Rav Ashi and the Beginning of the Babylonian Talmud's Redaction

By the start of the fifth century so much material had accumulated that holding it in memory was becoming impossible: two and a half centuries of amoraic discussion in Sura, Pumbedita, Nehardea and Mechoza, plus everything that had come from the Land of Israel. What was needed was a man with enough knowledge, authority and time.

Rav Ashi headed the academy of Sura—more precisely in the neighbouring town of Mata Mechasya—for some sixty years. Of him, as once of Rabbi Yehuda haNasi, the Talmud says: since Rebbi, Torah and greatness had not been found in one place.

He worked through the kallah system. Twice a year thousands gathered and studied a tractate announced in advance; in thirty years that covers sixty tractates. The Talmud says Rav Ashi went through the cycle twice, and that the second recension differed from the first: he returned, refined, changed rulings. He did not compose—he arranged: which discussion belongs to which mishnah, in what order objections stand, where a conclusion is drawn and where the question stays open with the word teiku.

Ravina worked alongside him and after him. The formula Rav Ashi and Ravina are the end of instruction means that after them no ruling carries the same authority; one may explain and apply, but not alter. With Rav Ashi the oral teaching began to become a book.