Ever wonder how many times the Babylonian Talmud cites the Bible? Me neither, until I compiled the data.
The answer is 13,219 times, give or take a little. For those who are interested, the Vilna edition of the Talmud has 5894 folio pages (information from Wikipedia, so beware!). That computes to about 2.25 citations per folio page.
I’m not sure what to do with this fact. The verses are certainly not evenly distributed, but perhaps this gross number helps to reinforce the impression that the Talmud is not really about Scripture and its interpretation. Stay tuned for other, more significant statistical facts about the Talmud’s use of Scripture.
For those who are curious, the Zip-code of Syracuse, NY is 13219