¹ Certeau, Michel De, The Practice of Everyday Life (trans. Rendall, Steven; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) 117–30Google Scholar; Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space (trans. Nicholson-Smith, Donald; Oxford: Blackwell, 1974, 1991)Google Scholar; Massey, Doreen, For Space (London: Sage Publications, 2005)Google ScholarPubMed; Sheldrake, Philip, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, and Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Tuan, Yi-Fu, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977)Google Scholar; idem, “A View of Geography,” Geographical Review 81 (1991) 99–107. Most scholars map the spatial world by differentiating between space and place, using these terms in relationship with each other to distinguish meaningful lived spaces from mere points on a map. These are generally referred to as “space” and “place,” though the specific hierarchical relationship between the two differs from scholar to scholar.

² De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 117.

³ This passage follows a baraita (an ostensibly earlier teaching, see n. 4 below) in which R. Yose veers off the road to pray in certain ruins in Jerusalem and there meets Elijah the Prophet. This narrative highlights three specific laws that R. Yose learned from Elijah that day: “that one should not enter a ruin; that one should [instead] say the prayer on the road; and that when one prays on the road, one should say an abbreviated prayer.” The fact that these teachings are voiced by Elijah the Prophet—himself a liminal figure with a complicated and at times contradictory character—suggests that, at times, Elijah himself takes on the role of intermediary being and thus has special insight into these figures. The rabbis, however, do not make this connection literal, perhaps because doing so would undercut their own claims to rabbinic authority and supremacy over intermediary beings such as demons. My thanks to Yonatan Miller for pointing out this connection.

⁴ The dating of particular quotations and texts within the rabbinic corpus is very contested. This text uses the citation formula appropriate to 2^nd- or 3^rd-cent. CE rabbinic texts; however, scholars have argued that the 4^th- through 6^th-cent. CE rabbis at times framed their own teachings in antique terms for a variety of reasons. See Jacob Nahum Epstein, מבוא לנוסח המשנה [Introduction to the Text of the Mishnah] (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Y.L. Magnes, 1948, 1999) 1:171–77; Friedman, Shamma, “‘Wonder Not at a Gloss in Which the Name of an Amora Is Mentioned’: The Amoraic Statements and the Anonymous Material in the Sugyot of the Bavli Revisited,” in Melekhet Mahshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature (ed. Amit, Aharon and Shemesh, Aharon; Ramat-Gan, IL: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011) 101–44Google Scholar, at 103; Louis Jacobs, “Are There Fictitious Baraitot in the Babylonian Talmud?,” HUCA 42 (1971) 185–96; Rubenstein, Jeffrey L., Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 262 Google Scholar.

⁵ All translations are my own, taken from the Vilna print edition of the Talmud, unless otherwise noted. Significant textual variants are discussed in the notes. The Babylonian Talmud has three terms that it unsystematically uses to refer to demons, שידים (demons), מזיקין (harmers), and רוחות (spirits). The use of the word מזיקין here to refer to demons appears only four times in the earlier 2^nd- and 3^rd-cent. Tannaitic materials, three times in the Tosefta (t. B. Qam. 3, 7, and t. Soṭah 4) and once in m. ’Abot 5:6, whose date is difficult to ascertain. The rarity of the term in the earlier materials, all of which appear in these early Palestinian corpora, serves to strengthen my contention that this citation of an ostensibly earlier text is actually itself a later pseudonymous text dating to Babylonia in the 4^th through 6^th cents. CE.

⁶ The rabbis believed that demons avoid attacking human beings in pairs or larger groups. See, e.g., b. Ber. 62b, b. Qidd. 29b, b. Pesaḥ. 112b.

⁷ Thus, for example, in Moreh Nevuḵim, Maimonides metaphorically defines “demons” as referring to evildoing humans who never fully developed a rational mind and therefore seek to harm others (1.7). Much more recently, Adin Steinsaltz has explicitly followed the model laid out by Rashi and Maimonides, by explaining many of the demonic references in the Babylonian Talmud as symbols of medical phenomena familiar to the modern scientific community. See Adin Steinsaltz, “The Demons of Our Creation,” Shefa, http://www.hashefa.co.il/home/doc.aspx?mCatID=68636.

⁸ Bo 38:3, ib 67:5, 100:5, 129:4, 130:2 in Sokoloff, Michael, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan, IL: Bar Ilan University Press, 2003) 313 Google Scholar. This concept may also be attested in b. Pesaḥ. 114a, which, according to ms. NY JTS 1623/2 Enelow Manuscript Collection 271 and ms. Columbia X893T14a, states: (One who eats of the sea rocket of the field will sit on the garbage dumps of the town). This statement may suggest a demonic response to a provocative action.

⁹ For a discussion of the Babylonian incantation bowls and their relevance to the study of the Babylonian Talmud, see Gideon Bohak, “Babylonian Incantation Bowls—Past, Present and Future,” Pe'amim 105–6 (2005–2006) 253–65; M. J. Geller, “Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud,” Max-Planck-Institut Für Wissenschafsgeschichte Preprint (2004) 1–60, https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/ P259.PDF; Rebecca Lesses, “Exe(o)rcising Power: Women as Sorceresses, Exorcists, and Demonesses in Babylonian Jewish Society of Late Antiquity,” JAAR 69 (2001) 343–75; Levene, Dan, “‘This Is a Qybl’ for Overturning Sorceries’: Form, Formula—Threads in a Web of Transmission,” in Continuity and Magic in the Magical Tradition (ed. Bohak, Gideon, Harari, Yuval, and Shaked, Shaul; JSRC 15; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 219–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., A Corpus of Magic Bowls: Incantation Texts in Jewish Aramaic from Late Antiquity (London: Kegan Paul, 2003) 1–30; Avigail Manekin Bamberger, “Jewish Legal Formulae in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls,” SBLAS 13 (2015) 69–81; Naveh, Joseph and Shaked, Shaul, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985) 1–20 Google Scholar; Shaked, Shaul, “Bagdana, King of the Demons, and Other Iranian Terms in Babylonian Aramaic Magic,” in Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce (ed. Duchesne-Guillemin, Jacques and LeCoq, Pierre; Hommages et Opera Minora 15, ACTA Iranica 24; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 511–25Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See also b. Pesaḥ. 112b–113a. This belief is found in the Hebrew Bible as well. See Lev 17:7; Isa 34:14; Jer 15:37; 2 Chr 11:15. And see Schmitt, Rüdiger, “Demons, Demonology. II. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” Encyclopedia of Biblical Reception (ed. Klauck, Hans-Josef et al.; Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2012) 537 Google Scholar; Janowski, B., “Jackals,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. Toorn, Karel van der, Becking, Bob, and van der Horst, Pieter W.; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 459 Google Scholar.

¹¹ The manuscript tradition of this passage is divergent. My translation follows ms. Vatican 125.

¹² An alternative reading might suggest that the danger of palm trees can be found across the Jewish world, where the danger of the moon can be found only in Roman Palestine. This reading seems unlikely to me, given that the importance of the danger of palm trees can be found only in the Babylonian rabbinic corpus and there only in reference to the Babylonian community.

¹³ On the redactional organization of this text as a whole, see Ronis, Sara, “‘Do Not Go Out Alone at Night’: Law and Demonic Discourse in the Babylonian Talmud” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2015) 33–34, 164–69Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Vilna Print edition. Mss. Vatican 109, Vatican 125, Columbia X893T14a, NY JTS 1623/2 Enelow Manuscript Collection 271, and Munich 6 all add, “and one who passes between two palm trees.”

¹⁵ This reading has already been noted by the medieval commentator Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi), on b. Pesaḥ.111a, s.v. , and is adopted by his grandson Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam), on b. Pesaḥ. 111a, s.v. .

¹⁶ A similar phenomenon can be noted in talmudic reports of rabbinic magic use. See, e.g., b. Sanh. 68a, b. Šabb. 81b; y. Sanh. 7:13 25d, 7:19 25d, 10:2. See also Becker, Hans-Jurgen, “The Magic of the Name and Palestinian Rabbinic Literature,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture (ed. Schäfer, Peter; TSAJ 93; 3 vols.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002) 3:391–407, at 398Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The Venice and Vilna print editions end this general rule with ומיהו למיחש מיבעי (nevertheless one should take care). This clause is not found in any of the earlier manuscripts.

¹⁸ For discussions of the kallah, see Goodblatt, David, “The History of the Babylonian Academies,” in Cambridge History of Judaism (ed. Katz, Steven T.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; 2008) 821–39Google Scholar; Brody, Robert, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) 43–45 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Several scholars have read this passage as a parody or satire of demonological beliefs. See, e.g., Elman, Yaakov, “The World of the ‘Sabboraim’: Cultural Aspects of Post-Redactional Additions to the Bavli,” in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada (ed. Rubenstein, Jeffrey L.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005) 383–415 Google Scholar. I hesitate to dismiss this passage as satire because (1) determining tone in ancient written works is difficult in the best of circumstances, and (2) scholars of satire and parody have noted that humor is deployed in critical cultural work precisely around issues that are important and relevant to specific audiences. See, e.g., Dentith, Simon, Parody (London: Routledge, 2000) 1–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilbert, Joanne R., Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender, and Cultural Critique (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004) 1–72 Google Scholar; Palmer, Jerry, Taking Humour Seriously (London: Routledge, 1994) 57–92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rather than dismissing this passage as humorous, then, I leave the question of tone open and assume that, regardless of whether or not this passage is meant to be humorous, it is examining issues of relevance and importance to a rabbinic audience in Late Antiquity.

²⁰ This interpretation is supported by a single talmudic account of a malevolent demon in a rabbinic space, found at b. Qidd. 29b. However, this narrative is anomalous in the broader scope of rabbinic discourse, in which demons appear as learned followers of the rabbis and perhaps even rabbis themselves, though they remain powerful and at times capricious. See Sara Ronis, “A Seven-Headed Demon in the House of Study: Understanding a Rabbinic Demon in Light of Zoroastrian, Christian, and Babylonian Textual Traditions” (forthcoming from AJS rview), for an extensive treatment of this story.

²¹ See, e.g., b. Pesaḥ. 109b–112a. Statements cited in the name of demonic teachers also appear at b. ‘Eruv 43a and, possibly, at b. Yevam. 122a. In b. ‘Eruv. 43a, Joseph the demon is portrayed as traveling from Sura to Pumbedita in order to teach in both rabbinic centers on the Sabbath. While the demon in b. ‘Eruvin appears to be the same Joseph as here in b. Pesaḥim, b. Yevamot may introduce us to another demonic teacher, Jonathan or Yoḥanan. The identity of this demon remains uncertain because the manuscript tradition is extremely corrupted.

²² See, e.g., b. Me‘il. 17a–b, where the demon Ben Thamalion aids the rabbis in overturning an anti-Jewish decree by the Roman Caesar. See also the case of the demon who is a member of Rav Papa's household in b. Ḥul. 105b–106a and discussion in Ronis, “A Demonic Servant in Rav Papa's Household: Demons as Subjects in the Mesopotamian Talmud,” in The Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud and its Cultural World (ed. Geoffrey Herman and Jeffrey Rubenstein; Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, forthcoming).

²³ See also b. Ḥul. 106a, which contains a narrative of a demon who is taken to rabbinic court and found liable for causing unintentional harm. There the demon expressly admits his subordination to the rabbis and their rabbinic courts.

²⁴ Gafni, Isaiah M., The Jews of Babylonia in the Talmudic Era: A Social and Cultural History (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1990) 169Google Scholar n. 103 (Hebrew), following Uziel Fuchs, has suggested that a noted distinction can be drawn between the rabbinic community of Nehardea/Pumbedita, to whom most of the talmudic teachings about demons are attributed, and the rabbinic community of Sura, which is less prominent in talmudic teachings about demons. Determining the regional identities of the anonymous redactors, however, is more complex, and more work must be done before an internal Babylonian rabbinic geography can be mapped.

²⁵ See n. 34 below for a discussion of scholarly explanations of this belief in its historical and cultural context.

²⁶ This clause is found only in the Vilna and Venice Print editions. See above, n. 17.

²⁷ Moreover, almost all of the Palestinian Talmud's references to demons are found in the Palestinian tractate Šabbat. The reason for this localization of the demonic is unclear. The minimal and extremely local evidence does not allow us to create a complete picture of the Palestinian legal approach to these intermediary beings.

²⁸ Elman, “World of the ‘Sabboraim,’” 403, has argued that this clause is a later insertion into the passage based on manuscript evidence that the placement of the clause was not certain. However, though it does appear in a slightly different location in ms Munich 95, it always appears in this passage as part of an earlier discussion, and the other eleven manuscripts this author examined are consistent in their location of the clause. Given the spatial discussions that follow it, I argue that it seems to have been part of the redactor's original redaction of the passage, functioning to focus the reader's attention on the importance of location in the ensuing discussion.

²⁹ See above, n. 24. Note, however, that the Babylonian Talmud records many statements by Palestinian sages about demonic issues. I have argued above that many of the baraitot about demons cited by the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Pesaḥim are in fact pseudo-baraitot. What can account for the appearance of Palestinian Amoraic memrot (short declarative statements attributed to the sages of the 3^rd and 4^th cents. CE) about demons in the Babylonian Talmud, though they do not appear in the Palestinian rabbinic corpus? This phenomenon can be explained most convincingly by pointing to the function of the stam as redactor of the talmudic sugya. For discussions of the role of the anonymous redactor in the composition of the Babylonian Talmud, see, e.g., Elman, “World of the ‘Sabboraim,’” 383–415; Yaakov Elman, “The Beginning of Tractate Pesahim in the Bavli and Yerushalmi: Questions of Redaction and Formation,” in Melekhet Mahshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature (ed. Aharon Amit and Aharon Shemesh; Ramat-Gan, IL: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011) 9–26; Halivni, David, Mevo'ot Limqorot Umasorot: ‘Iyyunim Behithavut Hattalmud (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009) 11–87, 339–60Google Scholar; Hauptman, Judith, “Development of the Talmudic Sugya by Amoraic and Post-Amoraic Amplification of a Tannaitic Proto-Sugya,” HUCA (1987) 227–50Google Scholar; Kalmin, Richard, “The Function and Dating of the Stam and the Writing of History,” in Melekhet Mahshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature (ed. Amit, Aharon and Shemesh, Aharon; Ramat-Gan, IL: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011) 31–50 Google Scholar; Rubenstein, Jeffrey L., The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)Google Scholar. The stam functions to knit together diverse traditions into a general worldview and legal approach. The rhetoric created by the stam points to particular discursive moves and interests and sheds light on the world that the stam sought to create in its organization of rabbinic tradition. The individual named sayings take on new meanings and valences in the contexts in which the stam places them. The stam has been most recognized and characterized in the Babylonian Talmud. Yet the Palestinian Talmud has an anonymous voice as well, along with a redactor or redactional layer that pulls together the disparate sources and organizes them coherently to make particularly discursive and legal points. It is the stam in both Talmuds that distinguishes between the land of Israel and Sasanian Babylonia in their approaches to intermediary beings. Thus it is possible that the Palestinian redactors intentionally excluded demonic discourse from their text and did not record existing Palestinian rabbinic teachings on the matter. Alternatively, or perhaps complementarily, it is possible that the Babylonian rabbis pseudepigraphically attributed Babylonian rabbinic sayings to their Palestinian colleagues. Some combination of these approaches is most likely.

³⁰ See y. B. Bat. 15a, b. Yoma 20b, for a discussion of the locations in which Rav lived during his lifetime. See also Strack, H. L. and Stemberger, Gunter, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (trans. Bockmuehl, Markus; 2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1996) 85 Google Scholar.

³¹ A similar tendency has been noted in relation to the Evil Eye by Kalmin, Richard, “The Evil Eye in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” in Judaea-Palaestina, Babylon and Rome: Jews in Antiquity (ed. Isaac, Benjamin and Shahar, Yuval; TSAJ 147; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012) 111–38, at 131Google Scholar.

³² In the Babylonian Talmud, these trends cannot be distinguished according to the linguistic and historical layers of the text's composition. Instead, rabbinic interest in demons, and resistance to that interest, is consistent across the compositional layers.

³³ De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 117.

³⁴ On the subject of the rabbinic belief in the danger of doing things in pairs, see, e.g., Gafni, Jews of Babylonia, 169; Elman, “World of the ‘Sabboraim,’” 383–415; Michael Baris, “‘For I Am the One in Nega'im, I Am the One in Ohalot’: Dualism and Monism in Aggadic Conceptualization of the Law,” (paper presented at the Annual International Meeting of the Jewish Law Association, Antwerp, 16 July 2014) who attribute it in different ways to Zoroastrian dualism; and Geller, “Akkadian Healing Therapies,” 56–57 who attributes it to ancient Mesopotamian extispicy. Note, however, that none of these cultures associated doing things an even number of times with danger or with demons. In fact, this iteration of such a belief appears only in Babylonian rabbinic literature.

³⁵ See, e.g., Pahlavi, Vīdēvdād 7.2C–E in Moazami, Mahnaz, Wrestling with the Demons of the Pahlavi Widēwdād (Iran Studies 9; Leiden: Brill, 2014) 185 Google Scholar. For scholarship on the Zoroastrian use of legal discourse to treat demons, see Elman, Yaakov, “The Other in the Mirror: Iranians and Jews View One Another: Questions of Identity, Conversion, and Exogamy in the Fifth-Century Iranian Empire,” BAI 19 (2005) 15–25 Google Scholar; Kiel, Yishai, “Gazing through Transparent Objects in Pahlavi and Rabbinic Literature,” BAI 24 (2014) 27–38 Google Scholar.

³⁶ These demons mark a transformation of earlier Indic and Iranian deities (daēva) into malevolent intermediary beings (dēw) with the development of Zoroastrianism. See, e.g., Yarshater, Ehsan, “Iranian Common Beliefs and World-View,” in The Cambridge History of Iran (ed. Yarshater, Ehsan; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 341–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jong, Albert De, “Going Going Gone! The Fate of the Demons in Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Zoroastrianism,” in Démons iraniens: Actes du colloque international organisé à l'Université de Liège les 5 et 6 février 2009 à l'occasion des 65 ans de Jean Kellens (ed. Swenson, Philippe; Liège, BE: Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2015) 163–70Google Scholar. Many intermediary beings in Zoroastrian tradition are benevolent, but these beings are never referred to as dēw. See Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism: The Early Period (HO1 8/1; Leiden: Brill, 1996) 85–92. One exception to this general rule may be found in the Pahlavi descriptions of the being Vāyu (Wāy) who is apparently dual natured, both malevolent and benevolent. However, this being is never referred to as a demon (Prods Oktor Skjærvø, personal correspondence, 2 Aug 2016). For more on the nature of Vāyu, see William W. Malandra, “Vāyu,” Encyclopædia Iranica (2014); online edition, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/vayu.

³⁷ For an extensive discussion of late antique approaches toward demons and of the types of conflict these approaches could engender, see Ronis, “‘Do Not Go Out,’” 272–376.