Where Did Rav and Shmuel Preside? Lingering Institutional Assumptions in the Study of the Late Antique Rabbis

Abstract

The study of the late antique Babylonian rabbis has undergone a scholarly revolution over the last fifty years. The medieval rabbinic chronographies, which constituted the primary source about the rabbinic past for over a millennium, are now approached with extreme caution and skepticism. The clearest impact of this methodological shift is the wide acceptance that the Babylonian rabbis of the Talmudic period were organized not within a few large academies, as they were described in medieval chronographies, but rather in smaller disciple circles assembled around a charismatic master. Little attention, however, has been devoted to better understanding the nature of these disciple circles. Instead, disciple circles are treated as primitive academies. Previous assumptions dependent on a more institutional understanding of the Amoraic period—what we might call proto-institutional assumptions—persist. This article explores how attention to the distinct dynamics of disciple circles outside of proto-institutional assumptions can offer a radically different image of the social historical context of the Talmudic-era rabbis. It examines the way the two early major Babylonian Amoraim, Rav and Shmuel, whom medieval rabbinic chronographies and modern scholars continue to credit with founding rabbinic academies in Sura and Nehardea, respectively, related to particular geographic locales and their authority—or lack thereof—over them. Comparing the image of Rav and Shmuel in the Amoraic and post-Amoraic material in the Talmud and in medieval chronographies reveals distinct stages in the way their relationship with geography was conceived, which, in turn, reflect three distinct stages in the development of the Babylonian rabbinic movement.