At this point in the Talmud, we’re familiar with some of the rabbis who appear in tandem with each other. Probably the most famous duo is Hillel and Shammai, heads of schools of thought who fight pitched legal battles that the former usually wins. Today’s daf features two other frequent sparring partners, Rav and Shmuel, who headed competing Babylonian academies and were formative scholars in moving the center of Jewish intellectual gravity east from the land of Israel.
Today’s battleground: How to sprinkle sacrificial blood on the altar. A mishnah on today’s daf tells us that the blood from the burnt offering “requires two placements that are four.”
This cryptic remark demands analysis:
Rav says: He places and places it again. And Shmuel says: He places one placement similar to gamma.
Rav says the priest stands at a corner of the altar and places blood on both adjacent sides. Then he moves to the opposite corner and repeats the process, daubing twice but covering all four sides. Shmuel says that he draws a line that starts at one corner and runs around the adjacent corner to the opposite side, a shape similar to the Greek letter gamma. Then he does it again in the opposite corner. In this way, the priest takes action at two corners — two placements, as it were — to mark the four sides of the altar.
Which of them is right?
In a somewhat convoluted passage, the Gemara proposes the idea that a priest should do one sprinkling on just one side of the altar. However, in describing the ritual, Leviticus 1:5 directs the priest to “sprinkle the blood around against the altar that is at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.” The Gemara sees the word “around” as pivotal and an indication that all sides of the altar should get doused.
But, says the Gemara, let’s not get too carried away! If we took the word “around” too seriously, we’d have a single continuous thin line in blood running all the way around the altar, one that would have to be done with a finger. Drawing a line with a finger doesn’t match the directive to “sprinkle” the blood, which is explicitly required by Leviticus. So how do we resolve this dispute?
The Gemara opts for a middle ground, making sure there’s enough around-ness without requiring a digital application. In doing so, it adopts Shmuel’s approach since it circles two of the four altar corners, but can still be described as “sprinkling.”
The Sifra, an early midrashic text, provides some additional clarity on this topic. It connects Leviticus 1:5 to the description of the Yom Kippur service in Leviticus 16, noting that the word “around” is used in the choreography of both rituals. “Around” in the context of Yom Kippur indicates a pause at each of the altar’s corners, so “around” in the context of a burnt offering also suggests a pause rather than a continuous line.
So score one for Shmuel and his argument for a gamma-shaped line rather than Rav’s four daubs of blood. We can also note, however, that this is an unusual moment. In matters of ritual, it’s usually Rav who wins, so we chalk this one up as a win for the underdog.
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