1. I use the term here as used by folklorists, and borrowed from Aarne, Antti and Thompson, Stith, The Types of the Folktale (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961)Google Scholar. On later explanations of the term, its function, and meaning: Uther, Hans-Jörg, “Tale Type,” in Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales, vol. 3 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008)Google Scholar. On the usefulness of folk narrative research in the study of ancient texts, and specifically of ancient rabbinic literature and in comparative religion, see Hasan-Rokem, Galit, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, Hasan-Rokem, , Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar, and her many articles on the subject, of which “The Snake at the Wedding: A Semiotic Reconsideration of the Comparative Method of Folk Narrative Research,” ARV - Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore 43 (1987): 73–87Google Scholar, explains the difference between motif, theme, and tale type and their relationship to the social realm. See also Ben-Amos, Dan, “Jewish Folklore Studies,” Modern Judaism 11, no. 1 (1991): 22–26Google Scholar.

2. There are several meanings to the root. It is versatile already in the Hebrew Bible. See Riegner, Irene, The Vanishing Hebrew Harlot: The Adventures of the Hebrew Stem ZNH (New York: Peter Lang, 2009)Google Scholar. Bird, Phyllis, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, Women and Gender in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997), 219–36Google Scholar, and the literature mentioned there.

3. Forced prostitution was one of the ways the Romans punished the rebelling Jews. This is evident in Eikha Rabbah, E ikha, par. 1:45 to Lamentations 1:17 (ed. Buber, 81–82); E ikha, par. 4:18 to Lamentations 4:15 (ed. Buber, 150–51; ed. Vilnius 29a); B. Avodah Zarah 17b; and B. Gittin 58b. For examples of prostitution both as a profession and as a short-term practice see Y. Taʿanit 1:4 (5b). On prostituting unknowingly see Bereshit Rabbah, Bereshit, par. 18:24 to Genesis 2:24 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1:166) and its parallels.

4. In tannaitic literature we find fifty-eight occurrences of the word zonah, of which only fourteen refer to an actual person: twelve to Rahab, one to the prostitutes that King Solomon judges, and one to an unnamed prostitute who lived in the rabbis’ time. The other forty-four use the root z-n-h or the word zonah in discussion of different sexual laws and norms and their hypothetical transgression. Simcha Fishbane makes the same point about the Babylonian Talmud, but this is true about the entire rabbinic corpus, as Tal Ilan argues. Fishbane, Simcha, “Go and Enjoy Your Acquisition: The Prostitute in the Babylonian Talmud,” Approaches to Ancient Judaism 13 (1999): 71Google Scholar. Ilan, Tal, Jewish Women in Graeco-Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 115–214Google Scholar. Michael Satlow refers to the term beʿilat zenut as a rabbinic term for nonmarital intercourse or nonprocreative intercourse. This shows, once more, that the word zenut does not refer to paid sex or to a profession in rabbinic literature. Satlow, Michael, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1995), 121–26Google Scholar. Similar, but not identical problems are shared by the legal and hagiographical Christian texts, especially as words such as the Latin meretrix refer to both professional prostitutes and to those whose sexual morals are questionable. See Karras, Ruth Mazo, “Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 1, no. 1 (1990): 5Google Scholar.

5. The fundamental laws of ‘arayot, forbidden sexual relationships described in the Bible and in rabbinic literature, can be found in Leviticus 18. Visiting prostitutes is not forbidden anywhere in the Bible or in early rabbinic literature, but according to Deuteronomy 23:18, an Israelite man or woman should not prostitute themselves. Moreover, according to rabbinic law, a father must not prostitute his daughter (B. Sanhedrin 76a).  See also the debate between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai in B. Gittin 81b on the intentions and practices of the Jewish male in nonmarital/marital sex.

The practice of visiting prostitutes and “marriage for one night” is not uncommon in the Talmud. The most famous passage is this context is found in B. Yoma 18b and in B. Yevamot 37a–b, “Whenever Rab came to Darshis, he would announce: ‘Who would be my wife for a single day?’ Whenever R. Naḥman would come to Shekunzib he would have it announced: ‘Who will be my wife for a single day?’” If two of the most distinguished rabbis of Babylon did not shy away from the practice, we must assume it was not considered a serious sin. See also Elman, Yaakov, “Marriage and Marital Property in Rabbinic and Sasanian Law,” in Rabbinic Law in Its Roman and Near Eastern Context, ed. Hezser, Catherine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 247–48Google Scholar, where he makes the point that the ethical aspect of such “marriage” is not even briefly discussed. Others who wrote on the custom of marriage for one night also wondered why there are discussions only of technical but not of moral aspects of the phenomenon. See Gafni, Isaiah, “The Institution of Jewish Marriage in Rabbinic Times,” in The Jewish Family: Metaphor and Memory, ed. Kraemer, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13–30Google Scholar; Gafni, , Yehude Bavel bi-tekufat ha-talmud: Ḥayye ha-ḥevrah ve-ha-ruaḥ (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1990), 268–73Google Scholar; Calderon, Ruth, Ha-shuk, ha-bayit, ha-lev (Tel Aviv: Keter, 2001), 65–72Google Scholar; Herr, Moshe David, “Ha-nissu'in mi-beḥinah soẓiyo-’ekonomit lefi ha-halakhah,” in Mishpeḥot bet Yisra'el: Ha-mishpaḥah bi-tefisat ha-yahadut (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, 1984), 37–46Google Scholar. The use of marriage for one night to legitimize prostitution also stands at the heart of a split between the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam, and in various Karaite and Jewish discussions of the practice. See Friedman, Mordechai A., “Ha-halakhah ke-ʿedut le-ḥayye ha-min 'eẓel ha-yehudim she-be-’arẓot ha-’Islam be-yeme ha-benayim,” Pe'amim 45 (1990): 99–104Google Scholar. I thank Zvi Stampfer for referring me to this important paper.

6. Aarne and Thompson, Types of the Folktale.

7. Dundes, Alan, “The Motif-Index and the Tale Type Index: A Critique,” Journal of Folklore Research 34, no. 3 (1997): 195Google Scholar. Dundes acknowledged Honti's definition as the clearest. Honti, János, “Marchenmorphologie und Marchentypologie,” Folk-Liv 3 (1939): 307–18Google Scholar.

8. Including the latest, Uther, Hans-Jörg, The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography; Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2004)Google Scholar.

9. Dundes, “Motif,” 198.

10. The concept of ecotype was formulated by Carl von Sydow, Wilhelm, “Geography and Folk-Tale Oicotypes,” Béaloideas 4 (1934): 344–55Google Scholar; Sydow, von, Selected Papers on Folklore (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1948), 44–59Google Scholar, and further developed by Honko, Lauri, “Four Forms of Adaptation to Tradition,” Studia Fennica 26 (1981): 19–33Google Scholar. It became an important analytical concept not only in folklore scholarship; see Hasan-Rokem, Galit, “Ökotyp,” Encyclopädie des Märchens (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000)Google Scholar; Hasan-Rokem, , “Leviticus Rabbah 16, 1: ‘Odysseus and the Sirens’ in the Beit Leontis Mosaic from Beit She'an,” in Talmuda De-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine, ed. Fine, Steven and Koller, Aaron (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 159–89, esp. 183Google Scholar.

11. Namely in the tale of Shamḥat in tablet one of the Gilgamesh epos.

12. Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 138–40Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, “About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self,” in Michel Foucault: Religion and Culture, ed. Carrette, Jeremy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 158–81Google Scholar; Bowersock, Glen, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 42–47Google Scholar.

13. The eastern church still celebrates the day of Saint Mary of Egypt by reading her story; see Ward, Benedicta, Harlots of the Desert (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1987), 26Google Scholar. See also Brock, Sebastian and Harvey, Susan A., Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 40–41Google Scholar; Coon, Linda, Sacred Fiction: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 84Google Scholar; Burrus, Virginia, The Sex Lives of the Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 147–59Google Scholar.

14. Cloke refers to this model: Cloke, Gillian, This Female Man of God (London: Routledge, 1995), 199–200Google Scholar.

15. Most such stories were collected and translated by Ward, Harlots.

16. Burrus, Sex Lives, 128–29.

17. Ephrem, Life of Marian the Harlot, 7, as translated by Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 96. Brock and Harvey, however, translate the Syriac as if it is she who kisses him. Brock and Harvey, Holy Women, 33.

18. Ward, Harlots, 97.

19. Ibid., 100

20. Burrus, Virginia, “Word and Flesh: The Bodies and Sexuality of Ascetic Women in Christian Antiquity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10, no. 1 (1994): 45Google Scholar.  These terms enable her to evade the question of whether the authors of the texts were men or women.

21. For a survey of Jewish Hellenistic and rabbinic views of primal sin in comparison to Augustine and Paul see Cohen, Samuel S., Essays in Jewish Theology (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1987), 219–72Google Scholar.

22. Ephrem, De ecclesia 47.3.2; 11.10.1 (CSCO 199: 117, 32). More on Ephrem and Eve and the fall in Kronholm, Tryggve, Motifs from Genesis 1–11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (Uppsala: GWK Gleerup, 1978), 81–84, 94–106Google Scholar. A different, somewhat apologetic interpretation of Ephrem's view of Eve and the fall can be found in Botha, P. J., “Original Sin and Sexism: St. Ephrem's Attitude towards Eve,” Studia Patristica 33 (1997): 483–89Google Scholar.

23. Tertullian, De cultu feminarum 1.1 (ANF 4:25); De patientia 5 (ANF 3:1585–86); Origen, Leviticum homiliae 12.4; 8.3 (Barkley 223–24; 156); Clement, Paedagogus 2.2 (ANF 2:246). Even Augustine is a proponent of this doctrine: Augustine, De civitate Dei 13.14 (NANP¹ 2:581), but the origin of this tradition is within Judaism: David Flusser. “Motivim mi-parashat beri'at ha-ʿolam be-gilgulam ha-gashmi ba-nazrut,” Maḥanayim 74 (1963). Ilana Pardes summarizes feminist readings of the creation story and the motif of Eve's guilt in Countertraditions in the Bible, a Feminist Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 13–38.

24. Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 5 (ACW 34:36–37). A very similar text is found in B. Sotah 21b, where we find a virgin praying that man would not sin because of her. However, the talmudic text is ambivalent about this woman and her actions.

25. Tertullian, De cultu 1.1.

26. Ward, Benedicta, ed., The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, rev. ed. (London: Penguin Classics, 1983), 196Google Scholar; PG 65, col. 369.

27. Burrus, Sex Lives, 158–59.

28. Questions about what the victim of harassment or rape wore, what she was doing alone on the street late at night, or why she invited a stranger into her home (an invitation that supposedly implies consent to sex) are all too familiar. Women's friendliness and “feminine” dress were used to justify countless cases of sexual harassment and violence that have come before the courts in the United States and Europe, as shows, Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (London: Vintage Books, 1991), 37–48Google Scholar.

29. The outstanding manifestations of this perspective include the assumptions that prostitutes choose their profession because they are “nymphomaniacs” or “frigid,” enjoy the job and have found an “easy” way to use foolish men. The women are the ones who supposedly set the rules, name the price, and decide on the “allowed” sexual acts. Such perceptions can be found even in Simone de Beauvoir's work. She sees these rules as a coping mechanism, which enables the high-class prostitute to mediate between her work at night and her life during the day. See de Beauvoir, Simon, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 567–86Google Scholar; Roberts, Nickie, Whores in History: Prostitution in Western Society (London: Grafton, 1993), 300–302Google Scholar.

30. Brown, Peter, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Brown, , Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (London: Hanover, 2002)Google Scholar.

31. Four traditions or variants on the theme of prostitution and repentance can be found in rabbinic literature. Three can be classified as variants of the first Christian tale type (B. Avodah Zarah 17a, B. Bava Meẓiʿa 85a, and the story discussed here). The second type, the rescue of a fallen woman of the elite may find its parallel in B. Avodah Zarah 18a–b, and in B. Gittin 58a. Here, I shall confine myself to the discussion of the first example, and I hope to discuss the other stories elsewhere.

32. The dating is based on the fact that he was a student of Rabbi Ḥiyya, who belongs to the last generation of Tannaim and taught the sages of the first generation of the Amoraim.

33. On the story discussed here see Berkowitz, Eliezer, “The Ethics of Sex,” Tchelet 11 (2002): 166–92Google Scholar; Berkowitz, , Crisis and Faith (New York: Sanhedrin, 1976), 64–70Google Scholar; Harvey, Ze'ev, “The Pupil, the Harlot and the Fringe Benefits,” Prooftexts 6 (1986): 259–64Google Scholar; Goshen-Gottstein, Alon, “The Fringes, the Prostitute and the Homiletical Story,” Jerusalem Studies in Rabbinic Literature 1 (1990): 45–58Google Scholar. Kosman, Admiel, Maseḥet nashim (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007), 141–64Google Scholar; Fishbane, “Go and Enjoy Your Acquisition,” 71–90; Hevron, Ido, “A Prostitute and a Robber in the Study House,” Tchelet 31 (2008): 73–89Google Scholar; Balberg, Mira, “Between Heterotopia and Utopia: Two Rabbinic Narratives of Journeys to Prostitutes,” Meḥkare Yerushalyim be-sifrut ‘ivrit 22 (2008): 191–214Google Scholar; Kahana, Menachem, Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2015), 4:851–61Google Scholar.

34. Sifre Bamidbar, Shalaḥ, pis. 115 to Numbers 15:41 (ed. Kahana, 1: יט-כ)

35. I follow the printed edition as there are no major variants in the manuscript tradition of this page. In fact, variances occur mostly regarding the identity of the person enjoying the acquisition.  In MS Munich 95, the man is clearly the subject and the woman the object, MS Vatican Ebr. 120–121 uses an intermediate version in which Rabbi Ḥiyya tells the woman (specifically, 'amar lah) “go” (in the masculine form of the verb, leḥ) and enjoy (in the feminine form of the verb, zeḥi) your acquisition. Other variants will be addressed in footnotes when appropriate.

36. Deuteronomy 22:12 says “You shall make tassels on the four corners of the cloak with which you cover yourself.” See also Numbers 15:38, “Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner.”

37. All MSS have golden coins and not denars here.

38. This sentence is either wholly or partially missing in most of the manuscripts of the Sifre, and is added based on MS Berlin-Tübingen, OR. 4 1594 33. See Kahana, Menahem, to, introduction Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2011)Google Scholar, xx.

39. The MSS have here an oath identical to that which appears in the Sifre―“By the Temple Service.”

40. Only in MS Munich 95 is there an ambiguity regarding the feminine form seḥara, which could refer either to the woman or to the commandment (which takes the feminine form in Hebrew).

41. In fact, as Alon Goshen-Gottstein shows, the question concerns not the relative importance of mitzvot, but the financial loss involved in adhering to them. Wearing fringes is not very costly, and is therefore referred to here as miẓvah kalah, i.e., that which is easy to pay for, but not necessarily unimportant. Goshen-Gottstein, “Fringes,” 51.

42. The traditional dating of Sifre Numbers is circa 300 CE. See Kahana, Menahem, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages, vol. 2, ed. Safrai, Shmuel (Assen: Fortress, 2007), 3–105Google Scholar.

43. Bigamy was forbidden in Rome, of which the Jews became citizens after the year 212. Prominent rabbis of the third century like Rabbi Ami also thought bigamy was forbidden. See Elman, Yaakov, “Babylonian Echoes in a Late Rabbinic Legend,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Society 4 (1972): 15Google Scholar.

44. Some read the text as an oath in the name of Isis or some other love goddess. See Lieberman, Saul, Yevanit ve-yavanut be-’Ereẓ Yisra'el (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1962), 108Google Scholar.

45. Ze'ev Harvey, “Pupil,” 262. This view of the man's realization is more convincing than Goshen-Gottstein's assessment of the character's recognition of worldly rewards, which argues that sinning is more expensive (literally) than observance; Goshen-Gottstein, “Fringes,” 51.

46. Or we can assume with Goshen-Gottstein that all the woman is interested in is money, that is, even she realizes that sin does not pay and that real money lies in observance (“Fringes,” 51).

47. Balberg, “Between Heterotopia,” 191–214.

48. Visotzky has lately suggested that this story should be read as an allegory for the marriage between Judaism and Hellenism. Visotzky, Burton, Aphrodite and the Rabbis: How the Jews Adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism as We Know It (New York: St. Martin's, 2016), 127–30Google Scholar. He also mentions that most rabbinical students he taught thought the tale was fictional because of the stupidity displayed by the man who gave her his true contact details. So much for his repentance, then.

49. This is not only the modern sense of the word in Hebrew but also in rabbinic literature. See for example T. Ketubbot 10:4, T. Pe'ah 2:10 and many other places. It is connected with renunciation of wealth by a convert also in the story Monobaz (alt. Monbaz/Monobazos), King of Adiabene in Y. Pe'ah 1:1 (3a). The ambivalence embedded in the use of the verb reflects the gap between the convert's new and old worlds. On the charity of the converted royal house of Adiabene see also Gray, Alyssa, “Redemptive Almsgiving and the Rabbis of Late Antiquity,” JSQ 18 (2011): 144–84Google Scholar; Gardner, Greg E., “Competitive Giving in the Third Century CE: Rabbinic Approaches to Greco-Roman Civic Benefaction,” in Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians and the Greco-Roman World, ed. DesRosiers, Nathaniel et al. (Copenhagen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 81–92Google Scholar; Brown, Peter, “Treasure in Heaven,” Lapham's Quarterly 8, no. 3 (2015)Google Scholar, http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/philanthropy/treasure-heaven.

50. On almsgiving and renunciation of wealth of Christian converts see above, and also Brown, Peter, The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

51. Clearly not being born Jewish does not constitute a sin, but in the codes of the Talmud it is better to be a Jew and to follow the laws of God.

52. Moshe Beer commented on a sort of measure-for-measure principle in the Jewish penance narratives contemporary or slightly later than our story. “On Penance and Penitents in the Literature of Ḥazal,” Zion 46, no. 3 (1981): 169, 172, 180–81Google Scholar. Facing the same challenge but making a better choice symbolizes the truthfulness of the penitent's penance.

53. As Balberg, “Between Heterotopia,” 203, noticed, the distribution of wealth in three parts appears in the story of Simon Stylites, but there, it is not Simon, but a righteous farmer, who parts with his daily wages in such way―with a third he pays his taxes, a third he gives as alms, and a third he keeps for himself.

54. Especially in the rather late tractate Gerim 1:3: “Anyone who converts on account of a woman, on account of love, or on account of fear is not a convert.” And likewise, in Y. Kiddushin 4:1 (32a), “Anyone who converts on account of love, and a man on account of a woman, and a woman on account of a man … they are not accepted.” In B. Yevamot 24b, the same question is raised again, and an ongoing discontent with conversion for “love” is expressed. Shaye Cohen expresses dissatisfaction with both the acceptance of this convert for the sake of matrimony and the lack of any instruction on Judaism offered to her by Rabbi Ḥiyya. Both stand in opposition to the standards for conversion set by the Babylonian Talmud. Cohen, Shaye J. D., The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 164–65Google Scholar. However, in both Talmudim we find a “halakhah” according to Rav that those who convert on account of love should be accepted. Since Rav was the nephew of Rabbi Ḥiyya, this halakhah may be later than our story. On reading later Babylonian practices of conversion back into Palestinian sources, see Lavee, Moshe, “The ‘Tractate’ of Conversion—BT Yeb. 46–48 and the Evolution of Conversion Procedure,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 4, no. 2 (2010): 169–213Google Scholar.

55. As touching and beautiful as Berkowitz's description of the series of “silent agreements” is, it is hard to believe that all the abundance of meaning he finds in the story was intended by the narrator, who, most likely, found no need to repeat information already given to the listener/reader. Berkowitz, Crisis, 68–69.

56. Harvey, “Pupil,” 261.

57. On the ambivalence of the subject of this sentence see Kahana, Sifre, 4:857.

58. Harvey, “Pupil,” 263.

59. B. Ketubbot 10a.

60. While clearly we do not possess hard evidence for the familiarity of the composer(s) of the talmudic tale with the specific aforementioned Christian tales, it is also hard to believe that a tale type that took the East by storm stopped at the gates of the study house. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal argues that the author(s) of the story of Ben Dordia (B. Avodah Zarah 17a), which also ties prostitution and repentance, was familiar with at least some of the stories I named, an argument she bases on the resemblance between the model of repentance found in his story and that found in the Christian tales. Siegal, Michal Bar-Asher, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 171Google Scholar. I do not see why B. Menaḥot should be ignorant of what B. Avodah Zarah knows. For the conclusion I wish to draw, however, there is no need to resolve this question.

61. Boyarin, Daniel, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

62. The Hebrew phoneme z is normally represented in Aramaic as d. While this is a Hebrew text, the oral natural of the language represented in the Talmud, and the constant state of diglossia within the rabbinic circle make the two sounds very close. On the importance of alliteration in literature and on its use in Aggadah specifically see Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life, 22–25. She builds a new layer on top of that presented by Hershuvski, Benjamin, “Ha'im yesh la-ẓelil mashma'ut? Liveniyat ha-’ekspresiviyut shel tavniyot ha-ẓelil ba-shirah,” Ha-sifrut 1, no. 2 (1968): 410–30Google Scholar.

63. In most of the manuscripts of the Sifre, the bed-hopping element is missing, as is the symbolic spatial move upwards. These appear in all the manuscripts that we have of the Babylonian Talmud's version. On the “correction” of the Sifre here using the Babylonian story, and a description of the manuscript tradition of the Sifre lacking the additional ladders and possibly cups see Kahana, Sifre, 4:853.

64. Again this is consistent in the manuscript tradition. The number 400 may be typological; what's important here is that it seems that he, not she, names this price.

65. Ironically, he is figured himself as a female virgin. Boyarin stresses the strong links rabbinic literature creates between the figure of the female virgin and the Jewish male in the Roman Empire. Boyarin, Daniel, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 67–92Google Scholar.

66. Kosman, Maseḥet, 143.

67. This religious difference has been studied by Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Boyarin, Carnal Israel; Biale, David, Eros and the Jews: from Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1992)Google Scholar.

68. B. Ketubbot 59b.

69. That is to say, that the complex situation described by Patricia Cox Miller does not come into being. According to Miller, Pelagia, even after her conversion, continues to act as a free agent and disrupts male norms of subjectivity. Miller, Patricia Cox, “Is There a Harlot in This Text? Hagiography and the Grotesque,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33, no. 3 (2003): 429Google Scholar. We cannot say the same about the protagonist of this story. Once she converts and becomes a wife, she will take on conservative gender roles.