Rabbah bar bar Chana רבה בר בר חנה

Rabbah bar bar Chana travelled between Babylonia and the Land of Israel, studied under Rabbi Yochanan at Tiberias, and carried many of his words back to Babylonia. But he is known for something else: the string of tales in tractate Bava Batra (73a–74a), unlike anything else in the Talmud.

There he says: I saw a fish on whose back sailors lit a fire, taking it for an island; I saw a frog the size of a fortress, and a serpent that swallowed it; I saw the dead of the wilderness lying face upward, and cut the corner of one man's garment—and the caravan could not move until it was returned.

What these are has been argued since the first commentators. Rabbeinu Chananel and Maimonides read them as parables; the kabbalists as visions; the Maharsha treats each as a lesson on Israel's fate in exile. One thing is common: almost no one reads them literally, and the Talmud itself sets beside them the remark that tellers sometimes exaggerate.

No years survive; the generation is the third, a contemporary of Rav Huna.