Rav Simuna רב סימונא
a Savora who finished what was left unsaid
Rav Simuna is named in the Epistle of Rav Sherira among the Savoraim of Pumbedita of the second generation. Beyond that nothing is known of him: no town, no students, not one saying that could be quoted.
And that in itself testifies to the character of the age. The Savoraim worked so that they cannot be seen: they did not sign their insertions and did not start new disputes. Where a tractate carries a question "and let it be taken?" or an explanation of why one chapter follows another—in the view of most Rishonim, it is they who speak. The Talmud as it is read is the work of the Amoraim, brought to the state of a book by hands that deliberately left no fingerprints.
To set a window of activity for such a man is a convention; it is taken from his place in Rav Sherira's list and means a generation, not years.
The years are taken from the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon—the letter of 4747 (987), the only source in which the age of the Savoraim is set out by name and year. There is no other testimony, and that should be kept in mind.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Seder Tannaim ve-Amoraim — the list of the Savoraim and the first heads of the academies, put together about a century before the Epistle: the same chain, attested independently of Sherira
Documents of the period
- Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — Rav Simuna among the Savoraim of Pumbedita
Basis: documents and evidence.