text · B0013
Talmud Bavli תלמוד בבלי
The Babylonian Talmud — the ocean into which the whole earlier mesorah flows and the source from which all subsequent halakhah is drawn. Its sealing is the endpoint of this atlas's main arc: after "the end of hora'ah," the chain of transmission becomes a chain of interpretation.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- תלמוד בבלי
- Also known as
- Babylonian Talmud, The Talmud, Gemara, Shas
- Era
- amoraim
II. When
- Traditional
- arranged by Rav Ashi; hora'ah ended with Ravina's death, 4260 AM (c. 500 CE), per Rav Sherira Gaon
- Academic
- amoraic material to c. 500 CE; anonymous redactional layer continuing into the 6th–7th c.
- Duration
- ≈125 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Language
- Babylonian Aramaic and Hebrew
- Redaction
- Arranged in the academy of Rav Ashi at Mata Mechasya over his ~60-year tenure; "Rav Ashi and Ravina — the end of hora'ah" (Bava Metzia 86a), which Rav Sherira Gaon fixes at Ravina's death in Kislev 811 of the Seleucid era (4260 AM, 499/500 CE), after which the savoraim clarified and polished.
- Structure
- Gemara on 37 tractates of the Mishnah (B0003), concentrated in Moed, Nashim, Nezikin, and Kodashim; with the Mishnah embedded, some 2,700 double-sided folios in the standard Vilna layout — the largest single corpus in the mesorah.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Rabbi and R' Natan — the end of Mishnah; Rav Ashi and Ravina — the end of hora'ah" — the Bavli's own one-line periodization of its completion. | rabbinic | ★★★★☆ | |
| Rav Sherira Gaon narrates the process: hora'ah accumulated generation by generation until Ravina; he dates Ravina's death to 13 Kislev, year 811 of the Seleucid era (499/500 CE), "and that was the end of hora'ah," after which the savoraim rendered explanatory refinements without adding hora'ah.
Section-level Sefaria refs for this edition resolve inconsistently via the API, so the work-level ref is cited; the passages are in the sections noted.
|
tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| The Rambam states that Rav Ashi composed the Babylonian Talmud in Shinar about a hundred years after R' Yochanan composed the Yerushalmi, and counts Rav Ashi fortieth in the chain from Moshe. | tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| Academic scholarship attributes the Bavli's extensive anonymous dialectical layer (the stam) to post-amoraic redactors working into the 6th–7th centuries — placing the literary finalization later than the traditional end of hora'ah, while accepting that the named amoraic material ends c. 500 CE.
Stated alongside the traditional account without merging; the map places the work by the traditional sealing date.
|
reconstruction | ★★★★☆ |
|