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How direct (if at all) is the connection between the Jewish concept of the Beshert and Aristophanes’ parable in Plato’s Symposium?

Something I’ve been curious about for a while.

In Plato’s Symposium, Plato has the comic playwright Aristophanes discuss the concept of soulmates (well, more so sexual attraction/orientation) based on a parable about how in the distant past, people were hermaphrodite beings fused together and now everyone is trying to find their missing “half”.

IIRC in Plato/Aristophanes’ original version, he accounts for gay men and lesbians by indicating that some of the pairs of fused people were both male or both female.

What’s interesting to me though is that in two separate media works, Vienna Blood and Shtisel, when characters discuss the concept of the Beshert, they recite a nearly identical parable to the one in The Symposium (minus the part about homosexuality).

Is there somewhere in the Talmud where the concept of the Beshert is explained in that way?

From a quick google of “Aristophanes speech symposium Beshert”, I do see a number of Jewish writers discussing Aristophanes with approval when talking about the concept of the Beshert, but I’m wondering if it goes deeper than that.

Part of why I’m curious is because my impression is that Jewish scholars like Maimonides (or his Muslim equivalent Avorres) were Neo-Platonists. So, I wasn’t sure if they actually had access to The Symposium.

submitted by /u/KaiLung
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Source: Reditt