Davar Akher

Seeing as I am still procrastinating the writing-up of my paper (odd, considering that I must deliver it tomorrow morning and I know that I am going to be stressed about it tonight), I thought that I would add one more reference to the childish xenophobia of the Babylonian Talmud. The following quote is taken from Tractate Berakhot, folio 58a, and I cannot help but feel that it has a rather humorously Pythonesque feel to it…

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Originally appearing on folio 43a of tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud, the following brief narrative was one of many that was expunged by Christian authorities. Curiously, Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman (the Ramban) commenced his account of the famous “Disputation at Barcelona” with this very passage. The individual against whom the Ramban disputed, a convert to Christianity who adopted the name Fray Pul, was a man who had been raised within the Jewish faith but who, for reasons of his own, had seen fit to become an antagonist of the same. It was undoubtedly a person similarly educated who had been responsible for recognising this passage within the Talmud and who had recommended its deletion. I reproduce it below as it appeared in the Venice edition of 1520.

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