Conclusion

Summary

While presiding over a legal dispute, Rav Naḥman’s student persistently pestered him with questions. Exasperated, Rav Naḥman reprimanded the student:

Did I not say to you that when I am sitting in judgment you should not say anything to me, for Huna our colleague said with reference to me that I and King Shapur are brothers in respect of judgement (dina) … ?¹

The comparison Rav Naḥman draws between himself and King Shapur has traditionally been understood as a reference not to the Sasanian king himself, but to the third-century Babylonian rabbi Shmuel. This is based on another talmudic pericope discussed in the introduction of this book, where a rabbi boasts that he will say something “that not even King Shapur said,” which an anonymous gloss there suggests refers not to King Shapur, but to a nickname of the rabbi Shmuel.² As I argued there, there is no reason to accept the late anonymous explanation, and there is certainly no compelling reason to apply it here to the story of Rav Naḥman where no such interpolation appears.³ Taking the above story on its own terms, Rav Naḥman is not comparing his expertise in judgement to Shmuel, but to King Shapur himself.