What Do Women Contribute to a Baby’s Conception?

Seed, blood, or nothing? This debate among the Greeks about the role of women in the development of a fetus influenced the way Second Temple and Rabbinic interpreters understood the meaning of the biblical verse "If a woman emits seed" (Leviticus 12:2).

Dr.

Shana Strauch-Schick

Dr.

Shana Strauch-Schick

Categories:

Tazria

What Do Women Contribute to a Baby’s Conception?

In the ancient Mediterranean world, two main schools of thought emerged regarding reproduction:

One-Seed theory—Associated with the first-century Greek physician Soranus of Ephesus, this theory posits that only men produce seed; the woman’s role is solely to provide a place in which the seed develops.^[1]

Two-Seed theory—Championed by the Hippocratic and later Galenic traditions, two seed models propose that both men and women emit seed that combine to form the embryo,^[2] and that the woman’s is white fluid emitted at sexual climax.^[3] According to the Hippocratic theory of pangenesis, each parent transmits material derived from all parts of the body.

Seed and Blood theory—For Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), instead of seed, women contribute menstrual blood (katamenia) as raw material, which male semen shapes into a fetus.^[4]

Second Temple Treatments

In the Second Temple period, all three models appear in various Jewish (writ large) texts.

Seed and Blood—Aristotle’s model is reflected in the Wisdom of Solomon (a 1^st c. B.C.E.–1^st c. C.E. composition preserved in the Septuagint), when the king declares that he was formed from male seed and female menstrual blood:

^{Wis 7:1} I also am mortal like everyone else, a descendant of the first-formed child of earth, and in the womb of a mother I was molded into flesh, ^7:2 within the period of ten months, compacted with blood, from the seed of a man and the pleasure of marriage. (NRSVue)

Fourth Maccabees (1^st c. C.E.) similarly speaks of siblings as deriving from what was “implanted in the mother’s womb” and “growing from the same blood”:

^{4 Macc 13:19} You are not ignorant of the affection of family ties, which the divine and all-wise Providence has bequeathed through the fathers to their descendants and which was implanted in the mother’s womb. ^13:20 There the brothers spent the same length of time and were shaped during the same period of time, and growing from the same blood and through the same life, they were brought to the light of day.^[5] (NRSVue)

Female Seed—The Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament, when describing Sarah’s pregnancy, reflects the Hippocratic and Galenic two-seed model—that women possess generative seed:

^{Hebr 11:11} Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child.^[6] (NRSVue)

Indeed, the idea that women contribute seed to a pregnancy is the plain sense of Leviticus:

^{ויקרא יב:ב} דַּבֵּר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר אִשָּׁה כִּי תַזְרִיעַ וְיָלְדָה זָכָר...

^{Lev 12:2a} Speak to the Israelites, saying: “If a woman emits seed and bears a male child...

Many translations render the phrase אִשָּׁה כִּי תַזְרִיעַ (ʾishah ki tazriaʿ) idiomatically as “when a woman conceives.”^[7] The verb תַזְרִיעַ (tazriaʿ), however, a hiphʿil form of the root ז.ר.ע, elsewhere means “to produce seed” (Gen 1:11–12). Thus, the use of the word tazriaʿ suggests that a woman “emits seed.”^[8]

Male Seed Only—The Septuagint, however, aligns with the one-seed model, and thus renders tazriaʿ as “she is fertilized,” eliminating any suggestion that she emits seed:

^{LXX Lev 12:2} Speak to the sons of Israel, and you shall say to them: “Any woman, if she is fertilized (spermatisthe) and bears a male child...”^[9] (NETS)

Passive Pregnancy: Land of Israel Rabbis

Rabbinic texts from the Land of Israel adopt an increasingly passive view of female biology, with the father as the sole contributor in conception. The Aramaic Targumim, which largely if not completely originated in the Land of Israel, ^[10] translate the phrase with no hint of female seed:

Onqelos: אִיתְתָא אְרֵי תְעַדֵי, “If a woman becomes pregnant”^[11]

Pseudo-Jonathan: איתתא ארום תעדי, “If a woman becomes pregnant”

Neofiti: אתא ארום תעבר, “If a woman becomes pregnant”

Tannaitic midrash (ca. 3^rd cent. C.E.) similarly describes God as forming the fetus solely from the father’s “water,” with no mention of the mother’s contribution:

^{מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל, מַסֶּכְתָּא דְשִׁירָה ח} אֶלָּא נוֹתֵן לְאָדָם בֵּן מִטִּפָּה שֶׁלְּמַיִם, וְדוֹמֶה לְצוּרָתוֹ לְשֶׁלְּאָבִיו.

^{Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael}^{Shirah 8} He gives a man a son from a drop of water that is similar to the father in form.^[12]

An even clearer example appears in Leviticus Rabbah (4^th–5^th c. C.E.), an Amoraic homiletic collection from the Land of Israel.^[13] The embryo is repeatedly depicted as formed from the father’s “white drop,” which God fashions into a child. The third-generation Amora R. Levi offers the following parable:

^{ויקרא רבה יד:ב} ר' לוי אמ' בנוהג שבעולם מפקיד אדם אצל חבירו אנקיא שלכסף /של כסף/ בחשיי ומחזיר לו ליטרא שלזהב בפרהסיא אינו מחזיק לו טובה, כך הקדוש ברוך הוא מפקידין לו הביריות טיפה שלבלנית בחשיי והקב"ה מחזיר להן נפשות שלימות משובחות בפרהסיא ואין זה שבח.

^{Lev Rab 14:2} R. Levi said: In everyday life, if a person deposits an ounce of silver with his friend in private, and the latter returns to him a pound^[14] of gold in public,^[15] would he not be grateful to his friend? So, too, the Holy One, blessed be He. Human beings deposit a drop of the whitest drop in private, and the Holy One, blessed be He, returns to them fully formed and perfected (lit. praiseworthy) human beings in public. Is this not worthy of praise?

At most, the mother functions here as the vessel in which fetal development occurs.

Genital Examinations for Men and Women

Halakhic rulings from the Land of Israel also reflect this biology. The Tosefta—a collection of Tannaitic comments organized in the same manner as the Mishnah—encourages women to perform frequent manual genital examinations to detect impurity, while warning men against frequent self-checking, with an analogy that reveals what is at stake; just as poking a finger into one’s eye provokes tears, manually checking the genitals provokes emission: ^[16]

^{תוספתא נדה ב:ח} כל היד המרבה לבדוק בנשים הרי משובחת, ובאנשים תקצץ. ר' טרפון אומר תקצץ על טיבורו. אמר לו הרי כריסו נתפתחת. אמר להם אף אני לא נתכוונתי אלא לכך.

^{Tosefta Niddah 2:8} Any hand which makes many examinations: in the case of women is to be praised; in the case of men, is to be cut off. R. Tarfon says: it should be cut off [while it is placed] on his belly-button (m. Niddah 2:1). They said to him: his belly will split open. He said to them: I intended for that.^[17]

משלו משל למה הדבר דומה? לנותן אצבע בעין כל זמן שהוא דוחק הרבה מוציא דמעה. במה דברים אמורים? בשכבת זרע. אבל לזיבה. כל היד המרבה לבדוק הרי זו משובחת.

They drew a parable: To what is the matter compared? To one who puts his finger in his eye,^[18] for all the time that he exerts pressure, he brings forth an abundance of tears. Under what circumstances [are examinations prohibited]? With reference to seminal emission. But if it is with reference to flux, any hand which makes many examinations, it is to be praised.

Men are banned from “wasting” seed, and therefore they should not perform self-examinations.^[19] The Tosefta does not specify the reason why women are not restrained from checking to see if they are menstruating, but it may be based on an assumption that women do not have seed to spill, thus there is little concern if the checking ends up arousing her.^[20]

Babylonia: Restoring Female Seed

Where Land of Israel sources suppressed the active sense of tazriaʿ, the slightly later Babylonian Talmud restores it.^[21] In b. Niddah (31), alongside traditions that closely parallel Leviticus Rabbah (14), the tractate preserves teachings that explicitly describe the mother as contributing substance to the baby’s body.

One famous teaching describes “three partners” in the creation of a person: father, mother, and God. The father emits the “white” substance (bones and sinews); the mother emits the “red” substance (flesh and blood), and God provides the life forces. Both parents are explicitly described as contributing generative material, with the man’s white contribution forming the whitish parts of the body, and the woman’s red contribution, the darker parts:

^{בבלי נדה לא.} תנו רבנן שלשה שותפין יש באדם הקב"ה ואביו ואמו אביו מזריע הלובן שממנו עצמות וגידים וצפרנים ומוח שבראשו ולובן שבעין.

^{b. Nid. 31a}The rabbis taught: Three participate in the human being: The Holy One, his father and his mother. His father sows the white [substance], from which bones, fibers, and nails [are made], the brain in his head and the white in the eye.^[22]

אמו מזרעת אודם שממנו עור ובשר ושערות ושחור שבעין.

His mother sows the red [substance], from which skin, flesh and hair [are made], and the black in the eye.

והקב"ה נותן בו רוח ונשמה וקלסתר פנים וראיית העין ושמיעת האוזן ודבור פה והלוך רגלים ובינה והשכל.

God gives him spirit and soul, the form of the face, sight of the eye and sound of the ear, voice of the mouth, movement of the legs, understanding and intelligence.^[23]

In b. Niddah, R. Isaac of the house of R. Ami discusses sex determination through both parents’ emission of seed—not Aristotle’s blood model but taking female ejaculation as her contribution to the child’s physical development:^[24]

^{בבלי ברכות ס., נדה לא:} אמר ר' יצחק דבי ר' אמי: אשה מזרעת תחילה יולדת זכר, איש מזריע תחילה יולדת נקבה, שנאמר אשה כי תזריע וילדה זכר (ויקרא יב:ב).

^{b. Berachot 60a, Niddah 31b} R. Isaac of the house of R. Ami said: If a woman emits seed [mazraʿat] first, she bears a male. If the man emits seed [mazriaʿ] first, she bears a female. As it is said, ‘When a woman inseminates and bears a male’ (Lev 12:2).^[25]

In his gloss on the word tazriaʿ, R. Moses Nahmanides (Ramban ca. 1195–ca.1270) cites this Talmudic dictum, illustrating how Greek embryological frameworks continued to shape rabbinic engagement with these Talmudic traditions in the medieval period:

^{רמב"ן ויקרא יב:ב} ואין כונתם שיעשה הולד מזרע האשה, כי האשה אף על פי שיש לה ביצים כביצי זכר, או שלא יעשה בהם זרע כלל, או שאין הזרע ההוא נקפא ולא עושה דבר בעובר.

^{Nahmanides Lev 12:2} Their intention is not that the fetus is formed from the woman’s seed, for a woman, even though she has organs like male testicles, either they don’t make sperm at all, or that that seed is not able to be shaped, and thus does not contribute anything to the fetus.

אבל אמרם: מזרעת – על דם הרחם שיתאסף בשעת גמר ביאה באם ומתאחז בזרע הזכר, כי לדעתם הולד נוצר מדם הנקבה ומלובן האיש, ולשניהם יקראו זרע.... וגם דעת הרופאים ביצירה כך היא.

But when they say “she gives forth seed,” they are referring to the blood of the womb, which gathers at the end of sexual intercourse in the womb, and takes hold of the male semen, since in their view, the fetus is formed from the blood of the woman and the white substance of the man, and both are called “seed”…. And this is also what the doctors say about child creation.^[26]

Putting aside Nahmanides dismissal of female ejaculant as irrelevant to conception,^[27] the Babylonian Talmud here is working with a model in which each gender contributes something towards the creation of the embryo’s physical body. What is the origin of this idea?

Greek medical knowledge circulated widely in the eastern Roman and Sasanian worlds during the fifth and sixth centuries, including Babylonia,^[28] as attested by significant analogues with Zoroastrian texts from the period of the Babylonian Amoraim and the Talmudic redactors.^[29] The Middle Persian cosmological work, the Bundahišn (or “primal creation”) presents a remarkably similar assumption to that of the Talmud,^[30] though the parents’ roles are reversed, and sex is determined by whose seed is stronger rather than the order of emission:^[31]

^Bundahišn^15:4 When the time of conception has come, if the seed of the man is stronger, a son is conceived. And if that of the woman is stronger, a daughter. If both seeds are equal then twins and triplets result from it.^[32]

Although the tenth-century composition of the Bundahišn postdates the Bavli traditions, it preserves much earlier Iranian traditions, including Old Avestan as well as Sasanian material transmitted orally for centuries.^[33]

In this intellectual environment, אִשָּׁה כִּי תַזְרִיעַ (ʾishah ki tazriaʿ) once again meant what it says: a woman emits seed.

Menstruation as Female Emission? Halakhic Consequences

If menstrual blood was understood, following Aristotelian biology, “the analogous thing in females to the semen in males,”^[34] then menstruation could be imagined as a form of female emission.^[35] This biological model carries halakhic consequences. The first-generation Babylonian Amora Shmuel states:

^{בבלי נדה נז:} בדקה קרקע עולם וישבה עליה ומצאה דם עליה טהורה שנאמר (ויקרא טו) 'בבשרה' עד שתרגיש בבשרה.

^{b. Nid. 57b} If a woman checked the ground, and sat down on it, and [upon standing] finds blood on it—she is pure, for it states (Lev 15:19) “in her flesh,” until she feels it in her flesh.^[36]

As opposed to the mishnaic view, which regards the mere presence of blood as sufficient to establish menstrual impurity,^[37] Shmuel (or the redactors of this passage)[38] requires that a woman “feel it in her flesh.” He does not elaborate what, precisely, she is meant to feel, and this has baffled centuries of Talmudic scholars.^[39] However, Shmuel articulates a similar rule for men, which sheds considerable light:

^{בבלי נדה מג.} אמר שמואל: כל שכבת זרע שאין כל גופו מרגיש בה - אינה מטמאה

^{b. Nid. 43a} Shmuel said: Any semen that is not felt throughout one’s entire body does not convey impurity.

Here too, Shmuel does not define what רגש (“to feel”) refers to, but the Mishnah employs the same verb when describing male arousal:

^{משנה נדה ה:ב} היה אוכל בתרומה והרגיש שנזדעזעו אבריו אוחז באמה ובולע את התרומה...

^{m. Nid. 5:2} …If he (a priest) is consuming terumah, and he feels his limbs (i.e. genitals) trembling, he grasps his penis^[40] [to prevent emission] and swallows the terumah.

As Tirzah Meachem has argued, the application of the same language to the menstruant strongly suggests that the requirement for a woman to feel a sensation at the onset of menstruation mirrors the sensation accompanying male ejaculation.^[41] For Shmuel, just as men must feel the emission of semen in order to be rendered impure, so too a woman must experience a corresponding bodily sensation in order to become impure through menstruation—her parallel form of impurity.^[42]

This is how Moses Maimonides (1138–1204) understands it as well (illustrating again how Greek embryological frameworks continued to shape rabbinic thinking in the medieval period). Indeed, Maimonides offers a detailed definition of hargasha “sensation/feeling” from that same root רגש that borrows the Mishnah’s vocabulary (m. Niddah 5:2) in its description of male ejaculation to describe the female experience:

^{רמב"ם משנה תורה קדושה "איסורי ביאה" ה:יז} האשה שהשתינה מים ויצא דם עם מי רגלים...הרי זו טהורה, ואפילו הרגיש גופה ונזדעזעה אינה חוששת שהרגשת מי רגלים היא זו שאין מי רגלים מן החדר ודם זה דם מכה הוא בחלחולת או בכוליא.

^{Maimonides, Mishnah Torah, Kedushah, “Laws of Forbidden Sex” 5:17} When a woman urinated and excreted blood together with the urine… she is pure, even if she has physical sensations and her body trembles, she need not suspect [that the blood originated in the uterus]. Instead, the sensation is associated with her urination [and] urine does not originate in the uterus. This blood [rather stems from] a wound in the colon or in the kidney (which does not render her impure).

Even in a case where sensation does not signal menstrual impurity, Maimonides describes that sensation using the very same vocabulary the Mishnah applies to a man approaching ejaculation. The bodily mechanics of female emission, in his view, directly parallel those of the male.

What Did the Women Think of All This?

Second Temple texts reflect competing assumptions about female generative capacity, rooted in an unresolved debate in Greek medical thinking. Rabbinic sources in the Land of Israel adopt a one-seed model that minimizes the mother’s biological contribution, while the Babylonian Talmud reintroduces both two-seed models. Indeed, it was only in the 19^th century that the process of fertilization was shown to depend on the union of sperm and egg, a reminder that this was not merely an ancient question long since cleared up, but one that continued to be debated and remained unresolved well into the modern era.

Yet the women whose bodies are being described are silent in the textual record. We cannot know how they experienced these rulings, any more than we can know how women felt about Greek medical theories.

The biblical law of childbirth begins with a woman’s act. The history of its interpretation reveals how much that act and its meaning depended on scientific assumptions, but also how contextually dependent scientific assumptions ultimately can be.

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April 16, 2026

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Footnotes

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Published

April 16, 2026

Last Updated

April 16, 2026

[1] Owsei Temkin, trans., Soranus: Gynaecology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 12, §1.12.

[2] Geoffrey Ernest Richard Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge University Press, 1983), 88–94; Lesley Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Clarendon Press, 1996), 149; Phillip de Lacy, ed., Galen: On Semen (Akademic Verla, 1992), 50; § 2.2, 2.4; Margaret Tallmadge May, trans., Galen: On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (Cornell Publications on the History of Science, 1968), 2.630.

[3] See e.g. On Generation 4.1–5.1, LVII 474–477.

[4] Treaties On the Generation of Animals 2.716a § 5–7, 2.4.738b § 20–23. A. L. Peck, trans., Aristotle: Generation of Animals (Harvard University Press, 1942). Editors note: See Marianne Grohmann, “Biblically, How Are Babies Conceived?” TheTorah (2024).

[5] Other texts, however, indicate a different position. In his paraphrase of Gen. 1:28, Ben Sirah omits any reference to women, procreation, or the divine command פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ, “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28),:

^{Sir 17:1} The Lord created humans out of earth and makes them return to it again. ^17:2 He gave them a fixed number of days but granted them authority over everything on the earth. ^17:3 He endowed them with strength like his own and made them in his own image.

Jeremy Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It”: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Cornell University Press, 1989), 70. Jubilees (6:7) likewise relocates the blessing of procreation from Creation to Noah alone (Gen. 2:14; 6:1-11). Cohen, Be Fertile and Increase, 71–72.

[6] Peter W. Van der Horst, “Sarah’s Seminal Emission: Hebrews 11:11 in the Light of Ancient Embryology,” in Hellenism—Judaism—Christianity: Essays on Their Interaction (Kok Pharos, 1994), 203–223 (at 217–218). This passage may even reflect a one-seed theory in which Abraham plays no role. See Rafael Rachel Neis, When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species, Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species (University of California Press, 2023), 154–94., on the generative multiplicity in late antiquity. For Second Temple texts that appear to reflect a two-seed theory, see also 1 Enoch 15. Michael Satlow, “‘Wasted Seed,’ The History of a Rabbinic Idea,” Hebrew Union College Annual 65 (1994): 157–58.

[7] Baruch A. Levine, The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus (The Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 73.

[8] Other biblical terms such as וַתַּהַר וַתֵּלֶד, “she became pregnant and gave birth,” (Genesis 4:1, Leviticus 12:2) similarly convey woman’s active role in pregnancy and delivery. See Gwynn Kessler, Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 113.

[9] ^{LXX Lev 12:2} Λάλησον τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ καὶ ἐρεῖς πρὸς αὐτούς Γυνή, ἥτις ἐὰν σπερματισθῇ καὶ τέκῃ ἄρσεν...

[10] On the origins and challenges of dating the targumim, see Ze’ev Safrai, “The Targums as Part of Rabbinic Literature,” in The Literature of the Sages: Second Part: Midrash and Targum, Liturgy, Poetry, Mysticism, Contracts, Inscriptions, Ancient Science and the Languages of Rabbinic Literature, ed. Shmuel Safrai Z"l et al., 1^st ed. (Royal Van Gorcum Fortress Press, 2006), 107–132. Regarding Targum Neofiti, there is no evidence for a date earlier than the fourth century. Scholars continue to debate whether Targum Onqeles originated in the Land of Israel; in any case, it exhibits clear signs of Babylonian influence (ibid., 265).

[11] Translation of rabbinic texts are the author’s and/or the editors’.

[12] Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. Be-Shalakh, mas. de-Shira 8 (ed. Horotvitz-Rabin, 144); Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon b Yohai, par. Be-Shalakh, 15:11 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 94).

[13] Mordecai Margulies, Midrash Vayyikra Rabbah, 3rd ed. (Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993); Burton L. Visotzky, Golden Bells and Pomegranates: Studies in Midrash Leviticus Rabbah (Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 6. While the distinction is not absolute, exegetical midrash expands the biblical text verse by verse or word by word, whereas homiletic midrash presents sustained discussions centered on a single verse or theme from the Torah reading. Herman L. Strack and Gunter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus Bockmuehl (Fortress, 1996), 240.

[14] Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, second. (Bar Ilan University Press, 1992), 281–82, s.v. ליטרה.

[15] See Genesis Rabbah 17:7, where a similar analogy is employed regarding the creation of the first woman.

[16] The Tosefta here parallels a shorter ruling in the Mishnah:

^{משנה נדב ב:א} כל היד המרבה לבדוק בנשים משובחת ובאנשים תקצץ

^{m. Niddah 2:1} Any hand which makes many examinations: In the case of women is to be praised; in the case of men, is to be cut off.

[17] This is not intended as a literal requirement but a rhetoric. The text is partially cited in b. Niddah 13a–b.

[18] Another occurrence of this analogy is invoked in regard to females, for a rather different purpose; m. Nid. 5:4 compares the regenerative quality of the hymen of a girl that is younger than three years of age to “one who sticks a finger in an eye.” In other words, just like an eye that tears returns to its original state and is capable of tearing again, so too will the hymen regenerate in a girl younger than three.

[19] See discussion in Michael L. Satlow, “Does the Torah Prohibit Male Masturbation?” TheTorah (2024); Satlow, “‘Wasted Seed,’ The History of a Rabbinic Idea,” 142–43..

[20] In his talmudic commentary to b. Niddah 13a, R. Moses Nahmanides argues that women are in principle subject to a prohibition against wasting seed, but may nonetheless perform genital examinations because they are less likely to become aroused in the process. In contrast, Rabbeinu Tam (R. Jacob b. Meir, 1100–1171) explains the Mishnah’s encouragement of women’s genital examinations as a purely legal issue: לאו בנות הרגשה “they do not feel anything [sexual when checking]” is interpreted as דלאו בנות איסור הרגשה “they are not subject to a prohibition” women are not subject to a prohibition against wasting seed, just as they do not have an obligation to procreate. See commentary of Tosafot to b. Nid. 13a, b. Yeb. 12b.

[21] David Brodsky, A Bride Without a Blessing: A Study in the Redaction and Content of Massekhet Kallah and Its Gemara, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 118 (Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 160, n. 104; Kessler, Conceiving Israel, 108; Reuven Kiperwasser, “‘Three Partners in a Person’: The Genesis and Development of Embryological Theory in Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism,” Lectio Difficilior 10 (2009).

[22] Although this tradition is introduced with the formula תנו רבנן (tanu rabbanan), “our rabbis taught” (its later parallel in Kohelet Rabbah 5:10 reads “tanni”), implying it is a Tannatic tradition, this attribution has been questioned by scholars. See Michael Higger, Ozar Ha-Baraitot in Ten Volumes (NY, 1942), 5:57; Michael Higger, Ozar Ha-Baraitot (NY, 1943), 6:448; Reuven Kiperwasser, “‘Three Partners in a Person’ The Genesis and Development of Embryological Theory in Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism,” Lectio Difficilior 10 (2009).” The Yerushalmi parallel (y. Kil’aim 8:4 [31c]) is not presented as a baraita, and lacks explicit reference to seed. Kiperwasser, “Three Partners in a Person,” n. 15, argues that this tradition was originally about respect for parents and God (see b. Kiddushin 30b) and later applied to conception.

[23] The description of the mother’s contribution “red substance” resonates particularly with the Aristotelian model, in which women’s menstrual blood is shaped by the male seed. It also parallels Hippocratic pangenesis, since each parent transmits material derived from all parts of the body. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Harvard University Press, 1990), 39.

[24] The text in both Berachot and Niddah has variants, and I’ve chosen one that appears in Munich 95 as well as other manuscripts in both. Alternatively, some texts read Rabbi Isaac in the name of Rabbi Ami, both Babylonian sages who immigrated to Israel and appear together in both Talmuds. Michael Satlow prefers this reading and concludes that the view that a woman’s emission of seed first results in a male child is attributed only to Land of Israel sages. Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Society of Biblical Literature, 1995), 304. Other manuscripts have Rabbi Isaac the son of Rabbi Ami, which Joshua Levinson prefers. See Joshua Levinson, “Cultural Androgyny in Rabbinic Literature,” in From Athens to Jerusalem: Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature, ed. Samuel Kottek and Manfred Horstmanshoff (Erasmus, 2000), 124 n. 32. Irrespective of which version is correct, the view that the mother emits seed appears only in the Bavli. A similar statement is cited in b. Niddah 71a in the name of R. Hama b. R. Ḥaninah, a Land of Israel sage.

[25] This tradition clearly assumes the literal meaning of the phrase. A related (purported) baraita immediately follows, similarly asserting that both parents emit seed and that the sex of the child depends on whose emission occurs first and bringing biblical prooftexts for support. See also b. Niddah 25b, 70b–71a; b. Bava Kamma 92a; b. Berakhot 54a, 60a where R. Isaac’s dictum challenges a baraita that links gender selection to prayer and hence divine intervention. A similar assumption underlies b. Ḥulin 69a regarding animals. That female seed can determine the sex of the child further parallels Hippocratic texts, although Hippocrates maintains that the resulting sex depends on which seed is stronger. See Hippocrates, On the Generating Seed and the Nature of the Child, 6–7, see “On Generation” 4:1, “if her desire for intercourse is excited, she emits semen before the man” (Paul Potter, ed., Hippocrates, vol. X of Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press, 2012), 12–13; Van der Horst, “Sarah’s Seminal Emission: Hebrews 11:11 in the Light of Ancient Embryology,” 210.)

[26] Here Nahmanides interprets the Sages along the lines of Aristotle, and not Hippocrates and Galen. That said, he continues by ascribing a somewhat different view to “the Greeks”:

ועל דעת פילוסופי היונים: כל גוף העובר מדם האשה, אין בו לאיש אלא הכח הידוע בלשונם היולי, שהוא נותן צורה בחומר...

But according to the Greek philosophers, the embryo’s entire body is from the blood of a woman, and that the male only has the power known in their language as hū́lē (ῡ̔́λη), which gives form to matter….

This is also how R. Abraham Ibn Ezra understands the Greek science:

^{אבן עזרא ויקרא יב:ב} ועל דעת חכמי יון: שהזרע לאשה, וזרע הזכר מקפיא, וכל הבן מדם האשה.

^{Ibn Ezra, Lev 12:2} And according to the Greek sages, that the seed is the woman’s, and the male see only contributes the form (lit. “congeals”), the son is formed entirely by the blood of the woman.

R. Elazar ben Matatya, in his commentary on Ibn Ezra (ad loc.), notes that Ibn Ezra gets his term for “form” from Job:

^{איוב י:י} הֲלֹא כֶחָלָב תַּתִּיכֵנִי וְכַגְּבִנָּה תַּקְפִּיאֵנִי.

^{Job 10:10}You poured me out like milk, congealed me like cheese.

He then continues by trying to explain how this mechanism works for determining gender:

^{ר' אלעזר בן מתתיה על אבן עזרא ויקרא יב:ב} ואם ישאל השואל: הלא כל דבר מוליד בדומה, ואיך תוליד האשה זכר והאיש נקבה אם הוא כדברי רבותינו? התשובה "אשה מזרעת תחלה" זרעה הוא החומר וזרע האיש המקפיא הוא הצורה, והוא נותן צורה (בראשית ה:ב) "בדמותו כצלמו". ומוליד בדומה לו זכר. וכן בהפך: "איש מזריע תחלה" זרעו הוא החומר, וזרע האשה נותן צורת נקבה בדומה לה.

^{R. Elazar ben Matatya on Ibn Ezra Lev 12:2} And if one were to ask: Doesn’t everything reproduce according to its own appearance? So how can a woman cause the birth of a male or a man cause the birth of a female, if the rabbis are correct? The answer: “If a woman ejaculates first” her seed is the substance, and the male seed is the congealer, i.e., the form, and it gives a form (Gen 5:2) “according to its likeness, its image,” so it produces a male like him. And the same goes for the inverse: “If a man ejaculates first,” his seed is the substance, and the woman’s seed gives the form of a woman in her likeness.

It is doubtful, however, that this creative interpretation is in line with what Ibn Ezra and Nahmanides understood as the Greek theory. See also Ibn Ezra to Genesis 17:17 where he states that embryos are formed from the woman’s blood. On scientific discourse in Ibn Ezra’s commentary, see David Biale, “Philosophy and Exegesis in the Writings of Abraham Ibn Ezra,” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1974): 43–62.

[27] He is correct but the rabbis did not know that.

[28] This was due to the influx of Nestorian refugees from Edessa in the Byzantine Empire in 431, which included many physicians. By the sixth century, Sasanian medical knowledge was thoroughly Hellenized. Andrea Pfister and David Bellamy, World Medicine: Plants, Patients and People (Blackwell Pub, 1992), 90.

[29] In recent years, scholarship championed by Yaakov Elman has demonstrated many affinities, shared institutions, and theologies common to the Babylonian Talmud and Middle Persian texts. See Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), for an introduction to the field of Talmudo-Iranica.

[30] See Kiperwasser, “Three Partners in a Person.”

[31] See Susruta-Samhita, ed. and trans. Priya Vrat Sharma (Varanasi, Chaukhambha Visvabharati, 2001), vol. 2, part 2, Sarirasthana (section on human body): 3 (On the descent of the embryo).

[32] All citations from the Bundahišn are from the Middle Persian Dictionary Project, English translation by Domenico Agostini.

[33] The Avesta was transmitted orally for almost two millennia and was only written down after Zoroastrian priests created an alphabet in the mid-sixth century. For other instances in which Bavli formulations parallel those found in the Bundahišn, see Reuven Kiperwasser and Dan Shapira, “Irano-Talmudica I: The Three-Legged Ass and Ridya in B. Taanith—Some Observations about Mythic Hydrology in the Babylonian Talmud and in Ancient Iran,” AJS Review 32 (2008): 101–16.

[34] Treatise on the Generation of Animals, Peck, Aristotle, 726b–272a..

[35] Aristotle repeatedly equates menstrual blood with semen in this way. See Sophia M. Connell, Aristotle on Female Animals: A Study of the Generation of Animals (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 103–4 for a list of references. Historia Animalium (634b29–39; 636a4–8).

[36] The Bavli (b. Niddah 20a) also introduces the concept of dam ḥimud, “blood of desire”: uterine bleeding triggered by sexual arousal. In this conception, male and female bodies mirror one another, each possessing a generative substance whose emission carries both biological and halakhic significance. See b. Niddah 20b. Aristotle’s History of Animals book VII, part 2, likewise describes the appearance of extra “katamenia” or menstrual blood reappearing multiple times in a month due to “excessive desire.” (D’arcy Wentworth Thompson, ed., History of Animals (Aeterna Press, 2015), bk. VII, p. 3.)

[37] E.g. m. Niddah 1:1,2; 2:2; 8:3; 9:1,2; 10:1.

[38] While the second half, introducing the notion of sensation, is presented as part of Shmuel’s statement, some have argued that it is a later addition and Shmuel’s actual ruling is concerned with the location of where the bloodstain is found; Ayelet Hoffman Libson, Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2018), 81–88; Adiel Cohen, “The Law of Menstrual Sensation: A Re-examination,” Netuim 10 (2003): 41–47. As Cohen notes, the dissonance between the two halves of Shmuel’s statement was already observed by the 18^th-century Rabbi Ezekiel Landau (Noda be’Yehuda, Yoreh De’ah I:55). The precise author of this rule is secondary for my discussion.

[39] See e.g. Maimonides Mishneh Torah: Isuri Biah 5:17; Tosafot b. Nid. 3a s.v. margasha; Tosafot HaRid b. Nid. 57b s.v. amar; Terumat Hadeshen 246; Aruh Hashulhan Yoreh De’ah 183: 47–48; Responsa of R. Moshe Schick Maharam Schick: Yoreh De’ah, 177; R. Eliezer Waldenberg, Ziz Eliezer 6:21.

[40] Lit. amah, (forearm, cubit) referring to the shaft of the penis.

[41] Tirzah Meacham, “Women Are Not Susceptible to Arousal,” in To Be a Jewish Woman, ed. Tova Cohen (Kolech, 2013), 153–68.

[42] Leviticus structures male ejaculation and female menstruation as parallel impurities (ch. 15), just as it pairs zav and zava (men and women experiencing abnormal genital emissions). Menstrual blood is thus construed as the female analogue to semen. Meacham, “Women Are Not Susceptible to Arousal.” See also b. Niddah 13a, where an explicit connection is made between רגש and arousal, though the anonymous redactors seem to draw a different conclusion than that of Shmuel’s dictum.

[1] Owsei Temkin, trans., Soranus: Gynaecology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 12, §1.12.

[3] See e.g. On Generation 4.1–5.1, LVII 474–477.

[7] Baruch A. Levine, The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus (The Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 73.

[11] Translation of rabbinic texts are the author’s and/or the editors’.

[12] Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. Be-Shalakh, mas. de-Shira 8 (ed. Horotvitz-Rabin, 144); Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon b Yohai, par. Be-Shalakh, 15:11 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 94).

[14] Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, second. (Bar Ilan University Press, 1992), 281–82, s.v. ליטרה.

[15] See Genesis Rabbah 17:7, where a similar analogy is employed regarding the creation of the first woman.

[16] The Tosefta here parallels a shorter ruling in the Mishnah:

^{משנה נדב ב:א} כל היד המרבה לבדוק בנשים משובחת ובאנשים תקצץ

^{m. Niddah 2:1} Any hand which makes many examinations: In the case of women is to be praised; in the case of men, is to be cut off.

[17] This is not intended as a literal requirement but a rhetoric. The text is partially cited in b. Niddah 13a–b.

[19] See discussion in Michael L. Satlow, “Does the Torah Prohibit Male Masturbation?” TheTorah (2024); Satlow, “‘Wasted Seed,’ The History of a Rabbinic Idea,” 142–43..

[26] Here Nahmanides interprets the Sages along the lines of Aristotle, and not Hippocrates and Galen. That said, he continues by ascribing a somewhat different view to “the Greeks”:

ועל דעת פילוסופי היונים: כל גוף העובר מדם האשה, אין בו לאיש אלא הכח הידוע בלשונם היולי, שהוא נותן צורה בחומר...

But according to the Greek philosophers, the embryo’s entire body is from the blood of a woman, and that the male only has the power known in their language as hū́lē (ῡ̔́λη), which gives form to matter….

This is also how R. Abraham Ibn Ezra understands the Greek science:

^{אבן עזרא ויקרא יב:ב} ועל דעת חכמי יון: שהזרע לאשה, וזרע הזכר מקפיא, וכל הבן מדם האשה.

^{Ibn Ezra, Lev 12:2} And according to the Greek sages, that the seed is the woman’s, and the male see only contributes the form (lit. “congeals”), the son is formed entirely by the blood of the woman.

R. Elazar ben Matatya, in his commentary on Ibn Ezra (ad loc.), notes that Ibn Ezra gets his term for “form” from Job:

^{איוב י:י} הֲלֹא כֶחָלָב תַּתִּיכֵנִי וְכַגְּבִנָּה תַּקְפִּיאֵנִי.

^{Job 10:10}You poured me out like milk, congealed me like cheese.

He then continues by trying to explain how this mechanism works for determining gender:

^{ר' אלעזר בן מתתיה על אבן עזרא ויקרא יב:ב} ואם ישאל השואל: הלא כל דבר מוליד בדומה, ואיך תוליד האשה זכר והאיש נקבה אם הוא כדברי רבותינו? התשובה "אשה מזרעת תחלה" זרעה הוא החומר וזרע האיש המקפיא הוא הצורה, והוא נותן צורה (בראשית ה:ב) "בדמותו כצלמו". ומוליד בדומה לו זכר. וכן בהפך: "איש מזריע תחלה" זרעו הוא החומר, וזרע האשה נותן צורת נקבה בדומה לה.

^{R. Elazar ben Matatya on Ibn Ezra Lev 12:2} And if one were to ask: Doesn’t everything reproduce according to its own appearance? So how can a woman cause the birth of a male or a man cause the birth of a female, if the rabbis are correct? The answer: “If a woman ejaculates first” her seed is the substance, and the male seed is the congealer, i.e., the form, and it gives a form (Gen 5:2) “according to its likeness, its image,” so it produces a male like him. And the same goes for the inverse: “If a man ejaculates first,” his seed is the substance, and the woman’s seed gives the form of a woman in her likeness.

[27] He is correct but the rabbis did not know that.

[30] See Kiperwasser, “Three Partners in a Person.”

[31] See Susruta-Samhita, ed. and trans. Priya Vrat Sharma (Varanasi, Chaukhambha Visvabharati, 2001), vol. 2, part 2, Sarirasthana (section on human body): 3 (On the descent of the embryo).

[32] All citations from the Bundahišn are from the Middle Persian Dictionary Project, English translation by Domenico Agostini.

[34] Treatise on the Generation of Animals, Peck, Aristotle, 726b–272a..

[37] E.g. m. Niddah 1:1,2; 2:2; 8:3; 9:1,2; 10:1.

[40] Lit. amah, (forearm, cubit) referring to the shaft of the penis.

[41] Tirzah Meacham, “Women Are Not Susceptible to Arousal,” in To Be a Jewish Woman, ed. Tova Cohen (Kolech, 2013), 153–68.

Dr. Shana Strauch Schick is a lecturer in Rabbinic Literature in the Department of Talmud and the Multidisciplinary Department of Jewish Studies at Bar-Ilan University. She is the author of Intention in Talmudic Law: Between Thought and Deed (Brill, 2021) and the editor of Land and Spirituality in Rabbinic Literature: A Memorial Volume for Yaakov Elman (Brill, 2022). Her forthcoming monograph, Women in Rabbinic Law and Narrative: Vying Currents in Babylonian and Palestinian Texts, will be published by Brandeis University Press.

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