The Savoraim רבנן סבוראי

"Rav Ashi and Ravina are the end of instruction," says Bava Metzia 86a. But between that end and the beginning of the geonic era lie another century and a half or two, and the Talmud did not lie still in that time.

The men of that interval are called the Savoraim — from the Aramaic savra, reasoning, opinion. The principal source about them is the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon, the letter in which, in the tenth century, the head of Pumbedita set out for the community of Kairouan how the Talmud came to be and who followed whom. Rav Sherira names them — Rav Rihumai, Rabbah, Rav Yosef, Rav Acha of Bei Hatim — and explains what they did: they clarified what had been left undecided.

What exactly they did can be seen in the text itself. To them are ascribed the introductory analyses that open certain tractates; the formulas linking passages; the final settlement of some disputes left open by the amoraim with the word teiku; and the general editing that brought scattered discussions into continuous text.

The peculiarity of their work is that they left almost no names of their own inside the Talmud. They issued no new rulings — and are therefore indistinguishable in the text. What in the Gemara seems to be the voice of the text itself, the anonymous reasoning that drives the argument, is in large part their voice.

In this base the era stands between the completion of the Talmud and the geonim; it is shorter than the others and almost without events, but without it there is no explaining where the book came from.