Babylonian Talmud

English

Our rabbis taught: It once happened that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Ḥananya was standing on a step on the Temple Mount, and Ben Zoma saw him and did not rise before him. He said to him: From where and to where, Ben Zoma? He said to him: I was gazing between the upper waters and the lower waters, and between the one and the other there are only three fingerbreadths, as it is said, 'and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters' (Gen 1:2) — like a dove that hovers over her young and does not touch them. Rabbi Yehoshua said to his disciples: Ben Zoma is still outside. — Now, 'the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters': when was that? On the first day. But the dividing was on the second day, as it is written, 'and let it divide water from water' (Gen 1:6). And how much [lies between them]? Rav Aḥa bar Yaakov said: a hair's breadth. The rabbis say: like the gap between the planks of a bridge. Mar Zutra, or some say Rav Ashi, said: like two cloaks spread one over the other; and some say, like two cups tipped one upon the other.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Hebrew / Aramaic

b. Chagigah 15a (Vilna) · cc-by-sa

Notes

The Bavli's Ben Zoma reads merahefet as a physical fact about distance: hovering measures the gap between upper and lower waters. The anonymous continuation then argues the gap into a hair's breadth. Steinsaltz/Davidson English is CC BY-NC and is NOT embedded; this is a fresh draft against the Wikisource Aramaic.

Threads

• ← parallel · Jerome
  Both derive a bird from merahefet. Jerome: incubabat/confovebat, a bird warming eggs. Ben Zoma: a dove hovering over her young and NOT touching. Same verb, opposite physical claim. No citation either way; Jerome's 'in Hebraeo' points at the word, not at a rabbinic informant.
• ← cites · Rashi
  Rashi's 'like a dove (yonah) hovering over the nest' follows the Bavli's dove (Chagigah 15a), not Bereshit Rabbah's unspecified bird ('of); the dove settles which source he is quoting.
• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  Same Ben Zoma story, two redactions. BR: bird beating its wings, touching-and-not-touching. Bavli: dove over her young, not touching, three fingerbreadths. Compiled independently from a shared Palestinian tradition.
• ← echoes · Bereshit Rabbah
  Both measure the relation of the upper and lower by a physical image and refuse to let them come apart: the stewpot and its lid, which are made together and belong together (Isa 48:13); Ben Zoma's three fingerbreadths between the upper and lower waters, a gap that is not a separation. The same instinct about heaven and earth, in the two Chagigah contexts this project has built.