Half flesh and half earth creature in classical rabbinic literature

The spiritual world of the Jewish sages in the Mishnah and Talmud period (1^th-5^th centuries), as well as the doors of the study halls, were open to news from the externalsecular world in various areas. The current article focuses on vermin or mouse that is half flesh and half earth. This creature was mentioned in the Mishna and Talmud literature in halakhic and ideological contexts. This miraculous hybrid creature was also described in the writings of Greek and Roman sages, and this phenomenon is grounded in a broader outlook mentioned by Aristotle concerning spontaneously generating creatures. According to the Greek and Roman sages, such as Diodorus, Ovid and Pliny, the mice can be seen in the area of the Nile in Egypt, when the water that floods the fields retreats to the river‟s normal channel. According to the Amoraim the mouse is created in a valley, apparently because it is a low place where the ground is normally moist and sometimes muddy. It seems that the origin of this belief is the fact the mice emerge from the earth with part of their body covered in mud and those observing from afar may receive the impression that they are half earth and half flesh.