1. See on this work Grünhut, Eleazar, Kritische Untersuchung des Midrasch Kohelet Rabbah (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1892)Google Scholar; Wachten, Johannes, Midrasch-Analyse: Strukturen in Midrasch Qohelet Rabba (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1978)Google Scholar; Marc Hirshman, “Midrash Qohelet Rabbah: Chapters 1–4” [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., Jewish Theological Seminary, 1983); Reuven Kiperwasser, “Midrashim on Kohelet: Studies in Their Redaction and Formation” [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2005); Kiperwasser, “Toward the Redaction History of Kohelet Rabbah,” Journal of Jewish Studies 61 (2010): 257–77.

2. A new English translation, titled The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos, was published by John Wortley (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1992); for the Greek text, see Patrologiae cursus completus: Series graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: J. P. Migne, 1857–66) (hereafter PG), 87 (3): 2851–3112. It is also known as the Leimon or Leimonarion or Neos paradeisos. The Greek text in Migne reproduces the 1681 edition by Jean-Baptiste Cotelier together with a facing Latin translation emended from that executed by the fifteenth-century Florentine humanist Ambrose Traversari (Fra Ambrogio). Despite the preliminary work of Philip Pattenden (“The Text of the Pratum Spirituale,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 26 [1975]: 38–54), the PS still lacks a critical edition. For a first contemporary study of Moschos and his work, see Henry Chadwick, “John Moschus and His Friend Sophronius the Sophist,” Journal of Theological Studies 25 (1974): 41–74, reprinted in his History and Thought of the Early Church (London: Variorum, 1982). See also the recent works of José Simón Palmer, El monacato oriental en el “Pratum Spirituale” de Juan Mosco (Madrid: Fundacion universitaria espanola, 1993), 46–47; Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen, John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014); and Derek Krueger, “Between Monks: Tales of Monastic Companionship in Early Byzantium,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20 (2011): 28–61.

3. See Chadwick, “John Moschus,” 41: “Written in the second or third decade of the seventh century, it records anecdotes from the monasteries of Palestine and Egypt related to John Moschus as he travelled about with his friend Sophronius in search of edification and the unusual.”

4. KR can be dated to the sixth century, although its final redaction probably did not occur before the seventh century. Regarding the relatively late final redaction of this work see Reuven Kiperwasser, “Structure and Form in Kohelet Rabbah as Evidence of Its Redaction,” Journal of Jewish Studies 58 (2007): 283–302; Kiperwasser, “Toward the Redaction History of Kohelet Rabbah”; Kiperwasser, “Early and Late in Kohelet Rabbah: A Study in Redaction-Criticism” [in Hebrew], in Iggud – Selected Essays in Jewish Studies, ed. Baruch J. Schwartz, Abraham Melamed, and Aharon Shemesh (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 291–312.

5. This would be true about every early Christian book. Despite extensive book production in monastic circles, books were read by a very small number of readers. As stated by Keith Hopkins, “many or most Christian communities … simply did not have among them a single sophisticated reader or writer.” See “Conquest by Book,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. Mary Beard et al., Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 3 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1991), 133–58. However, one can suggest that these very few readers did contribute to the circulation of the stories of Moschos, although their dissemination among different Christian communities probably took a long time. On reading practices in early Christian communities see Guy Stroumsa, “The New Self and Reading Practices in Late Antique Christianity,” Church History and Religious Culture 95 (2015): 1–18, and recently, Stroumsa, The New Self and Reading Practices (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

6. See Samuel Krauss, ‘‘Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,’’ Jewish Quarterly Review 5, no. 1 (1892): 122; Louis Ginzberg, “Die Haggada bei den Kirchenvätern,’’ in Abhandlungen zur Erinnerung an Hirsch Perez Chajes (Vienna: The Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1933), 22–50. For the full bibliography of these approaches, see Judith R. Baskin, ‘‘Rabbinic-Patristic Contacts in Late Antiquity: A Bibliographical Reappraisal,’’ in Approaches to Ancient Judaism, vol. 5, Studies in Judaism and Its Greco-Roman Context, ed. William Scott Green (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985), 54 and 75–80. See also Samuel Krauss, “Church Fathers,” in the Jewish Encyclopedia online version (1906) at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4380-church-fathers. The works of Krauss and Ginzberg were preceded by Graetz's studies; see Heinrich Graetz, ‘‘Haggadische Elemente bei den Kirchenvätern,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 3, no. 8 (1854): 311–19; 9 (1854): 352–55; 10 (1854): 381–87; 11 (1854): 428–31; 4, no. 5 (1855): 187–92, on which see the work of Baskin mentioned above. See also Hillel I. Newman, ‘‘Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, and the Church Fathers,’’ in Die Entdeckung des Christentums in der Wissenschaft des Judentums, ed. Görge K. Hasselhoff (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 147–63. For an analysis of Krauss's approach, see Catherine Hezser, “Samuel Krauss' Contribution to the Study of Ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Graeco-Roman Culture within the Context of Wissenschaft Scholarship,” Modern Judaism 33, no. 3 (2013): 301–31.

7. Space considerations preclude mentioning all these scholars. Studies of the interface between rabbinic literature and patristics include Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism, Reading Medieval Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and Hillel I. Newman, “Jerome's Judaizers,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9, no. 4 (2001): 421–52. See also the works I mention below regarding “the parting of the ways.”

8. See Hillel I. Newman, “Closing the Circle: Yonah Fraenkel, the Talmudic Story, and Rabbinic History,” in How Should Rabbinic Literature Be Read in the Modern World?, ed. Matthew Kraus (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 105–36. I will further analyze the same example.

9. I already tried my hand at a similar approach to the comparative reading of rabbinic texts and Syriac patristic writings in a few papers written together with Serge Ruzer: see Reuven Kiperwasser and Serge Ruzer, “The Holy Land and Its Inhabitants in Travel-Stories of Bar-Sauma” [in Hebrew], Cathedra 148 (2012): 41–70; Kiperwasser and Ruzer, “To Convert a Persian and to Teach Him the Holy Scriptures: A Zoroastrian Proselyte in Rabbinic and Syriac Christian Narratives,” in Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians: Religious Dynamics in a Sasanian Context, ed. Geoffrey Herman (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2014), 91–127; Kiperwasser and Ruzer, “Syriac Christians and Babylonian Jewry: Narratives and Identity Shaping in a Multi-Religious Setting,” in Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century: Proceedings of an International Conference to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the International Association of Patristic Studies, ed. Carol Harrison, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, and Theodore de Bruyn (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 421–42. However, the literary corpora I am subjecting to comparative analysis in this study are new. The comparative study of PS and rabbinic literature resembles, in general terms, the comparative study of rabbinic literature and Apophthegmata patrum, in that both are anthologies of narratives about deeds of spiritual leaders. However, as we will see, the cultural proximity between PS and rabbinic narratives is much stronger. See Catherine Hezser, “Apophthegmata Patrum and Apophthegmata of the Rabbis,” in La narrativa cristiana antica: Codici narrativi, strutture formali, schemi retorici, Studia Ephemerida Augustinianum 50 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1995), 453–64; Hezser, “Die Verwendung der hellenistischen Gattung Chrie im frühen Christentum und Judentum,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 27 (1996): 371–439; Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

10. See Marc Hirshman's critical edition of the first part of KR, Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 1–6 (Jerusalem: The Midrash Project of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, 2016), 178. For the synoptic edition see http://www.schechter.ac.il/.upload/Midrash/kohelet%20raba/parasha3.pdf. The translation is mine.

11. According to all the manuscripts אפילה means darkness; however, I accept Lieberman's emendation to אילפא.

12. Following the version of the printed edition, we could read here דנווטיא, which is probably a Graecism of the Greek ναυτής. See Samuel Krauss, Griechische und lateinische Lehnwörter im Talmud, Midrasch und Targum (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1898), 355. Other textual versions differ, though these differences could be explained as graphic errors. The version of the JTS manuscripts and the gloss that appears there is nonetheless quite interesting.

13. In Greek, πέλαγος; see Daniel Sperber, Nautica Talmudica (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1986), 147; and Raphael Patai, The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 52.

14. I think that the wording “he made himself angry at his son” indicates that the merchant pretended to be angry.

15. Here, I propose that the merchant is the character who articulates the verse in the end of the story. Traditional commentators on KR, however, understood these to be the words of the proconsul, who judged according to the Ecclesiastes verse. I have certain doubts about this interpretation; nevertheless, the suggestion is not completely implausible.

16. By “artificial,” I mean that this whole paragraph interprets Ecclesiastes 3:2–8. Every verse in it is built as a collision between two opposed times, such as “a time to keep” and “a time to throw away.” In KR the midrashist interprets the first “time” and then the second (opposed) “time,” couple by couple. In the first half of the commentary, every first “time” is interpreted as a time that belongs to a period of peace, and the second “time” as belonging to a period of war. After our story, a tradition about peace and war is also appended, supported by scriptural examples. But our story is the only one built on the second “time” of the verse, Ecclesiastes 3:6 (“a time to throw away”). Our story does not hint at a “time to keep,” and does not belong to the overarching theme of peace versus war. These unique features of our story point to an insertion made by the editor of KR. Thus, the story is weakly and “artificially” connected to the verse, based as it is on only half of it. The end of the story is not convincing—it is hard to see any basis for a judicial decision in this verse.

17. On the Christian appropriation of the topos of a sea voyage and its comparison to the pagan one, see Knut Backhaus, Religion als Reise, Intertextuelle Lektüren in Antike und Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). Regarding the comparison of rabbinic and Christian topos, see Reuven Kiperwasser and Serge Ruzer, “Sea Voyage Tales in Conversation with the Jonah Story: Intertextuality and the Art of Narrative Bricolage,” Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing 20, no. 2 (2019): 39–57.

18. See Saul Lieberman, “Six Words from Koheleth Rabba” [in Hebrew], in Essays in Jewish History and Philology: Gedaliahu Allon Memorial Volume, ed. Menahem Dorman et al. (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbutz Ha-me'uḥad, 1970), 227–30; reprinted in David Rosenthal, ed., Studies in Palestinian Talmudic Literature (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), 498–99, to which I refer later.

19. Ibid., 499–500.

20. See Sperber, Nautica Talmudica, 105.

21. Up to this point, Lieberman restricts himself to clarifying ambiguous words. Here, however, he proposes to correct the seemingly certain reading אנטיפוטא derived from the Greek ανθύπατος (proconsul) to another Greek-Aramaic term, דיוקטא from διώκτης, meaning “prosecutor,” arguing from logic that in such a trivial case the merchant would have appealed first to the prosecutor and not directly to the proconsul. This interesting suggestion is unnecessary, though. In folk narrative, and in this story as such, it is not necessary to follow subtle legal niceties. Regarding these terms, see Daniel Sperber, A Dictionary of Greek and Latin Legal Terms in Rabbinic Literature (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1984), 83.

22. See chap. 203 (3093A-C Migne). All quotations are from Wortley's translation, Spiritual Meadow, 182, with some minor corrections.

23. Per Wortley: “servants.” But probably it means “sons,” as it is evident from the end of the story, which is about the children.

24. The text uses the word παῖς throughout.

25. See John Duffy and Gary Vikan, “A Small Box in John Moschus,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 24, no. 1 (1983): 96; and see R. Browning, “The Language of Byzantine Literature,” in The “Past” in Medieval and Modern Greek Culture, ed. Speros Vryonis (Melibu: Undena Publications, 1978), 112.

26. The note is taken over from the seventeenth-century edition of Moschos by L. B. Cotelier, see Duffy and Vican, “A Small Box,” 96. The Latin translation printed in Migne is the work of the fifteenth-century humanist Ambrogio Traversari.

27. That is, a diminutive of ό βΐκος (jar, cask). Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961–68), s.v. ζικίον, evidently accepts this suggestion, listing the one occurrence as an “error for βικίον, vessel, box.”

28. Duffy and Vican, “A Small Box,” l94.

29. Ibid., 94.

30. Jeffrey Featherstone and Cyril Mango, “Life of St. Matrona of Perge,” in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. Alice-Mary Talbot (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1996), 56, found in the Vita of St. Matrona of Perge the line “that the servant Kallopodios had broken into the back side of the money chest (μουζικίον).” He explained it as another usage of this rare word “also used by John Moschos (PG 87.3:2936 and 3093 [where a μου ζικία should be emended to μουζικία]. The word (ζικία) was discussed by J. Duffy and G. Vikan, who were unaware of our text. It can now be said that a μουζικίον was specifically a strongbox for keeping valuables and that it could be, as here, of some size. It was not a pyxis.” See their footnote n. 104. I am thankful to Hillel Newman, who referred me to this work.

31. It is difficult to determine exactly how this might have occurred. It is likely that a simple change in the sequence of the two syllables occurred phonetically, but the possibility of graphical metamorphosis (as, for example, ביקיה-כיביה-קיביא-קובין) cannot be ruled out.

32. Without doubting the popularity of these categories and definitions for the reader of academic articles, for the sake of simplicity, I refer here to the well-known article by Dan Ben-Amos, “Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context,” Journal of American Folklore 84 (1971): 3–15.

33. One of the readers of this paper made the interesting suggestion that the story may have originated as part of a “clever merchant” prototype, who saves both his life and eventually his money. In this view, PS “Christianized” this hypothetical prototype with the phrase “money is of no ultimate value after death” while the rabbinic storyteller kept the money. Despite the interest and appeal of this suggestion, my own view is that we should confine ourselves to comparing existing stories instead of presuming a hypothetical prototype. Though one distant ancient parallel could be mentioned here: in this story, a famous Greek musician beset by the crew of the ship he sailed on, who intended to kill him for his money, begged to sing a last song. This done, he leaped overboard, and was carried safely to the shore by a dolphin, who came to hear his music. On the arrival of the would-be murderers, he handed them to the local king for punishment. See Herodotus, Histories 1.23–24. This ancient story may be a possible prototype of our somewhat structurally similar, yet radically transformed story.

34. Recent research has drawn attention to the possibility of actual or indirect links between Babylonian Jewry of the talmudic period and contemporaneous Syriac Christianity, since the geographical and cultural affinity, e.g., the shared Aramaic (Syriac) language, strongly increases the likelihood of such links. Yet, it seems prudent to refrain from setting the axis line of this discussion on such complex phenomena by proposing a monastic influence on Judaism (see, for example, the work of Bar-Asher Siegal, cited above), or vice versa, by suggesting a Jewish influence on the Christian authors. See, for example, Jacob Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism: The Christian Jewish Argument in Fourth-Century Iran (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 150–95; Tryggve Kronholm, Motifs from Genesis 1–11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian with Particular Reference to the Influence of Jewish Exegetical Tradition (Lund: Gleerup, 1978); Sebastian Brock, “Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources,” Journal of Jewish Studies 30 (1979): 212–32; Burton L. Visotzky, “Three Syriac Cruxes,” Journal of Jewish Studies 4 (1991): 167–75; Günter Stemberger, “Contacts between Christian and Jewish Exegesis in the Roman Empire,” in Hebrew Bible / Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 1, part 11, Antiquity, ed. Magne Sæbø et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 583–85; Naomi Koltun-Fromm, “A Jewish-Christian Conversation in Fourth-Century Persian Mesopotamia,” Journal of Jewish Studies 47 (1996): 45–63; Koltun-Fromm, “Aphrahat and the Rabbis on Noah's Righteousness in Light of Jewish-Christian Polemic,” in The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretations, ed. Judith Frishman and Lucas van Rompay (Louvain: Peeters, 1997), 57–72; Serge Ruzer and Aryeh Kofsky, Syriac Idiosyncrasies: Theology and Hermeneutics in Early Syriac Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 30–31, 43–48, 50, 56–59, 97–107; Elena Narinskaya, Ephrem, a “Jewish Sage”: A Comparison of the Exegetical Writings of St. Ephrem the Syrian and Jewish Traditions (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); Yifat Monnickendam, “Halakhic Issues in the Writings of the Syriac Church Fathers Ephrem and Aphrahat” (PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2011). For discussion of the existing appraisals of these links (from actual influence all the way to the Zeitgeist), see Adam Becker, “The Comparative Study of ‘Scholasticism’ in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians,” AJS Review 34, no. 1 (2010): 91–113.

35. A common culture, however, does not indicate a commonality of “the ways.” The traditional perception that the “parting of the ways” occurred during an extended period is widely accepted. For the description of an ongoing interchange between Jews and Christians see James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism (Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company, 1961), 113–19, and also his “Rome, Pagan and Christian,” in Judaism and Christianity, vol. 2, The Contact of Pharisaism with Other Cultures, ed. Herbert Loewe (1937; repr. New York: Ktav, 1969), 115–44. His view was rejected by the group of authors of the anthology compiled by Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, The Ways That Never Parted (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), who seem to think that discussion between Jews and Christians in antiquity is evidence against a parting of the ways, and that the “old model” of the parting of the ways did not allow for ongoing contacts between Jews and Christians. Though Parkes was aware of such ongoing contacts, these did not call into question for him the reality of the parting of the ways. See also James D. G. Dunn, Jews and Christians; The Parting of the Ways A.D. 70 to 135 (1992; repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). For more nuanced approaches see Boyarin, Border Lines; Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Ways That Parted: Jews, Christians, and Jewish-Christians ca. 100–150 CE,” in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70‒132 CE, ed. Joshua J. Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 307–33. See also a very thoughtful analysis of this area of research in the recently published review by Megan H. Williams, “No More Clever Titles: Observations on Some Recent Studies of Jewish-Christian Relations in the Roman World,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 99 (2009): 37–55. I strongly agree with her proposition: “To consider at every moment not a binary opposition, but … the shifting dynamics of a lopsided triangle defined by the interaction of cultural vectors of differing structure and unequal force” (p. 51).

36. As with every Galilean midrash compilation, KR is replete with elements of Byzantine Greek lore; however, in this case, some of them are unique. See, for example, Marc Hirshman, “The Greek Fathers and the Aggadah on Ecclesiastes: Formats of Exegesis in Late Antiquity,” Hebrew Union College Annual 59 (1988): 137–65; Hirshman, “Protocol for Prayer: Origen, the Rabbis and Their Greco-Roman Milieu,” in Essays on Hebrew Literature in Honor of Avraham Holtz, ed. Tseviyah Ben-Yosef Ginor (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2003), 3–14; Hirshman, “The Kairos of a Sage,” in Studies in Talmudic and Midrashic Literature in Memory of Tirzah Lifshitz, ed. Moshe Bar-Asher, Aryeh Edrei, Joshua Levinson, and Berachyahu Liftshitz (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2005), 127–34.

37. For the synoptic edition that served to prepare the critical editions of this important work, see http://www.schechter.ac.il/.upload/Midrash/kohelet%20raba/parasha11.pdf. On this story as the representative of the certain oikotype of folklore storytelling, see Dov Noy, “Jewish Versions of the Animal Languages Folktale (AT 670)—A Typological-Structural Study,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971): 194–97. The translation is mine.

38. See Hirshman, “Greek Fathers and the Aggadah on Ecclesiastes.”

39. See Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Had Rabbis Been Aware of the Concept of Folklore?” [in Hebrew], in Higayon L′Yona, New Aspects in the Study of Midrash, Aggadah and Piyut, in Honor of Professor Yonah Fraenkel, ed. Joshua Levinson, Jacob Elbaum, and Galit Hasan-Rokem (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2007), 199–229.

40. See Yonah Fraenkel, Studies in the Spiritual World of the Aggadic Narrative [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbutz Ha-me'uḥad, 1981), 16–18. The story is also discussed in Fraenkel “Chiasmus in Talmudic-Aggadic Narrative,” in Chiasmus in Antiquity, ed. John W. Welch (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981), 184–85; compare the similar conclusions of Norman J. Cohen, “Structural Analysis of a Talmudic Story: Joseph-Who-Honors-the-Sabbath,” Jewish Quarterly Review 72 (1982): 161–77. Fraenkel expounds this story at length, pointing out the underlying tension between the determinism of the astrologers at the outset, and the reward for Joseph at the conclusion. Joseph lives in a deterministic universe, but he is indifferent to fate—even ignorant of it—making his choices freely and therefore truly entitled to the reward he receives. Hillel Newman's approach to this tale takes a different direction. The story has not escaped the attention of folklorists, who look at it, of course, as a folktale. See Haim Schwarzbaum, Studies in Jewish and World Folklore (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968), 269–70; Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning, trans. Jacqueline S. Teitelbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 124–25. However, as Newman rightly points out, folklorists have not compared it to what is probably the closest parallel to it in provenance, both chronologically and geographically, namely, PS. All these attempts of folklorists were preceded by a neglected book by Sholem-Zisl Beylin, titled Wandering or International Sagas and Legends of Ancient Rabbinical Literature [in Russian] (Irkutsk, 1907), 351. For more on Beylin, who unfortunately was unrecognized by contemporary scholars, see http://yleksikon.blogspot.de/2015/01/sholem-zisl-beylin.html. He compared the rabbinic stories about the precious stone in the fish's belly with the above-mentioned Christian story; however, he knows its late version from the Greek-Slavic medieval work Prologue and not from PS. The story was recently and briefly discussed by Richard Kalmin; see Migrating Tales: The Talmud's Narratives and Their Historical Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 189–90.

41. The English translation is according to Newman, “Closing the Circle,” 105–35, with minor changes. The original text is according to the editio princeps. Due to their insignificance, I do not deal here with the minor differences between the textual versions.

42. See Newman, “Closing the Circle,” 105–35. In this article, Newman argues against Fraenkel's famous thesis about the “closure” of the talmudic story. See Yonah Fraenkel, Aggadic Narrative— the Unity of Content and Form [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: ʿAm ʿOved, 2001). See also Fraenkel, Studies in the Spiritual World: The Ways of the Midrash and the Aggadah [in Hebrew] (Givatayim: Dvir, 1991), 235–85; Fraenkel, Midrash and Aggadah [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Open University, 1996), 329–97. See, as well, his “Chiasmus in Talmudic-Aggadic Narrative,” 183–97. The scholarly discussion between Newman and Fraenkel is beyond the scope of this article.

43. PS, c. 185 (PG 87:3057–3061). Wortley, Spiritual Meadow, 155–58.

44. See Newman, “Closing the Circle,” 125. See also Fraenkel, “Chiasmus,” 196n5.

45. Unaware of the Jewish versions of the story in the Babylonian Talmud and KR, Chadwick has speculated that the Christian story is an adaptation of a Persian folktale. See Chadwick, “John Moschus,” 54 (following Ilona Opelt, “Der Edelstein im Bauch des Fisches,” in Mullus: Festschrift Theodor Klauser, ed. Alfred Stuiber and Alfred Hermann [Münster: Aschendorff, 1964], 268–72): “The location of the storyteller at Samos makes one wonder if Mary had heard echoes of Herodotus' story of Polycrates of Samos throwing his ring into the sea, only to find it in the fish on his dinner-table some days later. On the other hand, the location of the story in Nisibis points to a Persian tale; and a very close parallel in the Thousand and One Nights (no. 946) was acutely noted by Ilona Opelt in 1964 (Mullus, Festschrift Theodor Klauser, p. 268). However, this seems a bit doubtful. A Thousand and One Nights is a relatively late source and Nisibis, though a part of Persian Empire in that period, has a long history as a Greco-Roman polis.”

46. A note concerning the word כלילי in this story (translated as “wreaths” above): this story probably originated as a picaresque story in which a protagonist of good lineage marries a daughter of an artisan who might have made a living producing wreaths or crowns. (“Crowns” seems to me to be a more plausible reading here.) As the daughter of a crown-maker the wife would be well aware of what to do with precious stones and how to get a good price for the finished product. Guided by her advice the protagonist could get quite a significant reward for the stone and even defeat his father-in-law in the competition for righteousness without having any religious motivation in his dedication to the Temple treasury. Regarding the meanings of כלילא see Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), 582.

47. See Bereshit Rabbah 11:4, to Genesis 2:3 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1:91–92). The translation is mine.

48. In only two manuscript versions is there an addition that includes the miraculous motif. It is quite certain, however, that this addition was made in the process of transmission by a copyist who knew the Babylonian version of the story. This was already observed by Newman, “Closing the Circle,” 126.

49. See Pesikta Rabbati (Vienna, 1880), ed. Meir Ish-Shalom (Friedmann), Ten Commandments 23, 119a–b. See also the new edition Pesiqta Rabbati – A Synoptic Edition of Pesiqta Rabbati Based upon All Extant Manuscripts and the Editio Princeps, ed. Rivka Ulmer (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), 574–75. This text is from the lost midrash on the Ten Commandments. On the identification of these midrash fragments in Pesikta Rabbati, see Binyamin Elizur, “Pesikta Rabbati: Introductory Chapters” [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., Hebrew University, 2000), 45. For the text under discussion, see Shlomi Efrati, “Pesiqta of Ten Commandments and Pesiqta of Matan Torah: Text, Redaction and Tradition Analysis” [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., Hebrew University, 2019), 2:254. I am thankful to Shlomi Efrati for sharing with me the draft of his dissertation. See also the English translation of William Braude, Pesikta Rabbati, 2 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 484–85. The translation above is based on the latter, with some minor changes.

50. See Braude, Pesikta Rabbati, 484, and see Efrati, “Pesiqta of the Ten Commandments.”

51. In the current discussion, I leave aside the many differences between the versions of Bereshit Rabbah and PR; these have been discussed in great detail by Efrati.

52. However, in eastern medieval midrash anthologies, the Midrash Ha-gadol and Sefer Maʿasiyot, these sentences appear with some Aramaic words, but Efrati demonstrated that these are additions taken from another location in Pesikta Rabbati; see Efrati there. On these works see Reuven Kiperwasser, “Midrash ha-Gadol and the Exempla of the Rabbis (Sefer Maʿasiyot) and Midrashic Works on Ecclesiastes: A Comparative Approach” [in Hebrew], Tarbiz 75 (2006): 409–36.

53. The Bavli version has also contaminated the poorer textual traditions of Bereshit Rabbah 11:4.

54. Polycrates of Samos in Herodotus, Histories 3.42.

55. Its date is uncertain, but Kālidāsa is often placed in the period between the first century BCE and the fourth century CE.

56. The legend that Asmodeus once obtained possession of the ring of Solomon and threw it into the sea, and that Solomon was thus deprived of his power until he discovered the ring inside a fish (See Adolf Jellinek, Beit Hamidrash [Leipzig: F. Nies, 1853–77], 2:86–87), also has an Arabic parallel. This story is first documented in the book of Abu Jaʿfar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari; see Grünbaum, Max, Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sagenkunde (Leiden: Brill, 1893), 251–52Google Scholar, 271–77.

57. The motif of “treasure in the belly of a fish” resembles another motif, of “a coin in the mouth of a fish,” which appears in the New Testament, in Matthew 17:24–27. Some of my listeners at the 2016 Cambridge conference assumed that this might have implications for the background of the PS story and perhaps even also of the rabbinic “fish” stories. However, the story in Matthew differs from stories of above-mentioned type, not only because the find is inside the bowels of the fish rather than in its mouth, but because in the stories of “a treasure in the belly,” the find is usually a reward for something that the hero did and a miraculous mobilization of divine providence. See Horbury, William, “The Temple Tax,” in Jesus and the Politics of His Day, ed. Bammel, Ernest and Moule, Charles F. D. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, 274nn51 and 53. In “the coin in the mouth” story, the sudden appearance of the right amount of money in the mouth of a fish is a confirmation of the magical abilities of the miracle worker. This motif is relatively rare, and usually attested in medieval literature; see Bauckham, Richard J., “The Coin in the Fish's Mouth,” in Gospel Perspectives 6: The Miracles of Jesus, ed. Wenham, David and Blomberg, Craig (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986)Google Scholar, 252n98, and Eisler, Robert, Orpheus the Fisher: Comparative Studies in Orphic and Early Christian Cult Symbolism (London: J. M. Watkins, 1921), 100–102Google Scholar. Coins and other small objects could be occasionally found in fish's mouths, which shifts the emphasis from the miraculous discovery to Jesus's wondrous ability to predict the event. Bauckham cautiously suggested that the Matthew story was based on some real event of a discovery of a coin in a fish's mouth, after which the resonance of the event was empowered by the folkloristic motif of the “treasure in the fish's belly,” widespread in Jewish Galilee; see Bauckham, “The Coin,” 242–43. I think that we can agree that these two different types of fish stories are not identical; this paper is not about the possible relationships between them.