The Vilna Talmud as a reflection of changing patterns of study

This chapter discusses the publication of the Babylonian Talmud by ’the Widow and Brothers Romm’ between 1880 and 1886 in Vilna, which is considered a landmark event from the perspective of rabbinic culture. The Babylonian Talmud included almost all of the commentaries and reference tools that had become part and parcel of printed volumes of the Talmud starting in the late fifteenth century. It talks about the ’Vilna Shas,’ which was considered a far cry from talmudic texts that had been known in the age of manuscripts and the early stages of print. It also mentions the fourteenth-century vellum Munich Codex Hebraicus MS 95, the oldest complete text of the Babylonian Talmud, which was noted to have sporadic corrections and glosses in the text and margins. As printing evolved in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, publishers added more material to volumes of the Talmud.