רב ביבי

Rav Beivai is a frequently cited Amora who appears throughout the Babylonian Talmud, very often under the fuller name Rav Beivai bar Abaye. He is recorded raising objections (“matkif”) and posing inquiries in technical halachic discussions — for example, on the count of the thirty-six instances of karet in the Torah (Zevachim 107a), on liability for transgressions committed in a single lapse of awareness (Keritot 2b), and on cases of theft on Shabbat (Sanhedrin 72a). He is especially prominent in the dietary and slaughter laws of tractate Chullin, where he discusses the anatomy of the gullet (Chullin 43b, 56b) and questions of bekhorah and partnership-owned animals (Chullin 136a), and in matters of ritual purity in tractate Niddah.

He transmits teachings in the names of earlier authorities, including Rabbi Yochanan, Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish (Reish Lakish), Rabbi Elazar, Rabbi Yose, and Rav Asi, and he is shown studying before Rav Nachman and before Rabbi Yochanan (Niddah 25b, 45a). One passage (Niddah 25b) preserves a personal account in which a teaching is credited to him after he and a colleague sat together before Rabbi Yochanan.

Beyond halachah, a Rav Beivai also appears in the aggadic Midrash — cited by Rabbi Berekhya in Bereshit Rabbah (28) on the gathering of the waters of creation, and in the aggadic discussions of Esther Rabbah and Kohelet Rabbah.