Rav Papa

Origins and early life

Rav Papa bar Hanan was born about 300 in Babylonia, a Jew who studied under both Abaye and Rava, the two masters whose debates fill the Talmud and who both have their own fiches on this site; he heard them argue for years and outlived them, and that is the key to his work.

Work and career

On Rava's death he founded his own academy at Naresh, near Sura, about 352, and led it for more than twenty years, supporting himself and it by brewing beer, a trade the Talmud mentions without embarrassment. His generation faced a problem the earlier ones had not: the accumulated debates of two centuries had produced more opinions than could be held together, and someone had to say how they were to be weighed. Rav Papa is the sage who set out the rules — later called the kelalim, the principles — for deciding between the views of predecessors: which authority prevails against which, when the anonymous statement of a mishnah is binding, how a dispute between Abaye and Rava is resolved, what to do when two traditions conflict.

That work of second-order reasoning made the Talmud usable as law rather than as a record of arguments, and the editors who compiled it a generation later built on his framework. Some two hundred of his own rulings are cited by name, and the phrase 'Rav Papa said' is among the most frequent in the Babylonian Talmud. He was known for humility toward his teachers and for a habit of reciting a hundred blessings a day. He died at Naresh in 375, and his son Rav Hanina became a sage in turn.