Nehardea Destroyed: the Learning Moves to Pumbedita
In 259 Papa ben Netzer destroyed Nehardea, and its scholars moved to Pumbedita. So the two academies of Babylonia—Sura and Pumbedita—were set, and they would last eight hundred years.
In the days of Rav and Shmuel there were two centres in Babylonia: Sura, which Rav founded, and Nehardea, where Shmuel taught. Nehardea was the older—its community was held to go back to the first exile.
The year 259. Papa ben Netzer destroyed the city. The academy of Nehardea ceased to be, and its scholars moved to Pumbedita on the Euphrates.
Its memory did not vanish: generations later the sages of Pumbedita were still called "the row of Nehardea."
What was established. Rav Yehuda bar Yechezkel headed Pumbedita, and Rav Huna headed Sura. From this time until the end of the age of the Geonim two academies stand in Babylonia, and their argument with one another is the very work out of which the Babylonian Talmud came. Pumbedita became known for sharpness of analysis, Sura for breadth.
This double rule would hold for eight hundred years—to the very end of the Geonim.
How we know
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bava Metzia 38b — “they draw an elephant through the eye of a needle” — of the analysis in Pumbedita
Rishonim
- The Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the order of the heads of Sura and Pumbedita, on which the whole chronology of the age rests
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Nehardea” — the destruction of the city by Papa b. Netzer in 259 and the scholars' move to Pumbedita
Basis: documents and evidence.
People and places
Nehardea · Pumbedita · Sura · Rav Huna · Rav Yehuda bar Yechezkel · Shmuel of Nehardea · Rav (Abba Arikha) · Babylonian Talmud · Amoraim