The provenance of the opening Aramaic portion of the Passover Haggadah has confounded practitioners and scholars for centuries. Little evidence has come to light to explain the origins of this passage or the fluctuations in its attending practices over time. This article argues that additional evidence, found in some neglected Talmudic manuscripts and in incantation bowls, reveals that the core recitational and practical elements of this passage were originally unrelated to Passover or Jewish ritual. Instead, they were part of a recognised social script in late antique Jewish Babylonia that was integrated into the Passover Haggadah. With changes in Babylonian Jewish society, and with the transmission of this section and its associated practices to Jewish communities outside of Babylonia, the original social and cultural context of this sentence was forgotten. Untethered from the setting in which it was culturally legible, it developed through encounters with new actors in different contexts.

逾越节哈加达开放的阿拉姆语部分的出处已经使从业者和学者感到困惑了几个世纪。很少有证据可以解释这段经文的起源或随着时间的流逝其参加活动的波动。本文认为，在一些被忽略的塔木德手稿和咒语碗中发现的其他证据表明，这段经文的核心背诵和实践元素最初与逾越节或犹太教礼仪无关。取而代之的是，它们是已逾越的犹太人巴比伦尼亚人公认的社会脚本的一部分，该脚本被整合到逾越节哈加达中。随着巴比伦犹太人社会的变化，以及本节及其相关惯例向巴比伦尼亚以外的犹太社区的传播，这句话的原始社会和文化背景被遗忘了。它不受在文化上易读的环境的束缚，而是通过在不同背景下与新演员的相遇而发展起来的。