A Seven-Headed Demon in the House of Study: Understanding a Rabbinic Demon in Light of Zoroastrian, Christian, and Babylonian Textual Traditions

Abstract

This article examines a narrative about a seven-headed demon in Bavli Kiddushin 29b as an entry point into a much broader conversation about the Talmud's demonology. I first lay out the interpretive challenges of the story, then argue that B. Kiddushin's demonic discourse has more in common with ancient Near Eastern demonologies that it does with contemporaneous Zoroastrian materials. Two particular aspects of the rabbinic depiction of the demon in B. Kiddushin align with Mesopotamian characterizations of demons: (1) the physical description of the demon as a seven-headed serpent, and (2) his demonic nature. At the same time, the way that the rabbis describe the mode of the demon's defeat strongly parallels contemporaneous Syriac Christian modes of exorcism. This article demonstrates that the talmudic story exists at the intersection of more ancient and contemporary concerns and typifies rabbinic selectivity in adopting and adapting available discourses about demons. To conclude, I discuss some of the broader implications of this observation for our study of the Babylonian Talmud in its Sasanian cultural context.