On this page of Talmud there is an excursus into a particularly brutal form of capital punishment called serefa, or burning. This punishment involved pouring molten lead down the throat of the condemned person. Among other unfortunates, it was administered to the married daughter of a Cohen who committed adultery.
ויקרא 21:9
וּבַת אִישׁ כֹּהֵן כִּי תֵחֵל לִזְנוֹת אֶת־אָבִיהָ הִיא מְחַלֶּלֶת בָּאֵשׁ תִּשָּׂרֵף׃
When the daughter of a priest defiles herself through harlotry, it is her father whom she defiles; she shall be put to the fire.
The Talmud then examines the meaning of the last two words:
פסחים עה, א
וְאֶלָּא ״בָּאֵשׁ״ לְמָה לִי? לְאַפּוֹקֵי אֲבָר מֵעִיקָּרוֹ
But if it so that the verse says “she shall be burned” to include all methods of burning, for what do I need the expression “in fire”? The Gemara answers: To exclude lead from its source.
What exactly is the meaning of “lead from its source?” Rashi, the eleventh century commentator offers this explanation:
אבר מעיקרו - שמוציאין אותו מן הקרקע רותח הוא בלא תולדת אש
Lead from its source: It is extracted from the earth in a molten form, without any additional heat from a flame.
This explanation was sufficient for the great late Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz to include it in his own commentary on this passage:
אבר מעיקרו. שבשעה שמוציאים את העופרת מקרקע היא רותחת מעצמה, ובעופרת רותחת זו אין מקיימים מצות שריפה, כיון שאין חומה בא על ידי האש
Lead from its source: When lead is mined from the ground it is molten, and the commandment of serefa [burning] cannot be performed with naturally burning lead, since it was not melted with fire…
The English ArtScroll Talmud also offers Rashi’s explanation without further comment. But it is wrong.
ArtScroll Talmud. Pesachim 75a.
Where does lead come from?
The explanations of the great commentator Rashi and his modern day equivalent Rabbi Steinsaltz are both, unfortunately, incorrect. Lead is not mined from the ground in a molten form but is produced by smelting, in which heat is applied to a mixture of metals known as an ore in order to extract a base metal.
In 2012 a group of Israeli archeologists discovered what they claimed to be the earliest lead object in the Levant. The lead object, attached to a wooden shaft, was found in the deepest section of the large complex Ashalim cave in the northern Negev desert. Carbon dating placed it within the Chalcolithic period, late in the 5th millennium BCE. The archeologists noted that “the chemical analysis of the Ashalim Cave object indicates that the lead was likely to have been smelted from a relatively pure ore.”
Prior to the 4th millennium BCE, only a handful of lead objects made of metallic lead have been reported from datable contexts, all from northern Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia. These include a bracelet from Yarim Tepe I found in a context dated to c. 5,700 BCE , and a small conical object from Arpachiyeh dated to the 5th millennium BCE . However, both objects were never inspected for their metallurgical properties, and their identification as being the products of lead smelting is conjectural, and is based on the rarity of native lead and the relative ease of lead smelting, which can be performed at temperatures below 800°C … Thus, it appears that the Ashalim Cave object, based on the concentration of trace elements such as cobalt, might be the earliest lead artifact proven so far to have been produced from smelted lead.
Smelted. But not harvested as natural lead.
No one knows what the lead object was used for. “We may speculate” the Israelis wrote, “that the lead object was originally used in another context, which would have made it possible to acknowledge its rarity and significance (e.g. as a macehead), before being re-used as a spindle whorl, joined to the wooden rod, at a later stage. Its eventual deposition in the deepest section of Ashalim Cave, in relation to the burial of selected individuals, serves as evidence of the symbolic significance it possessed until the final phase of its biography.”
The Ashamilm cave object. The lead cast is at the top, attached to a wooden stick. From Yahalom-Mack N, Langgut D, Dvir O, Tirosh O, Eliyahu-Behar A, Erel Y, et al. (2015) The Earliest Lead Object in the Levant. PLOS ONE 10 (12): e0142948. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0142948
Lead was originally a by-product of smelting whose goal was to extract silver, in a process known as cupellation. Analysis of the lead shows that it was likely smelted from lead ores originating in the Taurus range in Anatolia.
A retraction of sorts
Writing earlier this week on the Seforim Blog, Rabbi Dr. Shalom Z. Berger, who is one of the content editors of the Koren (Steinsaltz) Talmud gave some additional background to the question of the origin of lead. He and fellow editor Rabbi Michael “Micky” Siev, noted that “ lead is mined from the ground, and as far as we are aware, is not burning hot when it is extracted from the ground.” And so in the new English Koren Talmud they replaced the incorrect explanation with an updated one, as shown below. It is a reminder that good Talmud commentary, like good science, needs to be amended and updated when it is based on erroneous information. Rashi and Rabbi Steinsaltz would surely concur.
Koren Steinsaltz Talmud Pesachim vol IIp 65.
