By its own reckoning, the Torah was not revealed to humanity until long after the creation of the world. Ten generations preceded Noah, ten more preceded Abraham, and six more preceded Moses. And yet the rabbis cannot imagine that their forebears, even those who lived in the 26 generations before revelation, did not know the Torah’s laws or follow its precepts. One of the great rabbinic flights of fancy, the 3rd-century rabbinic anthology Genesis Rabbah 56:11, imagines our ancestor Abraham declaring that he received blessings in life because he studied the Torah. Isaac, too, this midrash notes, after having been nearly sacrificed, did not return with Abraham from Mount Moriah (as Genesis 22:19 suggests), but went off to study Torah with Noah’s son Shem.
On today’s daf, the rabbis are working to make sense of how people obeyed God’s will before the Torah was revealed. We recently learned in a mishnah that sacrifices of the earlier generations were made according to the following rules:
Until the tabernacle was established, private altars were permitted and the sacrificial service was performed by the firstborn. And from the time that the tabernacle was established, private altars were prohibited and the sacrificial service was performed by the priests. Offerings of the most sacred order were then eaten within the curtains surrounding the courtyard of the tabernacle in the wilderness and offerings of lesser sanctity were eaten throughout the camp of Israel.
The sages seem to assume, however, that burnt offerings — those entirely consumed on the altar — were only ever offered in the tabernacle (and later the Temple). Why? Because the first chapter of Leviticus is clear that a priest must perform the olah in the tabernacle (later Temple). Yet Genesis 8:20 states that Noah made just such an offering. Does this mean that Noah’s sacrifices were blasphemous?
On today’s daf, the sons of Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yosei bar Hanina debate this, and one of them (the Talmud does not know which) argues that Noah’s sacrifices were akin to the sacrifices of all other Noahides — meaning anyone who is not a Jew or an Israelite. As such, even though Genesis characterizes Noah’s sacrifices as olot (burnt offerings), they were not the same as burnt offerings brought by Israel. They were, rather, more akin to Israelite peace offerings.
And how do we know that? According to the rabbis on today’s daf, we can learn about pre-Israelite sacrifices from Adam and Eve’s son Abel. (Recall that in Genesis 4, God accepts Abel’s sacrifice and not his twin brother Cain’s sacrifice, which engenders Cain’s murderous rage toward his brother.) As the Talmud recalls:
What is the reasoning of the one who says that the descendants of Noah sacrificed peace offerings? As it is written: “And Abel, he also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of the fat thereof” (Genesis 4:4). What is an item the fat of which is sacrificed upon the altar, but that is not sacrificed in its entirety upon the altar? You must say: This is the peace offering.
Unlike burnt offerings, which fully go up in smoke (and could therefore not be eaten after the fact), the pious people who preceded the building of the tabernacle offered shelamim, peace offerings, part of which was burned, and the rest could be eaten afterward.
Let’s step back a moment. Why does the behavior of these first generations matter to our sages if the Torah had not yet been revealed? Why would we hold anyone to a standard they could not reasonably know about?
Today’s daf frequently drops hints about people who believed in honoring a religion that had not yet been fully revealed. Today’s page features the Midianite priest Jethro converting to Judaism after hearing of God’s might, the prophet Balaam of Pethor debating God’s promises to the Israelites, and the Canaanite prostitute Rahab converting to Judaism after discovering God’s miracles. How could our sacred scriptures have meant so much to so many people before the Jews even had a complete Hebrew Bible?
On today’s daf, it is the non-Jewish prophet Balaam who receives an answer to this question: Long before the Israelites stood at Sinai, God had composed the Torah and hidden it in storage. In the Talmud’s words:
He has a good and precious item in His treasury, that was hidden away with Him for 974 generations before the world was created, and He seeks to give it to his children…
God wrote the Torah a full 974 generations before ever creating the world! Incidentally, the Talmud never explains this number. I have often wondered if this number was chosen because it is the result of subtracting the value of God’s four-letter name (yod-hey-vav-hey), which is 26, from 1,000. Or, perhaps, this number was chosen because it places the Torah exactly 1,000 generations before Moses. In 1511, Rabbi Mosheh HaGolah of Kyiv, in his mystical treatise Shushan Sodot, makes this argument by citing Psalm 105:8: “[God] is ever mindful of the covenant, the promise given for a thousand generations.”
Our sages ultimately were not concerned with whether upstanding people could live up to standards that had not yet been inscribed. Rather, our spiritual forebears hoped — and sought to prove — that people of strong faith would be able to intuit how to live in accordance with a code of law that was waiting to be revealed.
Read all of Zevachim 116 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on January 8, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
