1. See, e.g., B. Berakhot 5a, 51a; B. Shabbat 12b; B. Eruvin 18b, 43a; B. Pesaḥim 109b–112a, 114a; B. Megillah 3a; B. Ḥagigah 16a; B. Gittin 66a–68b; B. Bava Meẓiʾa 86a; B. Sanhedrin 44a, 67a–b, 101a, 109a; B. Ḥullin 105a–106b; B. Niddah 17a.

2. See Ronis, Sara, “Intermediary Beings in Late Antique Judaism,” Currents in Biblical Research 14, no. 1 (2015): 94–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an extended historiography of the field.

3. Kohut, Alexander, Ueber die Jüdische Angelologie und Daemonologie in ihrer Abhängigkeit vom Parsismus (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1866), 48–97Google Scholar. See also Graetz, Heinrich, History of the Jews, vol. 2, From the Reign of Hyrcanus (135 BCE) to the Completion of the Babylonian Talmud (1893; repr. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1967), 633Google Scholar; Blau, Ludwig, Das altjüdische Zauberwesen (Strasbourg, 1898), 1–16Google Scholar, 37–49. These attitudes continue into the twentieth century. See Trachtenberg, Joshua, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (New York: Behrman House, 1939), vii–xGoogle Scholar; Bamberger, Bernard J., Fallen Angels (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1952), 21, 102–14Google Scholar.

4. 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), 383–415Google Scholar. Perhaps ironically, Yishai Kiel has noted a similar dismissal of magic and the supernatural in the study of Zoroastrianism (personal conversation). For discussions of more recent assessments of the role of magical rituals, see Skjærvø, Prods Oktor, “The Vīdēvdād: Its Ritual-Mythical Significance,” in The Age of the Parthians, ed. Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh and Stewart, Sarah (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 105–41Google Scholar; Kiel, Yishai, “Zoroastrian and Hindu Connections in the Priestly Strata of the Pentateuch: The Case of Numbers 31:19–24,” Vetus Testamentum 62 (2013): 577–604CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. 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. Part One,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 19 (2005): 15–25Google Scholar; Secunda, Shai, “The Fractious Eye: On the Evil Eye of Menstruants in Zoroastrian Tradition,” Numen 61 (2014): 83–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shana Strauch Schick, “Intention in the Babylonian Talmud: An Intellectual History” (PhD diss., Yeshiva University, 2011). See also Kiel, Yishai, “Redesigning Tzitzit in the Babylonian Talmud in Light of Literary Depictions of the Zoroastrian Kustig,” in Shoshannat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman, ed. Secunda, Shai and Fine, Steven (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 185–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. M. J. Geller, “Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud,” in Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschafsgeschichte Preprint (2004): 56–57; Geller, , “An Akkadium Vademecum in the Babylonian Talmud,” in From Athens to Jerusalem: Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature, ed. Kottek, Samuel and Horstmanshoff, Manfred (Rotterdam: Erasmus, 2000), 13–32Google Scholar.

7. Kalmin, Richard, “The Bavli, the Roman East, and Mesopotamian Christianity,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106, no. 2 (2016): 242–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Siegal, Michal Bar-Asher, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gross, Simcha M., “Irano-Talmudica and Beyond: Next Steps in the Contextualization of the Babylonian Talmud,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106, no. 2 (2016): 248–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Brody, Robert, “Irano-Talmudica: The New Parallelomania?,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106, no. 2 (2016): 209–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and see a response to Brody's arguments in Secunda, Shai, “‘This, but Also That’: Historical, Methodological, and Theoretical Reflections on Irano-Talmudica,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106, no. 2 (2016): 233–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. The Vilna printed edition reads בי רבנן דאביי, “Abbaye's house of study.”

10. Munich 95, Vatican 111, and the Venice and Vilna print editions all read מיתזקי.

11. MS Oxford Opp. 248 (367).

12. Sokoloff, Michael, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003), 218–19Google Scholar.

13. See discussion in Ronis, Sara, “Space, Place, and the Race for Power: Rabbis, Demons, and the Construction of Babylonia,” Harvard Theological Review 110, no. 4 (2017): 588–603CrossRefGoogle Scholar. By contrast, B. Pesaḥim 109b–112a discusses the dangers of doing certain activities in even numbers. Scholars of Rabbinic Judaism have suggested both Zoroastrian and Greco-Roman influences in the valorization of odd numbers and the literal demonization of even ones. See Gafni, Isaiah, Y ehude Bavel bi-tekufat ha-Talmud (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1990), 170Google Scholar, discussing Scheftelowitz, Isidor, Die altpersische Religion und das Judentum; Unterschiede, Übereinstimmungen und gegenseitige Beeinflussungen (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1920), 88–91Google Scholar; Elman, “World of the ‘Sabboraim,’” 398–412; 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 delivered at the Annual Conference of the Jewish Law Association, Antwerp, 2014); Geller, “Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud,” 56–57. For a survey of Greco-Roman numerology specifically, see Tavenner, Euguene, “Three as a Magic Number in Latin Literature,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 47 (1916): 117–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elman is correct in noting that Tavenner does not distinguish between harmful and positive conceptions of the number three.

14. In the Babylonian Talmud, see, e.g., B. Berakhot 43b, where the speaker is the anonymous redactor; B. Shabbat 151b, where the speaker is the first-generation Palestinian Amora R. Ḥanina; B. Megillah 3a, where the teaching is attributed to the first-generation Palestinian Amora R. Joshua b. Levi; and B. Pesaḥim 112b–113a, where the speaker is the Tanna R. Jose b. Judah. Though three of these teachings are attributed to Palestinian rabbis, they have no parallels in Palestinian rabbinic literature, and should thus either be understood as Babylonian rabbinic pseudoattributions to Palestinian forebears, or as indicative of the Babylonian rabbinic redactional tendency to record and preserve Palestinian teachings that the Palestinian rabbis themselves, for whatever reason, chose not to preserve. On Babylonian pseudoattributions, see Epstein, Jacob Nahum, Mavoʾ le-nusaḥ ha-Mishnah, 2 vols. (1948; repr. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 171–77Google Scholar; 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: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011), 103Google Scholar; Rubenstein, Jeffrey L., “Context and Genre: Elements of a Literary Approach to the Rabbinic Narrative,” in How Should Rabbinic Literature Be Read in the Modern World?, ed. Kraus, Matthew (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2006), 141Google Scholar.

15. For a discussion of the range of narratives in which this Indo-European combat myth is found, see Watkins, Calvert, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 313–20Google Scholar, 464–70. For a discussion of one afterlife of this myth in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature, see Collins, Adela Yarbro, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press for Harvard Theological Review, 1976), 101–56Google Scholar.

16. For a discussion of these echoes in the Hebrew Bible, see Shinan, Avigdor and Zakovitch, Yair, From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends, trans. Zakovitch, Valerie (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2012), 1–26Google Scholar. See also Bel and the Dragon 14:23–30.

17. For discussions of this serpent in the Hebrew Bible and its reception, see Nigel Allen, “The Healing Serpent in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition,” in Kottek and Horstmanshoff, From Athens to Jerusalem, 203–26; Birkan-Shear, Amy, “‘Does a Serpent Give Life?’: Understanding the Brazen Serpent According to Philo and Early Rabbinic Literature,” in The Changing Face of Judaism, Christianity, and Other Greco-Roman Religions in Antiquity: Presented to James H. Charlesworth on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Henderson, Ian H. and Oegema, S. Gerbern, Studien zu den Jüdischen Schriften aus Hellenistisch-Römischer Zeit 2 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 2006), 416–26Google Scholar.

18. See, e.g., M. Avot 5: 5; M. Berakhot 5:1; M. Yevamot 16:6; T. Gittin 5:2; T. Ḥullin 22, 23; T. Sanhedrin 8:3; and see Sara Ronis, “‘Do Not Go Out Alone at Night’: Law and Demonic Discourse in the Babylonian Talmud” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2015), 96–102, 115.

19. On the omnipresence of unseen serpentine danger, see, e.g., B. Bava Meẓiʾa 78a; B. Sotah 8b; B. Sanhedrin 37b. On rituals to prevent snake attack, see B. Shabbat 110a. M. J. Geller argues that the fear of snakes in the Babylonian Talmud is related to Akkadian namburbi rituals, which sees snakes as omens of evil and prescribes warding off the evil they foretell through protective rituals involving water. Geller argues that the talmudic tradition corrupts the namburbi ritual and elides the snake as omen of evil and the snake as evil itself. See Geller, , “Deconstructing Talmudic Magic,” in Magic and the Classical Tradition, ed. Burnett, Charles and Ryan, W. F. (London: The Warburg Institute, 2006), 1–18Google Scholar; Geller, “Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud,” 24, 46–54.

20. See, e.g., B. Pesaḥim 109b–112a.

21. Prods Oktor Skjærvø, “Aždahā I. In Old and Middle Iranian,” in Encyclopædia Iranica online edition, accessed September 23, 2014, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/azdaha-dragon-various-kinds#pt1.

22. Scholars debate how to date the composition of the Yašts and their recording in writing. For a summary of scholarly positions, see Almut Hintze, “Yašts,” in Encyclopædia Iranica online edition, accessed September 23, 2014, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yashts.

23. Translation from Forrest, S. K. Mendoza, Witches, Whores, and Sorcerers: The Concept of Evil in Early Iran (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 131Google Scholar.

24. Bundahišn 31:6 in Skjærvø, “Aždahā I” Dhabhar, Ervad Bamanji Nusserwanji, The Persian Rivayats of Hormazyar Framaz and Others (1932; repr. Bombay: The K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, 1999), 454Google Scholar.

25. Zamyād Yašt 8:46–51 in Lommel, Herman, Die Yäšt's des Awesta (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1927), 180–81Google Scholar; Dēnkard 9.21.8–10 in Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, “Studies in Zoroastrian Exegesis and Hermeneutics with a Critical Edition of the Sūdgar Nask of Dēnkard Book 9” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2007), 304; Skjærvø, “Aždahā I.”

26. For more on Azdahāg, see Skjærvø, “Aždahā I.”

27. Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon, 464–70.

28. Skjærvø, “Aždahā I.” The late Zoroastrian Bundahišn 22.10 may contain the only reference to a seven-headed dragon in either Avestan or Pahlavi. See Anklesaria, Behramgore T., Zand-Ākāsīh: Iranian or Greater Bundahišn (Bombay: Dastur Framoze A. Bode, 1956), 184–85Google Scholar. The reference is obscure and does not appear in the Indian or Lesser Bundahišn, a shorter and more corrupted recension of the text. Scholarly dates for the Bundahišn range from the Late Sasanian period to the tenth century; these dates all suggest that the possible reference to the seven-headed dragon is later than the talmudic text. On the date of the Bundahišn, see D. N. Mackenzie, “Bundahišn,” in Encyclopædia Iranica online edition, accessed September 23, 2014, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bundahisn-primal-creation. If it is original to the Bundahišn, this reference highlights the survival of ancient Mesopotamian tropes into the medieval period.

29. One might attempt to situate this ʾaggadataʾ in the Greco-Roman world, based on parallels with Hercules's defeat of the multiheaded Hydra who guarded the entrance to the underworld (Ps.-Apollodorus, Library 2.5.2). Yet where Hercules attacked the Hydra with a club and fire, R. Aḥa b. Jacob defeats the demon through bowing. Furthermore, in the Greek traditions, Hydra had nine heads rather than seven. This evidence, taken together with the evidence discussed above, suggests an eastern context for the ʾaggadataʾ of B. Kiddushin 29b, even though the demon is portrayed as absolutely malevolent.

30. Lambert, W. G., Babylonian Creation Myths (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 443–44Google Scholar.

31. See Enuma Elish, tablets 5.73–76 in Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, 101–3, 230–32; Dalley, Stephanie, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 252–61Google Scholar.

32. “Ninurta's Return to Nibru: A Šir-gida to Ninurta,” 55–63, 135–47, in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/. See also Annus, Amar, The God Ninurta in the Mythology and Royal Ideology of Ancient Mesopotamia, State Archives of Assyria Studies (Finland: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002), 109–23Google Scholar.

33. Annus, The God Ninurta, 110; Biggs, Robert, “Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Looted Iraq Museum,” IFAR Journal 6, nos. 1 & 2 (2007): 46–49Google Scholar.

34. In the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, the god Mot otherwise ascribes this triumph in battle to Baal: “When you killed Lotan, the fleeing serpent, finished off the writhing serpent, Shalyat [‘Ruler’, a title of Lotan], the seven headed one.” Translations from Pitard, Wayne T., “Voices from the Dust: Tablets from Ugarit and the Bible,” in Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations, ed. Chavalas, Mark W. and Younger, K. Lawson Jr. (London: Continuum, 2003), 251–75Google Scholar, 261. See also Heidel, Alexander, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation (1942; repr. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 39–41, 78–79Google Scholar; Montgomery, James A. and Harris, Zellig S., The Ras Shamra Mythological Texts (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1935), 39Google Scholar.

35. Anat's love of the bow is also evident in the Aqhat Epic, where Anat seeks to kill Aqhat in order to seize his hunting bow (KTU 1.3 ii:16, 31; 1.17 vi:39–40), cited in Day, P. L., “Anat,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 36–43, 37–38Google Scholar.

36. The Baal Cycle later identifies the serpent as Lotan. Lotan is familiar to scholars of the Hebrew Bible with the Hebraicized name Leviathan. For a survey of this scholarship, see George C. Heider, “Tannin,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 834–36; C. Uehlinger, “Leviathan,” in ibid., 511–15. See also Miglio, Adam E., “A Study of the Serpent Incantation KTU 1.82: 1–7 and Its Contributions to Ugaritic Mythology and Religion,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 13 (2013): 30–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a broader discussion of the seven-headed serpent in Ugaritic literature.

37. According to Heidel, Babylonian Genesis, 107–8, “The seven-headed serpent is mentioned in Old Babylonian lists and omens and in the bilingual epic Andimdimma, in which the weapon of the god Ninurta is compared with this monster. Furthermore, such a serpent is represented on a Sumerian mace-head, and on a seal coming from Tel Asmar (ancient Eshnunna) fifty miles northeast of modern Baghdad, and dating back to about the middle of the third millennium BC, is a dragon with seven serpent heads.” See also Isaiah 27:1.

38. και` ὤϕθη ἄλλο σημεῖον ἐν τῶ οὐρανῶ, και` ἰδοὺ δράκων μέγας πυρρός, ἔχων κεϕαλὰς ἑπτὰ και` κέρατα δέκα και` ἐπι` τὰς κεϕαλὰς αὐτοῦ ἑπτὰ διαδήματα. Compare to LXX on Psalm 104:26; Isaiah 27:1. The word used for dragon in the Greek, δράκων, is the same word that the Septuagint uses to translate the word Leviathan in Psalms.

39. It is notable that the seven-headed snake demon does not appear in any of the extant published Babylonian incantation texts, in either the written text or the visual depiction of demons. Its absence in this corpus requires further study.

40. Oelsner, Joachim, “Incantations in Southern Mesopotamia—from Clay Tablets to Magical Bowls: Thoughts on the Decline of the Babylonian Culture,” in Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity, ed. Shaked, Shaul (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 30–51, 36–41Google Scholar; Dalley, Stephanie, “Occasions and Opportunities 2. Persian, Greek, and Parthian Overlords,” in The Legacy of Mesopotamia, ed. Dalley, Stephanie et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 41–42Google Scholar; Geller, M. J., “The Last Wedge,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 87 (1997; 2009): 43–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 43–63.

41. Boiy, T., Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 136 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 264–77Google Scholar; Dalley, “Occasions and Opportunities 2,” 35.

42. See, e.g., Jacob of Sarug, Fall of the Idols 11.51–62; Doctrina Addai 15b–16a, in Howard, George, The Teaching of Addai, Texts and Translations; Early Christian Literature Series, ed. Wilken, Robert L., Schoedel, William R., and Chestnut, Roberta (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), 48–49Google Scholar. For further instances of this survival, and a broader discussion of this phenomenon, see Drijvers, H. J. W., Cults and Beliefs at Edessa, Études Préliminaires aux Religions Orientales dans L'Empire Romain, ed. Vermaseren, M. J. (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 40–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My thanks to Shana Zaia for bringing these texts to my attention.

43. Stephanie Dalley, “The Sassanian Period and Early Islam, c. AD 224–651,” in Legacy of Mesopotamia, 163–64. Dalley further discusses the Zoroastrian tale of the king Jamshid (Yima) and notes that Jamshid ruled the entire world in peace, but on three occasions had to expand the world due to overpopulation (Yašt 19). In the earlier Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis, Atrahasis too must expand the world's borders on three occasions due to overpopulation. See ibid., 172–73, for analysis of the parallels between these two texts.

44. In fact, in Revelation, Rome is recast in the mold of the ancient Near East, heightening Rome's wickedness and its destined destruction.

45. Bamberger, Avigail Manekin, “An Akkadian Demon in the Talmud: Between Šulak and Bar-Širiqa,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 44 (2013): 282–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Levenson, Jon D., Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 37Google Scholar. Levenson also notes that in “biblical, apocalyptic, and Rabbinic Judaism alike, the combat myth is only one component of an amorphous and highly variegated eschatological vision” (37). See also Collins, Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation, 101–55 for a comparative analysis of the combat myth in early Christian texts.

47. The same phenomenon whereby malevolent serpents are vanquished through physical violence is attested in early Greek and Roman texts. See Ogden, Daniel, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 40–46Google Scholar, 110–41. There too, the act of defeating a dragon or serpent is seen as a key moment in the hero's journey, and in fact, in his transformation from simple man to hero at all.

48. The association between bowing and prayer in the rabbinic tradition is first found in M. Yoma 3:9, and appears in the Babylonian Talmud in B. Yoma 53b; B. Berakhot 31a, 34b; B. Megillah 22b; and B. Shevuʿot 16b. On his commentary on B. Kiddushin 29b, the medieval commentator Rashi understands these acts of bowing as part of R. Aḥa b. Jacob's ritualized prayers against the demon, and these acts may well have been part of a localized, otherwise undocumented exorcistic ritual.

49. Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers, 194–237. Yassif, Eli, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning, foreword by Ben-Amos, Dan, ed. Yassif, Eli, trans. S., Jacqueline Teitelbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 153Google Scholar, connects this ʾaggadataʾ to a version of the story of St. George vanquishing the dragon in which the dragon is defeated by being confronted with a cross.

50. Life of St. Anthony 22–23, 39, 48; Life of St. Daniel the Stylite 14–20. My thanks to Philip Keisman for bringing the Life of St. Daniel the Stylite to my attention. In an unpublished work, Keisman, “‘If a Miracle Hadn't Happened for Me …’: Daniel the Stylite and Rav Acha as Parallel Protagonists” (2017), 2, has noted striking similarities between the literary characterization of Daniel the Stylite's exorcism of a church from the phantasmic demons who inhabit it, and the story in B. Kiddushin 29b. Though it is in its infancy, Keisman's work points to exciting new areas of exploration.

51. The History of the Holy Mar Ma'in 81–82 in Brock, Sebastian P., The History of the Holy Mar Ma'in, with a Guide to the Persian Martyr Acts (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2009), 52–54Google Scholar. See also ibid., 77–80 in ibid., 48–52.

52. Vīdēvdād 8.79, 9.46, 10.1–18, 11.9–14, 18.30–49, 19.2 in Moazami, Mahnaz, Wrestling with the Demons of the Pahlavi Widēwdād (Leiden: Brill, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dēnkard 3.7 in Menasce, J. De, Le troisième livre du Dēnkart, Travaux de l'institut d’études iraniennes I.I.I. (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1973), 33Google Scholar; Dēnkard 5.2.1–14, 5.5.2 in Amouzgar, Jaleh and Tafazzoli, Ahmad, Le cinquième livre du Dēnkard. Transcription, traduction et commentaire, Cahiers de studia iranica (Paris: Association pour l'avancement des études iraniennes, 2000), 24–31Google Scholar, 36–37; Dēnkard 7.4.44–45 in Marijan Molé, La legende de Zoroastre selon les textes pehlevis (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1967), 50–51; Dēnkard 9.2 in Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, “Studies in Zoroastrian Exegesis and Hermeneutics,” 230–31; Bundahišn 24.30 in Anklesaria, Behramgore T., Zand-Ākāsīh: Iranian or Greater Bundahišn (Bombay: Dastur Framoze A. Bode, 1956), 198–99Google Scholar; Šāyest nē šāyest Supplement 13 in Kotwal, M. Firoze, The Supplementary Texts to the Šāyest Nē Šāyest (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1969), 40–55Google Scholar; Šāyest nē šāyest, appendix 20.11 in ibid., 84–85.

53. Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine, 9–10.

54. Brown, Peter, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” The Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brown, , Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World, Canto ed. (1995; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 55–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. See, e.g., Shaked, Shaul, Ford, James Nathan, and Bhayro, Siam, Aramaic Bowl Spells: Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Bowls, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moriggi, Marco, A Corpus of Syriac Incantation Bowls: Syriac Magical Texts from Late-Antique Mesopotamia (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similar incantation texts are found in the Christian amuletic tradition from Egypt and the wider Byzantine Empire. See, e.g., de Bruyn, Theodore, “What Did Ancient Christians Say When They Cast Out Demons? Inferences from Spells and Amulets,” in Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium, ed. Dunn, Geoffrey and Mayer, Wendy (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 64–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. Ronis, “Do Not Go Out Alone at Night,” 390–91.

57. For manifestations of this phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible, see Milgrom, Jacob, Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 566–69Google Scholar, 638–40. For evidence of this phenomenon in the rabbinic world, see M. Yoma 1:1–8, 5:1–7 and discussions thereon in the Babylonian Talmud.

58. See, e.g., Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers, 194–237.

59. E.g., B. Berakhot 6a; B. Pesaḥim 109b–112a; B. Eruvin 43a. See discussion in Ronis, Sara, “A Demonic Servant in Rav Papa's Household: Demons as Subjects in the Mesopotamian Talmud,” in The Aggada of the Bavli and Its Cultural World, ed. Herman, Geoffrey and Rubenstein, Jeffrey (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2018), 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. B. Pesaḥim 109b–112a; B. Berakhot 3a–b, 43b.

61. This rabbinic shift contrasts the move made by early Christian writers. Martin, Dale B., Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 187–206Google Scholar, has traced a shift in late antique Christian writers from a depiction of daimons as moral, divine, or quasi-divine beings to a depiction of daimons as entirely evil. Martin argues that “the shift in demonology that occurred in late antiquity … reflected broader shifts in intellectual culture of the period and cannot simplistically be written off as due to Christian influence” (188–89). While this shift may have been true in the Roman West, the rabbinic texts of late antique Babylonia present a counterpoint, making precisely the opposite move, from malevolent Second Temple demons to neutral or even positively marked late antique demons. The story under discussion from B. Kiddushin 29b is a singular exception in Babylonian rabbinic thought.

62. See, e.g., B. Pesaḥim 110a; B. Eruvin 43a; and possibly B. Yevamot 122a. See also B. Ḥullin 106a; B. Gittin 66a, 68a–b; B. Sanhedrin 44a; B. Meʿilah 17a–b; and B. Gittin 68a. There is an extensive body of scholarship on the positive and beneficial relationship between King Solomon and the demon-prince Ashmedai. Notably, in this account, the demon-prince is bound by the divine name to serve King Solomon, until that binding is released. See Kalmin, Richard, Migrating Tales: The Talmud's Narratives and Their Historical Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 116–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Torijano, Pablo A., Solomon the Esoteric King: From King to Magus, Development of a Tradition, Supplement to the Journal for the Study of Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 41–87Google Scholar; Ronis, “Do Not Go Out Alone at Night,” 259–67.

63. Both depictions function to enhance the importance and power of the Babylonian rabbis and the space that they create. The rabbis are so important, so exclusively authorized to transmit the Torah, that demons are drawn either to attack or join them. For a discussion of how the rabbis “think with” demons to construct rabbinic space, see Ronis, “Space, Place, and the Race for Power.”

64. As with the Christian texts discussed above, this Zoroastrian depiction of malevolent demons itself attests to a shift in understanding the nature of demons. Many scholars have studied the reversal of divine sources in Indic and Iranian sources. Early Indic beneficent divinities (daēva) become evil demons (dēw) with the emergence and early development of Zoroastrianism. See Yarshater, Ehsan, “Iranian Common Beliefs and World-View,” in The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 341–58, 347–49Google 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 la Université de Liège les 5 et 6 février 2009 à l'occasion des 65 ans de Jean Kellens, ed. Swenson, Philippe (Liege: Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2015), 163–70Google Scholar; Clarisse Herrenschmidt and Jean Kellens, “Daiva,” in Encyclopedia Iranica online edition, accessed September 23, 2014, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/daiva-old-iranian-noun. One exception to the predominant characterization of Zoroastrian demons as evil is found in the Middle Persian depiction of the being Vāyu (Wāy), who is dual natured, being both benevolent and malevolent at different times, though it is his benevolence that marks him as exceptional. On the nature of Vāyu, see William W. Malandra, “Vāyu,” in Encyclopædia Iranica online edition, accessed September 23, 2014, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/vayu. My thanks to the anonymous reader who noted Vāyu's exceptionalism.

65. van der Toorn, Karel, “The Theology of Demons in Mesopotamia and Israel: Popular Belief and Scholarly Speculation,” in Die Dämonen; die Dämonologie der israelitisch-jüdischen und frühchristlichen Literatur im Kontext ihrer Umwelt, ed. Lange, Armin et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 61–83Google Scholar, 73. Thus, in the older Sumerian accounts that make up the Dumuzi Myth Cycle, Ereškigal Queen of the Underworld sends out gallû demons to seize Dumuzi and drag him to the underworld, in place of his lover, Inana. From Dumuzi's perspective, these demons were evil attackers from whom he had to hide, but in the context of the Sumerian pantheon, these demons functioned simply as followers of divine commands. These stories survived into the Babylonian period, where women mourned the descent of Tammuz (the Babylonian name for Dumuzi) to the underworld every summer.

66. Gudea Cylinder B ii.9–10, in Edzard, Dietz Otto, Gudea and His Dynasty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See discussion in Ronis, “Do Not Go Out Alone at Night,” 280.

67. Cunningham, Graham, “Deliver Me from Evil”: Mesopotamian Incantations 2500–1500 (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 1997), 128Google Scholar.

68. Eliav, Yaron Z., “The Roman Bath as a Jewish Institution: Another Look at the Encounter between Judaism and the Greco-Roman Culture,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 31, no. 4 (2000): 416–54, 426–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an alternative, though complementary, model, see Satlow, Michael L., “Beyond Influence: Toward a New Historiographic Paradigm,” in Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext, ed. Norich, Anita and Z. Eliav, Yaron (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008), 53Google Scholar.