Volume 25 Talmud and Christianity:

No. 3 Rabbinic Judaism after Constantine, Part 1

2018
Introduction

Michal Bar-Asher Siegal

Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates
over Scripture: Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 102b

Holger Zellentin
Typology and the Transfiguration of Rabbi Aqiva
(Pesiqta de Rav Kahana 4:7 and BT Menahot 29b)
˙
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe
Demons between the Desert Fathers and the Rabbis

Helen Spurling
Interpretations of Daniel 12:1 and Perceptions of the
Christian “Other”

Mohr Siebeck
Michal Bar-Asher Siegal
Ben Gurion University, Israel

Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over

Scripture: Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 102b*

Abstract: This paper reads the story about R. Gamliel and a min in BT Yevamot 102b
against the backdrop of contemporaneous Christian writings. This reading can shed
new light on the min-rabbi dialogue. The story implies rabbinic awareness of Chris-
tian uses of the topos of halitzah, which are based on a different halakhic formu-
˙ on this knowledge does the position of the min in the
lation of the law. Only based
Talmud make sense. This story is yet another step in figuring out the complex matrix
of Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity and the Persian Empire, how much
the rabbis knew about their Christian neighbors, how much they cared to engage
with them, and what sort of engagement we can discern.
Key words: Halitzah, “fool,” biblical-based polemics, Early Christianity, Babylonian
Talmud. ˙

Introduction

Stories portraying minim (“heretics”) in rabbinic literature tell of inter-

actions between a rabbinic figure and a min and frequently involve a con-
flict surrounding the interpretation of a biblical verse. The rabbinic figure
always comes out victorious in the face of a challenge presented by the min.1
Though the vast majority of these stories are found in the Babylonian
Talmud, they almost always feature a Tanna, a rabbinic authority of the first

* This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 1199/17).
I wish to thank the participants of the conference “Talmud and Christianity: Rabbinic
Judaism after Constantine,” that was held in Cambridge University (2016) for their
useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and especially Daniel Weiss and
Holger Zellentin. I am indebted to Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal for his nuanced and careful
comments. Rabbinic sources are quoted according to the manuscript versions as found
in Ma᾽agarim: The Historical Dictionary Project of the Academy of the Hebrew Language
(maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il). English translations are mine. Biblical translations
are according to the New International Version.
1 Many articles have been dedicated to the study of the minim stories. For a survey
of the primary sources, see for example, R. T. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and
Midrash (London, 1903); Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (Leiden: Brill, 1977)
Daniel Sperber, “Min,” Encyclopedia Judiaca14 (2nd ed., 2007) 263–264 and David
M. Grossberg, Heresy and the formation of the Rabbinic Community (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2017).

JSQ 25 (2018), 221–238 DOI 10.1628/jsq-2018-0012

ISSN 0944–5706 © 2018 Mohr Siebeck

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222  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

or second centuries. In other words, the talmudic stories portray rabbis who
lived before the Amoraic time (200–500 CE), in the neighboring empire, in
the land of Israel.
Scholars have long attempted to identify these minim, proposing many
different possible referents: Christians, Jewish or Gentile; members of one
of the Greco-Roman religions; Gnostics; Samaritans; Sadducees; and sup-
porters of Roman rule.2 However, most now agree that the term min in
rabbinic literature cannot easily be mapped onto a specific non-rabbinic
group. Different rabbinic passages reflect different uses of this term, which
can sometimes be defined more specifically within a particular literary con-
text, while at other times it remains vague.3
As to the function of the minim stories, Richard Kalmin and Shai
Secunda both view them as providing historical evidence of some sort
regarding interactions between Jews and non-Jews. Kalmin reads the Baby-
lonian stories as reflecting an actual historical situation, though in Palestine
rather than in Babylonia.4 Secunda agrees that the stories “partially reflect
polemical realities in Roman Palestine,” but holds that their presence in the
Bavli is evidence of polemical interactions in the Persian Empire itself.5
On the other hand, Christine Hayes sees in these texts articulations of
inner rabbinic attitudes.6 She reads the texts not as evidence of historical
contacts between Jews and non-Jews, but rather as signs of rabbinic anxiety
about their own advanced methods of midrashic biblical interpretation
and about the extent of their authority as interpreters of the biblical text.
In other words, according to Hayes, what we read when we read dialogues

2 For example, Adolph Büchler, in Studies in Jewish History: The Adolph Büchler
Memorial Volume, ed. I. Brodie and J. Rabbinowitz (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1956) 245–274; Richard Kalmin, “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of
Late Antiquity,” Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994) 155–169; and Adiel Schremer,
Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity, and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010).
3 For summary of this approach, see, for example, Shaye J. D. Cohen, “A Virgin Defiled:
Some Rabbinic and Christian Views on the Origins of Heresy,” Union Seminary
Quarterly Review 36 (1980) 3; Stuart S. Miller, “The Minim of Sepphoris Reconsid-
ered,” Harvard Theological Review 86 (1993) 377–402; and Steven T. Katz, “The Rab-
binic Response to Christianity,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, vol.4 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006) 287–293.
4 Richard Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity (London: Routledge,
1999).
5 Shai Secunda, “Reading the Bavli in Iran,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100 (2010) 310–42.
6 Christine Elizabeth Hayes, “Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of ‘mînîm’
and Romans in b. Sanhedrin 90b–91a,” in Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later
Roman Palestine, ed. Hayim Lapin (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 1998)
249–89.

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25 (2018) Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture  223

between rabbinic Jews and minim, is a fabricated story, a discursive inven-

tion through which we can glean insights into the rabbis’ own mindset.
I offer a third approach, which I will illustrate through a close reading of
one of these minim texts. I will be reading rabbinic dialogues with minim
as an intellectual exercise on the part of the rabbis, a pretend dialogue com-
posed to express rabbinic thoughts. In this way, I side with Hayes’ non-his-
torical approach to these texts, which do not, in my view, represent actual
Jewish-Christian dialogues and should not be read as such. However, I pro-
pose that these fictional literary creations are rooted in historical realities.
Here, I come closer to Secunda and Kalmin, but I will not attempt to under-
stand the stories in light of historical Jewish-Christian polemics. Rather,
I  read them in the context of internal Christian discussions of scripture.
I will suggest reading these dialogues as an attempt by the rabbis to take
part in the broader conversation taking place outside their community. To
my mind, the rabbinic texts reflect the thought processes of the small group
of rabbis looking at the conversation around biblical interpretation taking
place in the Christian world and imagining how they might participate.
I will try to show that we can better understand how the biblical verses
at the center of some of these rabbi-min dialogues are employed if we read
them in light of outside, non-rabbinic literary material. When we read the
specific biblical text at the center of the talmudic dialogue with a recognition
how the biblical text was read in widely-known discussions within Chris-
tianity, the talmudic story no longer needs to be read solely as a reflection
of Jewish-Christian polemic. Rather, I propose viewing the talmudic texts
as intellectual exercises in which the rabbis ask: if we were to participate in
this larger conversation, how would we respond? In other words, I want to
offer a reading of these texts as historical, insofar as they represent actual
discussions concerning these exact biblical verses, and display awareness of
Christian text-readings of the time; but also as ahistorical, insofar as they
do not reflect actual Jewish-Christian debates over these verses. These dia-
logues are “guided imagery” of sorts, in which the rabbis imagine playing a
part in the wider discussions of the world in which they lived.7

7 Given the brief nature of these rabbi-min dialogues  – only a few short, and often
enigmatic sentences – I offer the caveat that my reading of these stories is strengthened
in my larger research project on a reading of all of the sources as a whole.

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224  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

BT Yevamot 102b

The example I discuss in this essay is part of a set of talmudic rabbi-min

dialogues which share a specific structure, including the use of the insult
“fool,” aimed at the min. In these stories, a min approaches a rabbinic figure
with a question about a biblical verse. In each case, the rabbi’s response con-
tains two parts: in the first, the response includes the “fool” insult, and in
the second part, the response is even more explicitly hostile. All of the pas-
sages end with this two-part response from the rabbi, except BT Hullin 87a,
˙
which goes on to discuss the min’s reaction and its aftermath.8
“Fool” (shote) in rabbinic literature can appear either as a legal category,
often with the hearing-impaired or a minor, or, as in the case I  discuss
here, as a derogatory term, meant to demonstrate a critical or disrespectful
attitude. The latter is not very common, and appears in relation to specific
groups, such as the Galileans (BT Eruvin 53b) and Sadducees (BT Baba Batra
115b, quoting the Scholion to Megilat Ta᾽anit). Jesus is also called a fool (BT
Shabbat 104b), and several people are criticized for foolish behavior (BT
Avoda Zara 51a) or foolish sayings (BT Hullin 85b; BT Nidda 52b). Else-
˙
where I have attempted to show a semantic field in late antique literature in
which the word “fool” is used to convey much more than a simple insult, but
should rather be seen as a polemic tool in scriptural disagreements.9 This
understanding shed interesting light on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the
Mount (Matt 5:22) in which he admonishes the use of this specific insult.
I have collected the talmudic passages in which a dialogue with a min
uses this specific insult, “fool,” and I can demonstrate that in this specific
group of stories the use of this term has a specific conotation. It is used
against minim figures to signal a biblical-based polemics, and all of these
stories should be understood in light of Christian traditions of reading the
verses, that stand at the heart of the talmudic min-rabbi dialogue, or in light
of themes related to these verses.
The following story is one example from this mini-corpus and is found
in BT Yevamot 102b10:

8 For the Hulin story, see Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, “‘Fool, Look to the End of the Verse’:
B. Hullin 87a and Its Christian background,” in The Aggada of the Bavli and Its Cul-
˙ World, ed. Geoffrey Herman and Jeffrey L. Rubenstein (Providence: Brown Judaic
tural
Studies, 2018).
9 Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, “Matthew 5:22: The insult ‘fool’ and the interpretation of the
law in Christian and rabbinic sources,” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 234:1 (2017)
5–23.
10 Text according to Munich 141, with changes.

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25 (2018) Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture  225

A certain min11 said to R. Gamliel: You are a people for whom its Master12 has per-
formed halitzah, for it is said, With their flocks13 and with their herds they shall go to
seek the ˙Lord, but they shall not find him; He has drawn off (halatz) from them14 (Hos
˙ It is written, He has
5:6). He said: “Fool, is it written,” He has drawn off for them?
15
drawn off from them. Now in the case of a sister-in-law [lit., the yevama] for whom
the brothers drew off, could there be any validity in the act?

In line with other minim stories in the Talmud, a min approaches a rabbin-
ical figure, Rabban Gamliel,16 and makes a statement based on a biblical
verse. The min refers to a verse in Hosea and learns from this verse that
God has performed the act of halitzah to the people of Israel. The levirate
˙
marriage (Heb. yibbum), according to which the brother of a dead man is
obliged to marry his widow, is legislated in the Bible:
If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must
not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her
and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on
the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.
(Deut 25:5–6)

The laws of levirate marriage also stand at the heart of the story of Yehuda
and Tamar in Genesis 3817 and are known from other Ancient Near Eastern
laws.18

11 The word min is missing in MS Vatican and added in the margin.

12 According to MS Munich 141. Slightly different are the printed versions: “its master
from them”(mareh minneh), and MS Oxford: “his master [from] his face” (mareh
appeh).
13 Http://maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il has “as their flocks” (be-tzonam), while the
manuscript scan as seen in the National Library of Israel catalogue shows “with their
flocks” (ke-tzonam), as read also by Friedberg project for Talmud Variants website.
14 MS Moscow-Guenzburg 594 only quotes the last words of the verse: “He has drawn off
from them.”
15 This version appears in the printed versions, as well as Moscow-Guenzburg 1017 and
594, Munich 95 and Vatican 111. In MS Munich 141, Oxford 248 and Geniza fragment
Cambridge-T‑S F2 (1) 186 have “Is it written: ‘They have have drawn it off for him’? It
is written, ‘He has drawn (it) off from them’!”
16 “Rabban Gamliel” in rabbinic literature can refer to two different Tannaitic sages, but
more often it refers to the second-generation Palestinian Tanna of that name (late first,
early second century CE).
17 See Calum M. Carmichael, “A Ceremonial Crux: Removing a Man’s Sandal as a Female
Gesture of Contempt,” Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977) 321–336.
18 On this, see Edward Westermarck, History of Human Marriage (New York: Allerton,
1922) 3.207–221; Millar Burrows, “Levirate Marriage in Israel,” Journal of Biblical
Literature 59 (1940) 23–33; Millar Burrows, “The Ancient Oriental Background of
Hebrew Levirate Marriage,” BASOR 77 (1940) 2–15; Millar Burrows, “The Marriage of
Boaz and Ruth,” Journal of Biblical Literature 59 (1940) 445–454; T. H. Gaster, Myth,
Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament (New York: Harper, 1969) 449–455.

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226  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

However, if the man refuses to marry his sister-in-law, he can perform

the act of halitzah thereby avoiding the marriage act. The ceremony is
˙
described in Deut 7–10:
However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife, she shall go to the
elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his
brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.” Then
the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I
do not want to marry her,” his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of
the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done
to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” That man’s line shall be
known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled.

The ceremony is thus called halitzah, after the act of the removal of the
˙
sandal, from the root h-l-tz, “to take off, to bare, to draw off/out.”19
˙
In the talmudic story the min reads the use of the same root in Hosea
(“He hath drawn off (halatz) from them”) as an indication of the perform-
˙
ance of the ceremony of halitzah by God with respect to his people. The
˙
answer is given in a polemical tone. The min is named “a fool,” and his claim
is rebuffed based on the specific details of the halitzah ceremony.
˙
The min’s argument makes sense not only based on the shared word:
Hosea uses the term halatz for the withdrawal of God, which can be read
˙
as the withdrawal of a shoe or a sandal, as in the known halitzah ceremony;
˙
but the move from a simple meaning of withdrawal to the ceremonial halit-
˙
zah also makes sense based on Hosea’s unique use of the word in biblical
Hebrew. In the Bible, the transitive root h-l-tz always denotes the removal of
˙
clothes, and specifically of shoes (not only in Deuteronomy, but also in Isa
20:2). Hosea’s verse constitutes the only intransitive use of h-l-tz denoting
˙
the removal of a person rather than a shoe.20 Therefore, the min’s argument
draws upon the more regular use of the word in the Bible in order to read
its unique use here.
Rabban Gamliel’s argument against the min’s statement is that the wording
of the verse does not support his reading. The halitzah ceremony as described
˙
in Deuteronomy requires the sister-in-law to remove the sandal from her
brother-in-law’s foot. If the brother-in-law in this scenario is God and the
sister-in-law is Israel, we should not expect a biblical version that assigns
God with the task of removing the shoe from his people. However, in Hosea
the verse reads “from them,” not “for him.” Therefore, says Rabban Gamliel,

19 BDB, ‫חלץ‬, 322.

20 See for example Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet
Hosea (Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Augsburg For-
tress Publishers 1974, 100–101.

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25 (2018) Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture  227

the analogy does not work: there would be no halakhic validity to the act if
the brothers of the dead man were to remove the sandal of their sister-in-law
(instead of vice versa). In the same way, in the allegory proposed by the min,
the act of halitzah by God removing from his people would not be halakhic.21
˙
The argument here is subtle and relies on understanding of both the legal
aspects of the ceremony and the Hebrew use of the correct propositions.
A comment made by R. Travers Herford makes this clear: “A knowledge not
merely of the O. T. scriptures but of the Jewish Law is implied on the part
of the min, to whom, otherwise, the answer of R. Gamliel would have been
unintelligible.”22 This, in turn, leads Travers-Herford to the conclusion that
the min had to be “some Christian of Jabneh, where R. Gamliel dwelt.” If
one does not choose to go down the historical route, pinpointing the min to
a specific religious and geographical background, based on this short story,
what can we say about the creation of this tradition?
The use of the insult “fool” in a biblical-based argument, the opponent
being a min, and the literary structure of this dialogue in line with other
minim stories, leads me to suggest that this story, short as it is, should be
read in light of outside, non-rabbinic literary materials. I propose reading
it, like the other minim stories, as a rabbinic literary construction, created
in light of contemporary Christian uses of the topos of halitzah. Christian
˙
writers, as demonstrated below, used the topos of halitzah to describe the
˙
shift of preference to the Christians.Theyread many of the biblical mentions
of sandals allegorically, in light of the halitzah ceremony, and this should be
˙
understood as the background to the talmudic passage.
Before we turn to Christian uses of the topic of halitzah specifically, the
˙
following passages will show that ancient Christian writers read the general
mention of sandals in biblical verses in allegorical interpretations. For
example, Jerome reads the scene in Joshua 6, where Joshua is instructed
to remove his sandals before entering the Land of Israel (Josh 5:15), as a
sign for the change from the desert period to the entry to the land, and in
allegory to the change in the period after Jesus:

21 See R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London: Williams

and Norgate, 1903) 235–237. On halitzah in rabbinic literature, see Samuel Belkin,
˙
“Levirate and Agnate Marriage in Rabbinic and Cognate Literature,” Jewish Quarterly
Review 60 (1970) 275–329; Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine (Peabody:
Hendrickson, 1996) 152–157; Dvora E. Weisberg, “Levirate Marriage and ‘Halitzah’ in
the Mishnah,” Annual of Rabbinic Judaism 1 (1998) 37–69; Dvora E. Weisberg, “The
Babylonian Talmud’s Treatment of Levirate Marriage,” Annual of Rabbinic Judaism 3
(2000) 35–66; Dvora E. Weisberg, Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism
(Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2009).
22 Herford, Christianity in Talmud, 237.

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228  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

Now, grasp the mystical meaning of Holy Writ. As long as we are walking through
the wilderness, it is necessary that we wear sandals to cover and protect our feet, but
when we shall have entered the Land of Promise, we shall hear with Jesus [Joshua],
the son of Nave [Nun]: “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place upon
which you are standing is holy.” When, therefore, we enter into the kingdom of
heaven, we shall have no need of sandals or for protection against this world, but –
to give you a new thought – we shall follow the Lamb that has been slain for us.23

The removal of the sandal in the Jerome passage signals the removal of the
laws of the old covenant.
The typological reading of the sandals was similarly read into the New
Testament, where John the Baptist prepares the way to Jesus. In Matthew,
John says:
I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more power-
ful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing
floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable
fire. (Matt 3:11)

In the versions of this text in Mark, Luke, Acts and John, John the Baptist
declares himself unworthy even of untying (lusai) the sandal, rather than
carrying it (bastasai).24 In the background of this saying is the fact that
slaves were responsible for untying their master’s shoes. So John the Baptist
is saying he is unworthy even to perform the slave’s task for Jesus.
Some scholars have viewed Matthew’s version as a change from the
original version found in the others,25 and debated the reason behind this
change, its origin (Matthew or his source) and its meaning.26 David Daube
suggested that Matthew’s John is treating Jesus as a disciple to his master
according to a rabbinic principle preserved in BT Ketubot 96a, where a dis-
ciple should do for his teacher anything a slave would do (such as carrying

23 Jerome, Homily on the Exodus, 91 (trans in The Homilies of Saint Jerome, vol. 2 (Wash-
ington: Catholic University of America, 2010) 241.
24 Mark 1:7: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals
I am not worthy to stoop down and untie”; Luke 3:16: “But one who is more powerful
than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie”; and Acts 13:25:
“But there is one coming after me whose sandals I  am not worthy to untie”); John
1:26–27: “I baptize people with water … But someone is standing among you whom
you do not know. He is the one who comes after me. I am not good enough to untie
his sandals.” Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 49, has Matthew’s bastasai.
25 W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical Commentary on the Gospel according to St.
Matthew (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1991) 1.315–316. And see there their rejection of
Bretscher’s reading of the sandal as John’s rather than Jesus’.
26 Brian C. Dennert, John the Baptist and the Jewish Setting of Matthew (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2015) 162–165 summarizes most of the scholarship on this difference.

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25 (2018) Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture  229

his shoes), except take his shoes off. Mark and Luke represented John as
willing to do even the jobs thought by the rabbis to be “too low for one who
was free.”27
The phrasing in Mark, Luke and John makes clearer the later connection
to the Christian typological readings of the sandal’s act of halitzah. This is
˙
made clear, for example, in Jerome’s Commentary on Matt 3:11:
“Whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.” In another gospel he says “whose sandal
strap I am not worthy to loose.” In the one passage his humility is shown, in the
other the mystery that Christ is the Bridegroom, and John is not deserving to loose
the strap of the Bridegroom, lest, according to the law of Moses and the example of
Ruth, his house be called “the house of the un-sandaled.”28

Jerome here reads in John’s words an allusion to the act of halitzah, read
˙
metaphorically as to express John’s inferiority. Some modern scholars have
agreed with Jerome’s reading and suggested that the element of untying
the sandals in John’s words is already intended there to invoke the levirate
marriage. Edmondo F. Lupieri writes: “John says that, in the eschatological
marriage between the Messiah/the bridegroom and Israel/the bride, he,
John, would not be able to take over his marital-eschatological function
with Israel from the Messiah.”29 I, however, think that Brian Dennert is
correct in dismissing the idea that the words of John the Baptist intended
to refer to halitzah.30
˙
Yet in addition to Jerome, other Christian writers have suggested reading
John this way. See, for example, Gregory the Great in the sixth century, who
describes the halitzah law and explains the relationship between John and
˙
Jesus as the replacement of John with Jesus:
It was a custom among the ancients that if someone was unwilling to take the wife
he should be taking, he who should have come to her as bridegroom by right of
relationship would undo his sandal. How did Christ appear among men and women
if not as the bridegroom of his holy church? John said of him that “he who has the
bride is the bridegroom.” Since people considered John the Christ, a fact that he

27 David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (New York, Arno Press, 1973)
266. Davies and Allison see this proposal as “too ingenious, perhaps” (Critical Com-
mentary, 315).
28 English translation according to Thomas Scheck, Saint Jerome: Commentary on Mat-
thew (Washington: Catholic University of America, 2008) 69.
29 Edmondo F. Lupieri, “John the Baptist in New Testament Traditions and History,”
ANRW 2.26.1 (1992) 436–437. This view was recently expressed also in André Ville-
neuve, Nuptial Symbolism in Second Temple Writings, the New Testament, and Rabbinic
Literature: Divine Marriage at Key Moments of Salvation History (Leiden; Brill, 2016)
129–130 (without referencing Lupieri).
30 Dennert, John the Baptist, 164 n. 150.

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230  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

denied, he was right to declare his unworthiness to undo the strap of Christ’s sandal.
It is as if he was saying, “I am not able to lay bare the footsteps of the Redeemer,
because I am not unrightfully usurping for myself the name of bridegroom.”31

The connection between Moses, Joshua and John is clearer still in the writ-
ings of Chromatius in the fifth century:
Now we must focus on what is meant by these sandals from the spiritual standpoint.
We know that Moses said long ago: “Put off your sandals from your feet, for the
place on which you are standing is holy ground.” We read that Joshua the son of
Nun likewise said, “Remove the latchet from your sandal.” But as to why they are
ordered by the Lord to remove their sandals, we must understand this to be the type
of a future truth. According to the law, if a man is unwilling to accept the wife of his
brother after his brother’s death, he should take off his shoes, so that another may
marry her and succeed by right of law. As to the commandment prefigured in law,
we find it fulfilled in Christ, who is the true bridegroom of the church. Therefore,
because neither Moses the lawgiver nor Joshua the leader of the people could be the
bridegroom of the church, not without good reason was it said to them that they
should remove the sandals from their feet, because the true future bridegroom of
the church, Christ, was to be expected. John says concerning him: “He who has the
bride is the bridegroom.” To bear or loosen his sandals, John professed himself to be
unworthy. The Lord himself through David revealed that these sandals signify the
footsteps of gospel preaching when he says, “Upon Edom I cast my shoe”; through
his apostles he will take the steps of gospel teaching everywhere.32

Moses and Joshua are seen as having gone through the halitzah ceremony
˙
when they were asked to remove their shoes and thus been removed from
being the “true bridegroom,” who is now Jesus. The old law was replaced by
Jesus, in whom the law has been fulfilled.
A similar argument can also be found in the fourth-century writer
Ambrose:
Therefore it is said to Moses, “Remove the sandals from your feet.” Otherwise Moses,
who was chosen as leader of the people, might be thought to be the bridegroom of
the church. It was for that reason that Joshua, son of Nun, removed his sandals, in
order that he also could preserve the gift of so great a function for him who was to
come. It is for that reason that John says, “A man is coming after me, the strap of
whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” He also says, “He who has the bride is the

31 Forty Gospel Homilies, 4 (Latin text in Gregorius Magnus, Homiliae in Evangelia cura
et studio Raymond Étaix (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999); English trans., David Hurst’s Forty
Gospel Homilies (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990) 24. In the 13th century
Thomas Aquinas picked up Gregory’s reading (Super Evangelium Johannis, I, Lecture
13. 250).
32 Tractate on Matt 11:4. The Latin and French text is in R. Étaix and J. Lemarié,
Chromatii Aquileiensis opera (Turnholt: Brepols, 1974). On Chromatius, see Robert
McEachnie, Chromatius of Aquileia and the Making of a Christian City (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2017).

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25 (2018) Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture  231

bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices
with joy.” This means he alone is the husband of the church, he is the expectation of
the nations, and the prophets removed their sandals while offering to him a union
of nuptial grace.33

In these Christian writers we have a typological reading of the biblical

sandal, and the connection made between the removing of the shoe by
Moses and Joshua on the one hand and the statement by John the Baptist
on the other, to the halitzah ceremony. The halitzah removed the status of
˙ ˙
bridegroom of Israel from the keeper of the old law and gave it to the new
bridegroom, Jesus.
I suggest that similar symbolic interpretations of the sandals should serve
as the backdrop of the min story in Yevamot 102b. The min offered to read
Hosea as testifying to a halitzah ceremony performed by God to his people.
˙
Reading the verb halatz in the Hosea verse as referring to the relationship
˙
between Israel and God is natural in the biblical context of Hosea. There,
Hosea is using his own relationship with his wife as a symbolic represen-
tation of Israel and God. The image of God as the husband and Israel as
the wife, and the unfaithfulness of the wife as a symbol of the fickle nature
of Israel towards God is found in several biblical passages. In Jer 3:8, God
declares: “I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away
because of all her adulteries.”34 The Christian reading of the Hosea verse
and its connection to the halitzah ceremony is a natural next step, given the
˙
context and the verb h-l-tz.
˙
Even though it is God who commands Moses and Joshua to remove their
sandals, the Christian writers do not discuss a halitzah done by God himself,
˙
but rather by Moses, Joshua and John the Baptist. Nor have I found explicit
Christian readings that understand Hosea 5:6 in such a manner. However,
I believe these Christian writers can illuminate the background for our pas-
sage as they make the explicit link of the halitzah ceremony and the move
˙
from the Old Testament to the New. What the min is suggesting is reading
the Hosea verse as proof for the halitzah of God from Israel. Halitzah itself
˙ ˙
is widely discussed in Christian interpretations, using the verse on Moses
and Joshua and John. There, the Christian writers discuss the halitzah as
˙
transference of leadership, signaling the move from the Old Testament to the

33 The Patriarchs, 4.21–22, trans. Fathers of the Church Patristic Series (Washington:
Catholic University of America, 2002) 254. See also Augustine, Sermon 101.7. On
Ambrose’s Patriarchs, see Marcia L Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common
Man (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2005).
34 William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1: A Commentary on the Books of the Prophet Jeremiah
(Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress, 1986) 47–131.

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232  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

New. Here, the min in the Talmud continues in this hermeneutical move and
finds the act of halitzah done by God – removing himself from his people.
˙
I want to make clear that I  do not claim any genealogical connection
between any of the Christian writers mentioned above and the composer of
the talmudic passage. First off, the writers that express the idea of halitzah
˙
in this way are Western, mostly Latin, which makes the case for literary con-
35
nection much less likely. Second, there is no need for direct connection,
for my current argument. I only wish to claim, that in line with prophetic
writings discussing the matrimonial difficulties between God and his
people, halitzah is a natural next step, especially in Christian circles, or in a
˙
fictional Christian setting imagined by the rabbis, where the claim for the
transference of supremacy is being made.

35 Though not impossible. Ambrose’s far reaching influence, even on emperor Theo-
dosios, can give basis to a possible claim of his “exegetical patterns” reaching Jewish
circles. Michael Gaddis and Ulrich Gotter demonstrated the ramification of Ambrose’s
influence; see Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those who Have Christ: Relig-
ious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2005) 194–161; also Ulrich Gotter, “Zwischen Christentum und Staatsraison. Römis-
ches Imperium und religiöse Gewalt,” in Spätantiker Staat und religiöser Konflikt.
Imperiale und lokale Verwaltung und die Gewalt gegen Heiligtümer, ed. J. Hahn (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 2011) 133–58. Other scholars did assume contacts between Ambrose and
contemporary Jews. For example, H. Savon, Saint Ambroise devant l’exégèse de Philon
le juif (1977) and L. Cracco Ruggini, “Ambrogio e le opposizioni anticattoliche,” Augus-
tinianum 14 (1974) 409–449; McLynn, Ambrose, 304, n. 44; Shlomo Simonsohn, The
Jews in the Duchy of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities,
1982). But see M. Doerfler, “Ambrose’s Jews: The Creation of Judaism and Heterodox
Christianity in Ambrose of Milan’s ‘Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam’,” Church
History 80 (2011) 749–772.Obviously, and maybe more importantly, the existence of
historical ties between Ambrose and his community are not required for making the
claim that his arguments were known to contemporary Jews, if his writings were later
known in Syriac, in the East: “He is, in fact, one of the very few Western theologians who
successfully traverses the boundaries between Latin West and Syriac East”; M. Doerfler,
“Glimpses from the Margins: Re-telling Late Ancient History at the Edges of the Law,”
in Beyond Authority: Tradition and Transmission in Late Antiquity, ed. Mark Letteny
and A. J. Levine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018) 111. If we do not limit
ourselves to the search for Syriac uses of Ambrose, for a possible route of transmission,
and allow for the possibility of knowledge of his views through Greek traditions, then
these are very well attested. Of special interest to my own project is that the passages
from Ambrose’s De Fide ad Gratianum, later to be expanded in his volume on the Holy
Spirit, made an appearance at the council of Ephesus (381 CE) and were attached in
excerpts to Leo’s Tome (florilegium, fr. 7) for Chalcedon. The passages discussing the
Holy Spirit have a possible interesting parallel in another Talmudic min’s story, in Hulin
87a which I discuss in “Fool, Look to the End.” But Cyril, as well, brought forward at
the Council of Ephesus (431 CE) texts from Ambrose about the two natures of Christ
(Grillmeier, Christ, 402, n. 82). I am really grateful to Tobias Nicklas and Maria Doerfler
for some of the above references, and for discussing this point with me.

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25 (2018) Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture  233

This argument is strengthened by the fact that Christian writers used

Hos 5:6 to claim the withdrawal of God from Israel.36 See Cyril of Alex-
andria, in his commentary on Hosea:
“With sheep and calves they will go to seek out the Lord, and will not find him, for
he has turned away from them because they abandoned the Lord, because illegiti-
mate children were born to them” (Hos 5:6–7). The facts highlight the truth that, as
the divinely inspired Paul says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to
take away sins,” (Heb 10:4) and that access to God is not granted through the Law,
‘by Law’ referring to the ritual of bloody sacrifices prescribed by the Law. So even if
the people of Israel made the prescribed offerings in supplication for forgiveness of
their unholy crimes or in search of a relationship with God, they would not attain it,
he is saying, nor would they manage to succeed in finding God, nor would access be
granted to those showing repentance in this way. He is found, you see, only through
life in Christ, to which the word of faith would be taken as an introduction and
also saving baptism, which is the basis of relationship with God in the Spirit. Con-
sequently, Israel would not find the Lord.37

Christian writers, thus, used this specific Hosea verse to prove God’s per-
manent removal from Israel, as opoosed to the temporary one meant by the
original biblical verse.
However, Rabban Gamliel’s response is a very good one: the use of the
verse does not align with the halakhic requirements of halitzah, since it
˙
describes God taking off his own shoe rather than his shoe being taken off
for him.
In many of the talmudic rabbi-min dialogues, the min’s argument looks
at first sight as a silly one, or at least one that is easily refutable. This makes
one wonder what the point of these passages may be, other than to ridicule
the min, if the answer is obvious. I wish to claim that when the background
to the min’s question is illuminated, then his question has greater standing
than first appears. While the rabbi figure’s answer is often based on rabbinic
halakha, or the rabbinic way of reading the verses, the min’s question often
has a basis in the non-Jewish context as well.
In the case of the min story in Yevamot 102b, I want to go back to the
above quoted Christian writers to point out one essential element in their

36 Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg, “The People of the Book Without the Book: Jewish
Ambivalence Towards the Biblical Text After the Rise of Christianity” (PhD diss., Uni-
versity of Chicago, 2015) 323–325. I am thankful to Yoni Nadiv for this reference.
37 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, trans. Robert Hill (Boston:
Catholic University Press, 2012) 126. Many of Cyril of Alexandria’s writings were
translated into Syriac in manuscripts going as far back as the mid-fifth to the mid-sixth
centuries. See Daniel King, The Syriac Versions of the Writings of Cyril of Alexandria: A
Study in Translation Technique (Leuven: Peeters, 2008).

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234  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

argument. These writers read the verses on Moses, Joshua and John, in
which the man himself removes the shoe, as signaling the separation. In
their treatises, the writers explain or imply the ceremony of halitzah to be
˙
conducted along the same lines of the explanation given by Gregory the
Great; for example: “It was a custom among the ancients that if someone was
unwilling to take the wife he should be taking, he who should have come to
her as bridegroom … would undo his sandal.” Or Chromatius: “if a man is
unwilling to accept the wife of his brother after his brother’s death, he should
take off his shoe.” These writers explain the rules of halitzah differently than
˙
the ceremony associated with levirate marriage in Deuteronomy. According
to them, the man himself takes off the sandal, rather than the sister-in-law.
And most importantly, only according to this depiction of the law does the
symbolic reading of Moses, Joshua and John work. The man has to be the
one to take off his shoe to effectuate the change.
Where did the Christian writers pick up this halakhic detail? The removal
of the shoe is mentioned in one other place in the Bible, Ruth 4: 2–8:
Boaz took 10 of the elders of the town and said, “Sit here,” and they did so. Then he
said to the guardian-redeemer, “Naomi, who has come back from Moab, is selling
the piece of land that belonged to our relative Elimelek. I thought I should bring the
matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated
here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, do so. But if
you will not, tell me, so I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and
I am next in line.” “I will redeem it,” he (the guardian-redeemer) said. Then Boaz
said, “On the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite,
the dead man’s widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property.”
At this, the guardian-redeemer said, “Then I  cannot redeem it. because I  might
endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I  cannot do it.” Now in earlier
times in Israel, for the redemption and transfer of property to become final, one
party took off his sandal and gave it to the other. This was the method of legalizing
transactions in Israel. So the guardian-redeemer said to Boaz, “Buy it yourself.” And
he removed his sandal.

The removal of the shoe appears here in the context of redemption of both
land and a dead man’s wife. But the act of the removal of the shoe, similar
to the act of halitzah as described in Deuteronomy, appears here as well,
˙
in connection with the refusal to marry the widow of a childless man. The
differences between the cases were noted by ancient and modern writers,
such as the fact that in this case the person asked to marry the widow is
not the brother, but a farther blood relative, and the removal of the shoe is
not done by the woman.38 Scholars debate whether the Deuteronomy and

38 See, for example, S. R. Driver, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy

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25 (2018) Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture  235

Ruth verses refer indeed to the same ceremony.39 But it is obvious that the
Christian writers saw them as such and relied on the description in Ruth to
complete their analogy. See, for example, Ambrose:
Again, St. John Baptist also taught in less weighty language what ideas they were
he had combined, saying: After me comes a Man, Whose shoes I am not worthy
to bear, setting forth at least the more excellent dignity [of Christ], though not the
eternity of His Divine Generation. Now these words are so fully intended of the
Incarnation, that Scripture has given us, in an earlier book, a human counterpart
of the mystic sandal. For, by the Law, when a man died, the marriage bond with his
wife was passed on to his brother, or other man next of kin, in order that the seed
of the brother or next of kin might renew the life of the house, and thus it was that
Ruth, though she was foreign-born, but yet had possessed a husband of the Jewish
people, who had left a kinsman of near relation, being seen and loved of Boaz while
gleaning and maintaining herself and her mother-in-law with that she gleaned, was
yet not taken of Boaz to wife, until she had first loosed the shoe from [the foot of]
him whose wife she ought, by the Law, to have become. The story is a simple one, but
deep are its hidden meanings, for that which was done was the outward betokening
of somewhat further. If indeed we should rack the sense so as to fit the letter exactly,
we should almost find the words an occasion of a certain shame and horror, that
we should regard them as intending and conveying the thought of common bodily
intercourse; but it was the foreshadowing of One Who was to arise from Jewry –
whence Christ was, after the flesh – Who should, with the seed of heavenly teaching,
revive the seed of his dead kinsman, that is to say, the people, and to Whom the
precepts of the Law, in their spiritual significance, assigned the sandal of marriage,
for the espousals of the Church. Moses was not the bridegroom, for to him comes
the word, “Loose your shoe from off your foot,” that he might give place to his Lord.
Nor was Joshua, the son of Nun, the bridegroom, for to him also it was told, saying,
“Loose your shoe from off your foot,” lest, by reason of the likeness of his name,
he should be thought the spouse of the church. None other is the bridegroom but
Christ alone, of whom John said, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” They,
therefore, loose their shoes, but his shoe cannot be loosed, even as John said, “I am
not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” To whom else but the Word of God
incarnate can those words apply?40

(New York: Scribner, 1896) 28; Julian Morgenstern, “The Book of the Covenant: Part
II,” Hebrew Union College Annual 7 (1930) 160–184; L. M. Epstein, Marriage Laws in
the Bible and the Talmud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942) 86–100; H. H.
Rowley, “The Marriage of Ruth,” Harvard Theological Review 40 (1947) 77–99; R. de
Vaux, Ancient Israel (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1961) 522; Samuel Belkin,
“Levirate and Agnate Marriage in Rabbinic and Cognate Literature,” Jewish Quarterly
Review 60 (1970) 275–329; E. F. Campbell, Ruth (Garden City: Doubleday, 1975) 150;
Richard Kalmin, “Levirate Law,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992)
4.296–297.
39 See Ahroni, Reuben, “The Levirate and Human Rights,” in Jewish Law and Current
Legal Problems, ed. Nahum Rakover (Jerusalem: Library of Jewish Law, 1984) 67–76.
40 On the Christian Faith 3. 10. 71–74; trans. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, A  Select
Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: St. Ambrose: Select

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236  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

Here, the verses in the book of Ruth are seen as the example for the imple-
mentation of halitzah laws. Notice that Ambrose, as opposed to the other
˙
writers above (for example, Gregory the Great and Chromatius) alters
the biblical narrative so that Ruth is the one loosening the shoe from the
redeemer. This fits better with the Deuteronomy law of halitzah, but the rest
˙
of the symbolic reading, in Moses, Joshua and John, only works if the man
is the one loosening the sandal, as the story in Ruth itself conveys. Thus, the
Christian reading of the halitzah symbolism is based on a performance of
˙
the ceremony as described in Ruth.
The rabbinic reading of these conflicting halakhic procedures rely on the
framing of the act in the Book of Ruth as different from that of Deuteron-
omy. The action in Ruth is described as one performed in transfer of such
ownership, and therefore has no bearing on the correct way to perform the
halitzah described in Deuteronomy. Modern readers have also regarded the
˙
differences in the details between Deuteronomy and Ruth as a sure sign of
two different ceremonies. Thus, for example, Calum M. Carmichael:
In Ruth the ceremony as regards the ceding of a right to redeem some land is a
relatively straightforward legal one between two parties, while in Deuteronomy the
ceremony involving the sandal is one in which one party publicly disgraces another.
Moreover, in Ruth one party removes his shoe and hands it to the other, while in
Deuteronomy the woman takes off the man’s shoe. He does not hand it over. Fur-
ther, the verb to remove the sandal in Ruth is slp while in Deuteronomy it is hls. The
difference is significant.41 ˙˙

Moreover, the rabbis tended to view the sandal that was removed (in the
words: “and he removed his sandal”) as the shoe of Boaz rather than that
of the redeemer (Ruth Rabba 7:10). Thus, for the rabbis, the Ruth verses
should not be taken as basis for the correct way to preform halitzah.
˙
In BT Yevamot, the min’s reading of Hos 5:6 as God performing the
halitzah, separating from the people of Israel, is indeed a plausible reading
˙
of the verse, according to the Christian tradition as outlined above. Given
the biblical context of Hosea, of marital problems between God and Israel,
and allowing for the loosening of the shoe to be done by the man himself, as
proven by the Ruth narrative, the reading is indeed a possible one. Rabban
Gamliel’s answer is rabbinic. The rabbis view Ruth’s verses as referring to

Works and Letters (Oxford: Parker, 1896) 253. On Ambrose’s “On the Christian Faith,”
see Dan Williams and D. H. Williams, “Polemics and Politics in Ambrose of Milan’s
‘De Fide,’” Journal of Theological Studies 46 (1995) 519–531.
41 Calum M. Carmichael, “A Ceremonial Crux: Removing a Man’s Sandal as a Female
Gesture of Contempt,” Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977) 324. See also A. Phillips,
Deuteronomy (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973) 169.

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25 (2018) Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture  237

issues of ownership and not halitzah. Halitzah is done according to Deuter-

˙ ˙
onomy. and if the brother were to loosen the sandal of his sister-in-law, the
halitzah will not hold.
˙
When quoting the words of R. Gamliel, I have used the version found in
Munich 95 and Vatican 111, Moscow-Guenzburg 1017 and 594, as well as
the printed versions: “Is it written: ‘He has drawn off [the shoe] for them?’ It
is written, ‘He has drawn [it] off from them’” (mi ktiv “halatz lahem” “halatz
˙ ˙
mehem” ktiv). I am reading the lamed here, both in the min’s argument and
in R. Gamilel claim, as an affected dative, to mean “for them,” rather than
“to them,” as one of the functions of the preposition lamed in Jewish Bab-
ylonian Aramaic.42 If I am right in suggesting that the min’s claim is based
on Christian readings of halitzah, then this version works best: The min
˙
is suggesting that God performed halitzah by removing God’s own shoe.
˙
R. Gamliel answers that, according to the Christian claim, the verse should
have said “for them,” but it doesn’t. It says “from them” – as if to say he took
the shoes off the people! The option of taking the shoe off the woman is
not an option of either biblical narrative, neither the rabbinic or Christian
reading of the halitzah ceremony.
˙
However, manuscripts Munich 141, Oxford 248 and Geniza fragment
Cambridge-T‑S F2 (1) 186 have “Is it written: ‘They have have drawn it off for
him’? It is written, ‘He has drawn off from them’” (mi kt “haltzu lo” “halatz
˙ ˙
mehem” kt). This version completely misses the Christian argument, and
its reliance on a different Ruth-based halakha. R. Gamliel’s answer argues
that even according to that halakhic argument, the grammatical phrasing of
the verse does not work. In this version, R. Gamliel asks the min a question
which is based on the rabbinic halakha: it should have said “they drew [it]
off for him,” because this is how the rabbinic ceremony of halitzah works.
˙
This version reads everything as if the lamed indicates the direct object, as
if the man is drawing the shoe from the woman.
According to this version, the entire sentence is meant to ridicule the min
for not being familiar with rabbinic law. Only according to the first version
is there some background to the Christian argument, rather than a com-
pletely wrong (and foolish!) argument. The min says: A people for which
the master performed halitzah, and R. Gamilel answers: No, according to
˙
you it should have been “he performed halitzah for them,” but it says, “he
˙
performed halitzah from them” which can only mean that he took off their
˙

42 See M. Bar-Asher Siegal and A. Elitzur, Introduction to the Grammar of Jewish Bab-
ylonian Aramaic (Munster: Ugarit, 2016) 221–222 and 228–229, for this use of the
preposition.

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238  Michal Bar-Asher Siegal JSQ

shoes, and according to rabbinic law, as well Christian views, if a brother

takes off the shoe of the women, it does not count as halitzah. It stands to
˙
reason that this second version was created when the Christian argument
was no longer understood.
Along with the basis for the allegory, all typological readings of the bib-
lical verses of Moses and Joshua, and their removal of the shoes, would also
collapse, given the rabbinic halakhic basis. In fact, none of the Christian
readings of these passages would make sense for the rabbis, not so much on
Christological as on halakhic grounds. These are not mentioned in talmu-
dic passage at hand, but I think it can be suggested that such argumentation
stands in the background of our min story.43

Conclusion

I wished to show that reading the talmudic story against the backdrop of
Christian reading of the halitzah ceremony can shed new light on the min-
˙
rabbi dialogue. The discussion between the rabbis and the min revolved
around God’s chosen people, before and after Jesus. This is a Jewish-Chris-
tian argument, no doubt; one rooted and repeated in many other passages,
Christian and Jewish. But in this case, the meaning and uses of halitzah
˙
topos in other Christian writings of the time is brought to the reading of the
Hosea verse, and put in the mouth of the Christian min.
Not only is the use of halitzah important here, but the story seems to
˙
imply awareness that Christian uses of the topos are based on a different
halakhic formulation of the law, in which the man takes off his own shoe.
Only based on this knowledge does the position of the min in the Talmud
makes any sense. The Talmud rebuffs the Christian claim about the Hosea
verse, with a good rabbinic refutation, and based on rabbinic halakha. But it
puts in the mouth of the min a claim that can only be based on this analogy,
which is itself based on a different formulation of the halitzah law.
˙
Within the context of my larger project of minim stories in the Babylon-
ian Talmud, this story is yet another step in figuring out the complex matrix
of Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity and the Persian Empire. We
can use it to further ask ourselves, how much the rabbis knew about their
Christian neighbors, how much they cared to engage with them, and when
they did, what sort of engagement can we discern.

43 I am thankful to Holger Zellentin for this emphasis.

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