01/10/2026
"(...) Mokhtarian highlights what he calls the “empirical” aspects of Babylonian rabbinic healing practices. And by focusing on Babylonian rabbinic traditions specifically, he is able to emphasize the Sasanian Mesopotamian context of these traditions, demonstrating that the more “scientific” healing therapies preserved in the Babylonian Talmud have conceptual parallels in Akkadian, Syriac, and Mandaic sources along with the Aramaic incantation bowls, and that these are not only the domain of Greek sources such as the Galenic corpus and rabbinic traditions arising from a Greco-Roman milieu."
Jason Sion Mokhtarian's book "Medicine in the Talmud: Natural and Supernatural Therapies between Magic and Science" (University of California Press, 2022) reviewed by Alexander Warren Marcus (Franklin & Marshall College).
Read the complete review here: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=61459
