Ravina רבינא
the last Amora, who sealed the Babylonian Talmud
Two sages bore the name Ravina: the elder, Rav Ashi's colleague in the work of redaction, and the younger, Ravina bar Rav Huna, who died around the year 4260. With him the Talmud's famous formula is connected: "Rav Ashi and Ravina are the end of instruction"—not the end of study, but the end of the time when a new opinion could enter the text itself.
His generation worked under pressure. The Sasanian kings tightened restrictions on Jewish courts, on study, on the Sabbath; the exilarch Mar Zutra was executed. The fear that the tradition might be cut off is what drove Rav Ashi's project to completion.
Ravina and his circle gave the Talmud its finished form: they fixed the order of discussions, added the connective and concluding language, and determined where a dispute remains open and where the law emerges. What had been the living speech of the study hall became a text.
After him came the Savoraim, who polished but no longer changed.
Chain of transmission
Maimonides: “Ravina and Rav Ashi are the end of the sages of the Talmud”; “the end of the great sages of Israel who transmitted the Oral Torah”. The count of forty closes at Rav Ashi, and this place bears no number.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bava Metzia 86a — “Rav Ashi and Ravina are the end of instruction”
- Sanhedrin — his statements in the tractate (the reference to be specified)
Rishonim
- the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the year of his death and the end of the age of the Amoraim
Documents of the period
- Seder Tannaim veAmoraim — the list of the generations
Basis: tradition.