The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli), the primary interpretative text of rabbinic Judaism, was composed by rabbinic schools and edited in the sixth century CE in Babylonia. Medical issues are dealt with extensively and these discussions can be found scattered throughout nearly all of the 37 Talmudic tractates. The rabbis expressed their opinions on medical topics within the framework of their religious-legal discussions. Thus the medical extracts—usually in the form of short narratives—are in most cases not the primary topic, but rather appendices or excurses on other matters of interest. One outstanding exception, however, is a lengthy and detailed treatise on therapeutics in tractate Gittin which lists the symptoms that affect different parts of the body.

Numerous different symptoms and diseases were treated with natural remedies such as plants or magical remedies and sometimes with a mixture of both. The Talmud preserves instructions for the preparation and application of these materiae medicae. As in ancient Mesopotamia, some diseases were thought to be caused by demons or evil spirits and therefore incantations and amulets were also used as forms of medical treatment. Even though non-Jewish physicians and healers are occasionally mentioned in the Talmud, it is usually the rabbis themselves who express their ideas about human anatomy or who give advice on matters on health and healing practices.

Since medicine and healing therapies were already well-developed sciences when the Bavli was edited, the large amount of medical material that we find in the Bavli needs to be analysed as a corpus with reference to older systems of diagnosis and therapy, specifically Greek and Babylonian medical corpora.

The medical passages in the Bavli will be extracted and classified by the BabMed project at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, which is led by Prof. Shamma Friedman and Dr. Aaron Amit. The Bar-Ilan research team will prepare full synopses of all primary textual witnesses for each passage under study, while establishing software for optimum presentation and analysis. In the initial stage, the research at Bar-Ilan utilizes the index of Julius Preuss’ opus magnum "Biblisch-talmudische Medizin", 1911; however, the Bar-Ilan research team is well aware that there are numerous medical texts that were not treated by Preuss. The team will work by tractate, identifying all medical contexts and follows a multi-staged process:

Stage I   All of the textual witnesses of the passage are carefully examined in order to record exact readings and to identify (when possible) the proposed original reading of the text in question. In many cases, because of the complications of the textual variants, it is impossible to offer one original reading and a number of options are offered for the best possible reading of the text. In this stage researchers attempt to establish if it is possible to identify manuscript branches among the textual witnesses and use this to aid analysis of the medical information contained in the text.

Stage II   Parallel texts within the Bavli are examined to see whether they can be used to better understand the text in question. In all cases in which the medical material is attributed to a named authority, the research team inquires whether the attribution can be accepted or if another is possible.

Stage III   Parallel texts throughout rabbinic literature are collected and analyzed in order to trace the development of medical knowledge. Does the medical text in question come from Eretz-Israel or Babylonia? How was the medical material modified in the Bavli when it is original in another context? Is the text in question part of the tannaitic or amoraic corpus or does it come from a later layer of the Bavli? How does this influence our understanding of the medical information in question?

Stage IV   The research team prepares a detailed bibliography for each medical text and terms mentioned therein. This includes any reference to the passage in books or articles within modern Talmud research. This multi-staged process will make it possible to create a source book of medicine for the Bavli which will include critical readings and categorization of all the texts organized clearly in order that both specialists and non-specialists will be able to take advantage of this important corpus for comparison and understanding of medicine in the ancient world.

Stage V   Almost certainly, medical traditions from both the Greek and the Babylonian cultural contexts entered into the Babylonian Talmud. The research results of BabMed Israel will be a key tool for the Berlin research team for answering the question, whether or not medical passages in Aramaic in the Bavli were based upon earlier texts from the same region – cuneiform medicine.