The Talmud’s Explanation for the Decline of the Idolatrous Impulse

The cycle of daily Talmud study known as daf yomi has just completed the tractate of Avodah Zarah, which details the prohibition against idolatry along with a host of regulations intended to keep Jews at a distance from its practice. Even a cursory reading of the Bible should make clear why such strictures might be necessary: time and again, the Israelites succumb to the temptation to worship foreign gods. Dovid Bashevkin notes that the Talmud—completed in Zoroastrian Persia after Rome had become Christian—itself seems to acknowledge that the era of paganism was over, and that idolatry had lost its seductive power: