The Nehutei as Traveling Agents and Transmitters of Cultural Data between the Torah Study Centers in Babylonia and in the Land of Israel during the Third and Fourth Centuries CE

This article suggests a new reading of some traditions, sayings, and anecdotes in the Babylonian Talmud attributed to four sages who lived between the middle of the third and the beginning of the fourth century CE, arguing that they should be identified as travelers’ tales. These four sages are portrayed in our sources as travelers and transmitters of Torah knowledge who traveled between the two main centers of Torah study, in Babylonia and in the Land of Israel. By assigning to them tales drawn from the wide well of travelers’ tales, created and told on the Eastern trade routes, by the Talmudic editors, these traveling sages became a link in the wide net of transmission of travelers’ tales.