רבא Rava (bar Yosef bar Chama)
Amora of Babylonia · 4th generation (c. 320–350 CE) — named 5,442 times across 38 tractates of the Bavli.
Rava bar Yosef bar Chama, of the fourth Babylonian generation, headed the academy at Machoza and is the most frequently named sage in the Talmud — cited more than five thousand times, in every tractate the Bavli has. He learned from Rabbah and Rav Yosef in Pumbedita and from Rav Nachman and Rav Chisda, whose daughter he married, and he taught Rav Papa and Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak.
His lifelong debate with Abaye — the havayot of Abaye and Rava — is the argument the Talmud is built around, and the ruling that the law follows Rava against Abaye in all but six cases is one of the first things a student is taught. He is the sharpest of the analytic voices: where a distinction can be drawn, Rava draws it. Learn any tractate and you will meet him within a page, most heavily in Shabbat and the three gates of Nezikin.
Head of Machoza; the law follows him against Abaye but for six rulings.
The gematria of the name
Computed from the consonantal letters of רבא by the same engine that runs every search. This is the value of a NAME — no word of the Talmud is valued anywhere in this app.
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Talmud Bavli, Wikisource edition, via Sefaria — CC BY-SA 4.0. A mention is an occurrence of a name-form the roster lists, found by longest match — not a scholarly attribution census; the index says what that means in full.