person · P0217
Ravina II רבינא בר רב הונא
The last amora (seventh generation, Bavel): with his death at Sura, says Rav Sherira Gaon, hora'ah ended and the age of the savoraim began. Nephew of Ravina I, orphaned young. No reception edge is drawn upstream — his personal teachers are not cleanly attested in the sources verified here — so the chain passes forward from the court of Rav Ashi and from him corporately to the savoraim.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- רבינא בר רב הונא
- Also known as
- Ravina bar Rav Huna, Rav Avina
- Era
- amoraim
- Generation
- A7
- Transmitted the mesorah to
- Savoraim
II. When
- Traditional
- d. 4260 AM (Seleucid 811 = 500 CE, per the Iggeret)
- Academic
- d. 475 or 500 CE (dating disputed)
- Lifespan (traditional)
- ≈80 years
- Precision
- disputed
III. Where
- Places
- Sura, Mata Mechasya
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| "In the Seleucid year 811 [500 CE] ... died Rav Avina son of Rav Huna, who is Ravina — and he is the end of hora'ah" — the Iggeret's own closing date for the amoraic age.
Some manuscripts and historians place his death at 475 CE; the era band follows the Iggeret's 500 CE.
|
tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| His teachers are not directly attested in the sources verified for this atlas: he was orphaned in infancy (talmudic notices show his mother and his uncle Ravina I transmitting his father's teachings to him), and he functioned in the final court at Sura completing the Talmud. His upstream reception is therefore recorded as this claim, not as an edge.
Deliberate no-edge decision; see the chain-honesty rule. |
reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ | |
| He served as a judge at Mata Mechasya and adjudicated a property claim involving Rav Ashi's daughter and Mar bar Rav Ashi.
The judicial role and parties are explicit.
|
rabbinic | ★★★★★ | |
| After Rabbah Tosfa'ah's death, Ravina II became head of the Sura academy around 474 CE.
The succession derives from geonic chronology.
|
tradition external | ★★★★☆ | |
| The Bavli twice shows him receiving his dead father's Torah through his mother: "Ravina said: Mother told me — your father would act like Rabbi Chiya, finishing the blessing together with the breaking of the bread" (Berakhot 39b), and "Mother told me — your father would not eat new grain save on the night of the seventeenth turning to the eighteenth [of Nisan], for he held like Rabbi Yehudah and was concerned for the doubt" (Menachot 68b). The mother as relay of the father's practice is the most unusual documented transmission conduit in this atlas.
Which Ravina speaks in these passages — the elder (Rav Ashi's colleague, Ravina I) or this Ravina bar Rav Huna — is disputed among the historians. Landed here because a father who must be quoted at second hand fits the bar-Huna orphan biography that the Iggeret's death notice anchors; the rival attribution is recorded on Ravina I. Both passages verified in the Hebrew.
|
rabbinic reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ | |
| "Ravina had in his charge the wine of Ravina Zuti, the orphan, his sister's son," bringing the question of transporting it to market before Rav Ashi (Ketubot 100b) — the elder Ravina as guardian of the orphaned younger, standardly identified as this Ravina bar Rav Huna. On this attested formation-proximity — guardian-uncle, not mere contemporary — the received_from_inferred edge to Ravina I rests; the attested received_from remains deliberately absent, per the chain-honesty rule.
"Ravina Zuti" = Ravina II is the standard but inferential identification. Mar bar Rav Ashi (Mar bar Rav Ashi), his contemporary in the Mata Mechasya line, gets no inferred edge: the attested contact (Ketubot 69a, above) is judicial, not formative.
|
rabbinic reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ |