10 passagesc. 500 CEHebrew / AramaicCC-BY
Individual passages from Talmud Bavli, Avodah Zarah, indexed for close reading, source verification, and myth source-checking.
What does God do all day? The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah takes this question seriously. The rabbis laid out a detailed twelve-hour schedule. During the first three hours, God ...
God is often remembered as all-knowing, all-powerful, the ultimate authority. but what if I told you there's a tradition that suggests God, too, is a student? It's a fascinating id...
The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah says that every afternoon, God plays with Leviathan, the colossal sea creature described in (Job 41:1) and (Psalms 104:26). The fourth quarter o...
The stories we have paint a pretty vivid picture. According to some traditions, on the very day of his creation, Adam saw the sun begin to dip below the horizon. And what was his r...
Havdalah, meaning "separation," is that beautiful, poignant ceremony we perform as the Sabbath ends, a ritual filled with light, spices, and a deep sense of transition. But where d...
The familiar picture has the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, guiding them, protecting them. But what if I told you there's a tradition that paints an even m...
Rabbi Elazar ben Dordia was a man consumed by desire. The Talmud in Tractate Avodah Zarah says there was not a single prostitute in the world he had not visited. When he heard abou...
Before creation there was a churning soup of Hebrew letters, swirling and chaotic, the alphabet unmoored and without sequence. Then God stepped in. To bring order from that chaos, ...
The Romans wrapped Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion in a Torah scroll, piled bundles of vine branches around him, and set him on fire. To prolong his agony, they placed wet wool over his...
Where did the Angel of Death come from? It’s a question that’s haunted humanity for millennia. Was it there from the very beginning, a shadow lurking in the nascent universe? Or di...
