הפיכת רב לנזיר: הרקע למסורות ר' שמעון בר יוחאי במערה

This paper explores a series of literary parallels between Christian and Jewish sources. In particular, it compares early Egyptian Christian monastic texts with the traditions concerning Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai (Rashbi) found in the Babylonian Talmud. Rashbi is portrayed in the Babylonian Talmud much as a monastic figure, and his stay at the cave evokes the experiences of the early monks. His portrayal in the Palestinian sources however, is different. This would seem to point to a unique receptiveness found in the Babylonian Talmud towards monastic literary traditions. A possible route of transmission could have been through Syriac translations. This resource might also account for the differences between the Palestinian and Babylonian versions of the cave story. While analyzing the redactional and intertextual processes that shaped the relevant texts, this study also contributes towards a better understanding of the processes of transmission of culture in the Sasanian Empire of the 4th—7th centuries, and in particular, of the literary interaction between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity.