Yevamot 118b ~ Does Marriage Make You Happier?

יבמות דף קיח

אמר ריש לקיש: טב למיתב טן דו מלמיתב ארמלו

Resh Lakish said: It is better for a woman to live as tan du than to live alone

In a 1975 lecture to the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi J.B. ("the Rav") Soloveitchik, quoted this aphorism of Resh Lakish found in today's Daf.  The Rav went on to explain that it was "based not upon sociological factors...[but] is a metaphysical curse rooted in the feminine personality. This is not a psychological fact; it is an existential fact." Wow.  Is this statement of Resh Lakish really an existential fact? To answer this, we need to first answer another question - what do his words actually mean?

What did Resh Lakish Actually Mean?

One way to understand the aphorism is as follows:  "A widow would rather live in misery than live alone." But that's not the only translation, which depends on the exact meaning of the Aramaic phrase טן דו (tan du).  There are a number of possibilities.

Rashi

 Let's start with Rashi (and his explanation to the text in .כתובות דף עה).

טן דו - גוף שנים. משל הדיוט הוא, שהנשים אומרות טוב לשבת עם גוף שנים משבת אלמנה

Tan Du: Two bodies. This is a common maxim, for women say that it is better to live as two than to live alone

So according to Rashi, Resh Lakish never mentioned anything about living in misery. He just made the observation that women prefer marriage over a single life.

Jastrow's Dictionary

Not so Marcus Jastrow, whose dictionary (published 1886-1903) became a classic reference text for students of the Talmud. Jastrow translated טן דו as a load of grief, an unhappy married life. This will become very important later, so make note. 

The Soncino Translation

Moving on, the Soncino translation of the Yevamot (first published in 1936) echoes Jastrow's translation "It is preferable to live in grief than to dwell in widowhood." However, a footnote to the text notes that "Levy compares it with the Pers., tandu, two persons." (The reference here is to Jacob Levy's  German Dictionary Chaldisches Worterbuch uber die Targumim - Aramic Dictionary of the Targums and a Large Part of Rabbinic Literature.) Why did Isidore Epstein, editor of the Soncino Talmud, choose to use Jastrow's translation over that of Levy - and that of Rashi? Answering that will take us too far off track, so we will leave it for another time... 

Melamed's Aramaic-Hebrew-English Dictionary

Melamed's Aramaic-Hebrew-English Dictionary (Feldheim: Jerusalem 2005) follows Rashi : "טן דו = two bodies." 

The ArtScroll Translation

The ArtScroll Schottenstein Talmud bases its translation on Rashi, but adds a footnote that brings its meaning closer to that of Jastrow and the Soncino: "I.e. a woman prefers even a less than desirable marriage over staying single." 

The Koren Steinsaltz Translation

In his Hebrew translation of the Aramaic text, Rabbi Steinsaltz follows Rashi, and translates טן דו as "two bodies."A side note points out that the true origin of the phrase is not known, though it likely comes from Persian.

The newer English Koren Talmud follows the same translation: "It is better to sit as two [tan du] than to sit lonely as a widow, i.e., a woman prefers the companionship of any husband over being alone."  The note, (written by Dr. Shai Secunda), is more definitive than the Hebrew note. Tan Du is from middle Persian, meaning together.  It's nothing to do with being miserable.

Teshuvot Hage'onim

I've left the strongest textual witness for last: how the words Tan Du were understood during the period of the Geonim (c. 589-1038). In 1887 Avraham Harkavy published a collection of responsa from this period that he found in manuscripts held in the great library of St. Petersburg. In this collection is a reference to our mysterious words:

  טן דו בלשון פרסי שני בני אדם. ארמלו יחידות 

טן דו in Persian means two people. ארמלו means alone.

Chronologically, this is our earliest source, and, therefore, our most compelling. Case closed. 

Variations of the Resh Lakish Rule

So far we have the following four versions of what we will now call the Resh Lakish Rule:

It's better for a woman to be...

....married and unhappy than single  (Jastrow).

...in a less desirable marriage than no marriage at all (ArtScroll footnote).

...miserable and married than to be a widow (Soncino).

...with a husband than to be alone (ArtScroll, Koren, Melamed, Rashi, Teshuvot Hage'onim)

What if Tan Du Means Miserable?

It seems that the translation of  טן דו as miserable originated with Jastrow, and that those who translate Resh Lakish as saying "misery is better than being single" are following in the Jastrow tradition. If we were to evaluate the Resh Lakish Rule per Jastrow (and Soncino and an ArtScroll footnote), the question is, what, precisely, constitutes a "miserable marriage"? One in which the woman feels physically safe but emotionally alone? One in which her husband loves her dearly but is  unable to provide for her financially? Or one in which she has all the money she needs but her husband is an alcoholic? Tolstoy  has taught us that each unhappy family (and presumably each miserable marriage) is unhappy in its own unique way. The point here is not to rank which is worse. 

Today it would be utterly silly (and incredibly rude and insulting) to suggest that a woman is better off miserable than single.  But after our review, that does not appear to be what Resh Lakish ever said.  What he really said was this: a woman would be better off (טב) married than living alone (as a widow). Resh Lakish didn't explain what he meant by better off, so we will have to assume that what he meant was a measure of overall well-being, or what we call... happiness. What we want to know is how this understanding of Resh Lakish stands up today. Was the Rav correct when he called this "an existential fact"?

Measuring Happiness & Happiness Inequality

Happiness inequality exists and has been well documented. University of Pennsylvania economists Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, (who live together, but not within the bonds of marriage), note that

“...the rich are typically happier than the poor; the educated are happier than those with less education; whites are happier than blacks; those who are married are happier than those who are not; and women—at least historically—have been happier than men.”

But why is this so? Don't we all oscillate around a set point of happiness, regardless of what life may throw at us? Some psychologists think so.

Lottery Winners & Accident Victims: The Set Point Theory of Happiness

According to the set point theory of happiness, we all revolve around our own, innate happiness point. When we are faced with adversity, we do, to be sure, become sadder. But we eventually bounce back to where we were before, back at our set point. Similarly, when met with some good mazal, we are, for a period, more happy. But then we return to our innate set point for happiness, wherever that was prior to the good fortune. The evidence for this comes from a classic study which found that "lottery winners were not much happier than controls" and that accident victims who were paralyzed "did not appear nearly as unhappy as might have been expected." (The problem is that this study used a tiny sample - there were only 22 lottery winners and 29 paralyzed accident victims - so we need to be very cautious in generalizing from it.) 

Married people are – on average – happier than those who are single, but perhaps this fact does not suggest causation. Some would argue that it's just a correlation. A grumpy person, unable to hold down a job and miserable to be around, is not likely to find another individual willing to marry him. So it’s not that marriage makes you happier –it’s that happier people are more likely to find a partner and get married. According to this set point theory of happiness, the Resh Lakish Rule would not be supported, since the act of marrying would have no overall long-term effect on happiness.

THE MORE IS BETTER THEORY OF HAPPINESS

However, evidence from a 15 year longitudinal study of 24,000 people suggests that "marital transitions can be associated with long-lasting changes in satisfaction."  This would support the claim that marriage is causally related to happiness. It's not that you went from being a happy person who was once single to being a similarly happy person who is now married. What actually happened was that the marriage had an effect on just how happy you became.  And data from other large cohort studies show that happiness increases when people marry. Just look at the happiness of women by marital status in the figure below. Was Resh Lakish onto something?

Mean happiness of women by marital status, birth cohort of 1953-1972, from ages 18-19 and 28-29. From Easterlin, RA. Explaining Happiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2003. 100 (19): 11176-11183.

“Remarriage has the same positive effect on happiness as a first marriage”

— Richard Easterlin, Explaining Happiness

Miserable marriages

Of course, not all marriages are equally happy. Some are downright miserable for one or both parties. A 2014 paper published in the delightfully named Journal of Happiness Studies, examined the relationship between marriage quality and overall well being, using data from the US, UK and Germany. The authors noted that “people in self-assessed poor marriages are fairly miserable and much less happy than unmarried people, even in the first year of marriages.” Conversely, “people in self-assessed good marriages are even happier than the literature suggests.” They continue:

In percentage terms (calculated at the mean) these effects suggest that those in high quality marriages are around 20, 19 and 18 % happier than the unmarried... The (un)happiness effect of a poor quality marriage is quite large compared to being unmarried, with the coefficients for the US, the UK and Germany respectively being -0.48, -0.55 and -0.27, which in percentage terms (calculated at the mean) are around 22, 27 and 14%.

And so, it all depends on the quality of the marriage. Of course it does.

what about the widows?

All this supports the Resh Lakish Rule that people are happier when they are married. (I say people because all the evidence applies equally to men too.) But we can get even more specific, because Resh Lakish used the word ארמלא, which most likely means widowed (and hence has a secondary meaning of being alone). There is actually data that applies to this more specific Resh Lakish claim about widows, and it comes from The Roper Center at the University of Connecticut. 

From Economics and Happiness, ed Bruni L. Oxford University Press 2005.

As shown in the table, 62% of women who are widowed want to be happily married.  (Of course this also means that about 40% of widowed women would rather not be married -  even happily. That’s a huge proportion. Still, the overall finding still supports the Resh Lakish Rule.) The women's perspective is the most important perspective in this conversation, and when women (widows)  were asked, most wanted to be married again. Widows indeed wish to live as two rather than live alone. I don't think this amounts to anything like an existential fact, as claimed by the Rav. But the evidence from the social sciences would certainly support the Resh Lakish Rule.

“Free to call the tune, free to say if you’re gonna work or play
You can have the moon but you don’t have to have it night and day

Anyway, on your own with only you to concern yourself
Doesn’t mean you’re lonely, just that you’re free
Live and alone and like it, don’t come down from that tree

That’s the answer for me
That’s the answer for me”

— Live Alone and Like It (From Dick Tracy), by Stephen Sondheim

Yevamot 116b~ Of Snake Bites, Palestinian and Israeli

The Palestinian Viper צפע ארצישראלי. Vipera palaestinae

יבמות קטז, ב

דאמר רב יהודה אמר שמואל שילפי קציר חטין היו והלכו עשרה בני אדם לקצור חטין נשכו נחש לאחד מהן ומת

Rav Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel: It was the end of the harvest when ten men went to reap their wheat; a snake bit one of them and he died

Snake bites were a widespread fear in ancient Israel. The Talmud warns that snakes can be found in houses and records a snake attack that occurred in the toilet, so going to the bathroom was a risk to one’s life. (Snakes still appear  to make relieving oneself in the Holy Land a dangerous enterprise, if this report is to be believed.)  And because of the possibility that a snake had discharged its venom into a standing bucket of liquids, the Talmud ruled that it is forbidden to drink from a liquid that had been left uncovered [Terumot 8:4] – a ruling codified, (with some changes) into normative Jewish law.

שולחן ערוך יורה דעה קטז

  משקים שנתגלו, אסרום חכמים דחיישינן שמא שתה נחש מהם והטיל בהם ארס. ועכשיו   שאין נחשים מצויים בינינו, מותר

Liquids that have been left uncovered [overnight] were forbidden by the rabbis, because of the concern that a snake may have drank from them and left its venom in them. Today, when snakes are less prevalent in society, it is permitted [to drink]

Actually, there is no danger in drinking at all, even in places where snakes are found. Snakes only discharge their venom when they intend to bite, not when stopping for a drink. And even if there was venom in the liquid, snake venom is not absorbed by the human gastrointestinal tract, so it would have absolutely no effect. Still, this shows how dangerous snakes were thought to be, and so when they did not bite, it was considered to be miraculous. Hence the Mishnah (Avot 5:5) records that one of the ten miracles that occurred during the time of the Second Temple was that no person was ever injured by a snake.

snake bites in Israel and around the world

Snake bites remain a threat in Israel and beyond (though in my six years of working in Jerusalem as an emergency physician I recall treating only one victim; he was a handler at a private snake collection- who should have known better.) In the US, venomous snakes are found in every state except Maine, Alaska and Hawaii, and each year in the US there are about 2,000 recorded venomous snake bites that result in about 6 deaths. The World Health Organization estimates that snakes kill between 20,000 and 94,000 people per year.

Kastururante A. et al. The Global Burden of Snakebite. PLOS Medicine 2008. 5:1591-1604

Snakes are such a problem for Israel and its neighbors that in 1998 the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Jordanian Armed Forces held a joint conference on the topic. Since snakes are cold blooded, they are virtually inactive in the winter months, and summer time can be too hot for them; hence they are most active in the spring and fall. Like the report in today’s page of Talmud, the IDF found that the peak incidence for snakebites is May (that is, harvest time). 

Snakebites in the IDF. Average incidence per month, 1993-1997. From Haviv, J, et al. Field treatment of snakebites in the Israel Defense Forces. Public Health Rev 1988; 26:24-256.

There are at least eight species of poisonous snake found in Israel, of which the most common is the Palestine Viper, (shown in the photo above,) which is found in all regions north of Be’er Sheva. It is this snake that is responsible for all the fatal snake bites in Israel, though the IDF reported not one fatality during its five year study period.

sidebar: palestinian or israel viper?

Let's re-read that last paragraph:

“There are at least eight other species of poisonous snake found in Israel, of which the most common is the Palestine Viper”

Is that its real name? Well, it depends who you ask, or perhaps, in what language you ask. The snake's Latin name is Vipera palaestinae, and its Hebrew name is...צפע ארצישראלי! The snake could have been given a Hebrew name that was transliterated from the Latin, i.e. צפע פלסטיני – but that's not what whoever chose the name decided on.  Outside the case of the viper in the Jerusalem Zoo, this multiple naming is evident:

(It's not only snakes that have may have a crisis of identity. The chamomile flower, common in Israel, is called by its scientific name Anthemis palaestina, and in Hebrew it is קחוון ארצישראלי. Similarly the Terebinth; it is known to the scientific community as Pistacia palaestina, and in Hebrew as אלה ארץ-ישראלית. I could go on, but the point is made.)

One snake living happily, called two names by two peoples. There's a lesson there somewhere. But I digress.

the treatment of snake bites in the Talmud - and today

The Talmud offers a remedy for the unfortunate person bitten by a snake (of either the Palestinian or Israeli variety. Not the person. The snake.)

If one is bitten by a snake, he should take an embryo of a white donkey, tear it open, and sit on it (Shabbat 109b)

How does this advice compare with the IDF field manual? Not very well, as you can see from this list of the field treatment do's and dont's from the Medical Corps of the IDF.  Embryos of white donkeys do not make it. (Donkey embryos as a therapy also fail to make a fascinating 1953 report of 65 cases of viper bite in Israel.)

Haviv, J, et al. Field treatment of snakebites in the Israel Defense Forces. Public Health Rev 1988; 26:24-256.

Snake venom produces its deadly effects by causing a coagulopathy, which is the general name for a breakdown in the normal way the blood clots.  When things get really bad, snake venom causes a consumption coagulopathy, in which (as its name implies), all the vital bits that are needed for blood to clot are consumed, leaving the poor victim susceptible to life-threatening uncontrollable bleeding. Here's a chart of the clotting pathways that medical students have to learn (a process only slightly less painful than a snake bite itself,) with the bits that venom attacks shown in green.

Diagram of the clotting pathway showing the major clotting factors (blue) and their role in the activation of the pathway and clot formation. The four major groups of snake toxins that activated the clotting pathway are in green and the intermediate or incomplete products they form are indicated in dark red. There are four major types of prothrombin activators, which either convert thrombin to form the catalytically active meizothrombin (Group A and B) or to thrombin (Group C and D). From Maduwage K, Isbister GK. Current Treatment for Venom-Induced Consumption Coagulopathy Resulting from Snakebite. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 2014. 8(10): 1-13.

The standard treatment for snake envenomation is antivenom. (This is a technical term for something that is anti the venom.) In the 1950s  antivenom was already part of the standard  treatment of viper bites in Israel, though apparently it was then called by the far fancier name of "serum antivenimeux."  (If chemistry or immunology is your thing, you can read more about how viper antivenom was made in Israel here.) These antivenoms work in a number of ways, one of which is by blocking the toxin and preventing it from binding to its target (i.e. those green diamonds in the diagram above).

It was these ten vials of antivenom that saved the life of the brave Jewish lady preparing for her son's Bar Mitzvah back in 2011. You can read all about that episode here. (Spoiler alert - the mom won.)

snakes that heal

Snakes aren't only associated with coma, convulsions and death.  They are - paradoxically -  often associated with those who heal.  Here is the cover of Fred Rosner's book; notice what looks like two snakes wrapped around a winged pole.  Compare that image with the insignia of the US Army Medical Corps below.

The image you see is the caduceus, the rod carried by the Greek god Hermes (known as Mercury when in Rome). But in fact this double-snake flying-rod has nothing to do with healing, and is erroneously -though very widely- used as a medical emblem.  But as an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association points out, the adoption of the double-snaked caduceus of Hermes - at least in the US - is likely due to its having been used as a watermark by the prolific medical publisher John Churchill.   

The correct mythological association is with the Staff  of Asklepios, the ancient Greco-Roman god of medicine. In one legend, a snake placed some herbs into the mouth of another serpent that Asklepios had killed, and the dead snake was restored to life.  As a mark of respect, Asklepios adopted as his emblem  a snake coiled around his staff.  While the US Army Medical Corps uses the caducues as its badge, on its regimental flag the US Army Medical Command uses the more appropriate single snaked staff. Oh, and a rooster.  

U.S. Army Medical Command Regimental Flag. Don't ask about the rooster...

Fortunately, the Israel Defense Forces clearly know a caduceus from an Asklepios. They adopted the correct Greco-Roman mythological symbol for the medical unit of the first Jewish army in 2,000 years.

The Greeks may have had their tradition, but we have ours. And in ours, it is never the snake that heals.

“עשה לך שרף ושים אותו על נס, והיה כל הנשוך וראה אותו וחי. וכי נחש ממית או נחש מחיה? אלא בזמן שישראל מסתכלין כלפי מעלה ומשעבדין את לבם לאביהן שבשמים היו מתרפאים, ואם לאו היו נימוקים...

”Make a fiery snake and place it on a pole, and it will be that anyone who is bitten will look at it and live” [Numbers 21:8] But is a snake the source of life and death? Rather, the verse means that when Israel looked up and submitted their heart to their Father in Heaven, they were healed, but if they did not do so, they perished.”

— Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 3:8

Yevamot 98b ~ On the Formation of Twins

Buried in a discussion of paternity, Rava states that the mechanism of the development of twin brothers is as follows:  "דטפה אחת היה ונחלקה לשתים"  - "there was one drop of semen that split into two".

Aristotle (384-322 BC) believed that twins were caused by too much seed (which does make a certain intuitive sense I suppose). In the thirteenth century the German theologian Albertus Magnus updated this theory, and suggested that twins were generated when the woman experienced too much sexual pleasure during intercourse. This redistributed the seed throughout the uterus, resulting in twins. 

We now know that there are actually only two ways that twins are formed, and neither depends on sperm splitting, too much seed, or an abundance of sexual pleasure. In monozygotic or identical twins (though they are not always literally identical), one sperm fertilizes one egg, and the resulting zygote then divides into two. Since the two offspring zygotes originated from the same "mother" zygote, they are genetically identical - and hence the twins (or triplets, if the zygote splits three ways) are identical and of course of the same sex.

Formation of identical (monozygotic) twins. Courtesy Womenshealth.gov

In dizygotic or fraternal twins, two sperm fertilize two eggs and the two resulting zygotes grow together in the same womb at the same time. They are not genetically identical, and are really two siblings who just happen to be sharing a womb at the same time. 

Formation of fraternal (dizygotic) twins. Courtesy Womenshealth.gov

That's it. No sperm splits.  Sorry.

Fun facts about twins, Israeli and others

• For reasons that are not clear, the rate of dizygotic twins varies across the world, (highest in sub-Saharan Africa, lowest in Asia) and varies across women by body habitus (taller women are more likely to have twins - who knew?) and age (older women are four times more likely to have twins) and varies across time (possibly highest when conception is in the summer and fall).

Twinning Rates in the USA, Europe, Australia and Asia. From Hoekstra et al. Dizygotic Twinning. Human Reproduction Update 2007.14; 37-47.

• From 1915, when records were first started, through the 1970s, the rate of twin births in the US was a constant 2% of all births. But in the early 1980s the number of twin births in the US more than doubled, and today that rate is over 3%. The cause, as you may have guessed, is the increased use of reproductive technologies.

“One in every 30 infants born in 2009 was a twin”

— US Dept of Health and Human Services. NCHS Data Brief Jan 2012

• The states that saw the greatest increase in twin birth rates were Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island. In these states, the twin birth rate more than doubled!

Percentage Increase in Twin Birth Rates 1980-2009. From NCHS Data Brief #80. Jan 2012.

• Finally, although the rate of twin births has increased for women of all ages over the last three decades, in women older than 40 the rate of twin births increased by 200%. There are at least two causes for this dramatic rise. First, as more women postpone childbirth, more are having children later in life, and older women, as we have already seen, are more likely to have (dizygotic) twins. And secondly, more older women are using assisted reproduction techniques, which also increases the rate of twin conceptions.

• In Israel, the incidence of twin births increased three fold in the three decades before 2001, a rate even higher than the increase in the US. The authors of a 2004 study on multiple births in Israel concluded that the "increased incidence of multiple births is explained by the special significance attributed to motherhood in Israeli society, which is met by the socio-political milieu and the availability of assisted reproductive technologies". Indeed.

• The incidence of twin births in higher in Jewish than it is in Arab Israelis.  This is likely explained by their greater use of assisted reproductive technologies (like in-vitro fertilization).  

Incidence of twin births in Jewish and Arab populations of Israel, 1994-2001. From Blickstein I, Baor L. Trends in multiple births in Israel. Harefuah 2004; 143 (11): 794-798.

---

The Talmud wasn't exactly accurate about how twins are formed, but elsewhere it does capture the sense of wonder that so many of us feel as we hold a newborn baby (or two). It's a transcendent moment in which we may, for a fleeting moment, feel the divine.   

“תנו רבנן שלשה שותפין יש באדם הקב”ה ואביו ואמו. אביו מזריע הלובן...אמו מזרעת אודם ... והקב”ה נותן בו רוח ונשמה וקלסתר פנים...

Our Rabbis taught: There are three partners in the creation of a person, the Holy One, blessed be He, the father and the mother. The father supplies the white...the mother supplies the red...and the Holy One, blessed be He, supplies the spirit and the breath and the beauty...”

— Niddah, 31a

Yevamot 97a ~ Rava on Delayed Puberty in Boys

THIS POST IS PART TWO OF TWO, ABOUT TODAY’S PAGE OF TALMUD.

On this page of Talmud we read of Rava's observation that delayed puberty may be related to body mass:

יבמות צז, א

כי אתו לקמיה דרבא אי כחוש אמר להו זילו אבריוהו ואי בריא אמר להו זילו אכחשוהו דהני סימנין זמנין דנתרי מחמת כחישותא וזמנין דנתרי מחמת בריותא

Whenever people came to Rava [with a case of a man who had not developed pubic hair]  he would tell them, if [the man was] thin, ‘Let him gain weight’; and if they were overweight he would say ‘Go lose weight’; for these signs [of sexual maturity] are sometimes delayed as a result of emaciation and sometimes  as a result of obesity.   (Yevamot 97a)

There has been some discussion of what appears to be the increasingly earlier onset of puberty in girls. In fact, menarche, (the age of a girl's first menstrual period) has been steadily decreasing by a consistent three years per century of record keeping. In an article in The New York Times published only a couple of weeks ago, the headline read “Puberty Starts Earlier Than It Used To. No One Knows Why.” It noted that “some girls are starting to develop breasts as early as age 6 or 7.”

However, Rava was addressing not the early onset of puberty in girls, but its delayed appearance in boys.  He noted that this delay was sometimes related to extremes of nutritional status, and so in these cases, was amenable to intervention.

“Rava may have been the first first to report an association of obesity and delayed puberty in boys.”

Rava was on to something. He may in fact have been the first to report an association between obesity and delayed puberty in boys.  This association has been confirmed by several studies which found that obesity has different effects on puberty in boys and girls. In girls, obesity is associated with earlier puberty, while in boys it has the opposite effect, and delays sexual maturation. But it was not until 2010 this association was confirmed by a longitudinal population-based study. This reported that a "higher BMI z score trajectory" (i.e. obesity)  during early to middle childhood may be associated with later onset of puberty among boys. 

Rava also claimed that puberty may be delayed in boys who are underweight, and this has also been confirmed. As far as I can tell, none of the researchers has credited Rava (who died around 350 CE.) for being the first to notice these associations. But Rava was first, and firsts count for something in science.

Rabbi Hiyya’s claim

The same passage is repeated in Bava Basra (155b) but in the name of Rabbi Hiyya.  Hiyya probably lived in the second half of the second century, and so predated Rava by a few decades.  The claim of primacy regarding the association with nutritional status and delayed puberty may therefore have to be extended back to R. Hiyya.  But so far I have found nothing in the works of Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen that address this issue, so this association does not appear to have been a widely held belief in antiquity that was simply being echoed in the Talmud. As all good scientific papers end, further research is needed...