“The fourth century was a period of great innovation in the history of Talmudic jurisprudence and legal conceptualization”

The fourth century was a period of great innovation in the history of Talmudic jurisprudence and legal conceptualization. Much of this may be attributed to the great fourth generation sage Rava, arguably the most creative and influential Amora of the Babylonian Talmud, whose influence far exceeds his own time. He not only issued countless rulings, but, along with his older contemporary Abaye, introduced a number of key legal principles that continued to have ramifications throughout the later amoraic and stammaitic periods, and ushered in a distinctly new era of legal thought.

Shana Strauch Schick, “Reading Aristotle in Mahoza?: Actions and Intentions in Rava’ Jurisprudence”, in Jewish Law and its Interaction with Other Legal Systems, ed. Christine Hayes and Amos Israel-Vleeschhouwer (Liverpool, UK: Deborah Charles Publications, 2014), 262.