance in the study of their authors; an aspect that sheds light on Jewish-Christian relations in the Persian Empire in the first centuries CE (a question I choose to leave aside in this paper); More rele-vant to the topic of this collection of essays, they are instructive of the way in which religious groups defined their identity vis-à-vis other groups, and the role that ethical issues played in this self-definition. Describing the revered master’s spiritual transformation from a sinful life, may seem trivial in the grand scheme of things, but it forms part of the moral foundation of a religious society. And when this receives such similar treatment in two vastly different societies, we find that shared moral values do signal the intersection between formed identities.

It is important to note that I am not claiming that the narratives of both religious groups do not differ. Rather, I would like to emphasize my objection to the use of “sameness” language in this context, which was emphasized by Smith mentioned above. 63 Resh Lakish is very much a Jewish rabbi whose ultimate goal is to join a world of Torah scholars, while Abba Moses is a Christian monk, with everything that such a position entails. What I did want to foreground are the inner moral choices that each text presents within each religious and spiritual world. Here we can detect, I believe, literary intersec-tions that signal a form of spiritual dialogue that lies at the very foundation of each religious text. If one makes the historical case for a connection between the Syriac traditions of the monastic texts and the composers of the rabbinic ones, it only reinforces the overall claim for an inter-religious dialogue. But even without staking this claim, the comparative study of such literary anal-ogies by itself is beneficial as it may shed light on our understanding of how two contemporaneous societies chose to define central aspects of their reli-gious identities.

63. See smith, Drudgery Divine, p. 42–3.

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