AMOREI. — Name (Aramaic ‘āmōrā’, plural ‘āmōrā’ē and, in Hebrew form, ‘ēmōrā’im, “expounder”) originally given to the lesser Jewish teachers who expounded to the people the teaching of the doctors of the Law; after the closing of the canon of the Mišnāh, it became the technical designation of the learned rabbis who succeeded the tannaites and who, from approximately 220 to 500, explained the text of the Mišnāh, resolving its contradictions or defining new cases, and developed it in a marginal way by gathering other legal traditions, which they committed to writing. From their work resulted the twofold Gemarā, which, added to the text of the Mišnāh, formed the Talmūd; they inserted ancient sayings that had remained outside the Mišnāh, calling them barajthā (“external things”). The a. had flourishing schools: in Palestine, from 219 until their closure by order of Theodosius II (425), at Caesarea, Sepphoris, Tiberias; in Babylonia (from approximately 219 to 500), at Sūrā, Neharde‘ā, Pumbeditā, Mahuzā.
Approximately two thousand a. are known, divided into seven generations, variously listed and dated by historians. The first five generations comprise Palestinian a. (with the title rabhī) and Babylonian a. (with the title rabh, sometimes mar; V. II), in almost parallel series; the last two comprise Babylonian a. alone. The last great a. were Rabh Ašī (v.) SABINA (v.). In addition to these, the following are celebrated among the Babylonians: Abba Areka, three Samuels, Jehudāh bar Jehezūf, Rabbā bar Nahmani, Josef ben Hijā, Nahman ben Jāhāq (and four other Nahmans); among the Palestinians: Uša‘āh, three Jehudāhs (the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th), Eleazar ben Pedath, Johanan bar Nappahā, Abbahū, Tanhum ben Abba.