Did the Guardians of the Babylonian Talmud Study Its Rival Version?

Around 400 CE, scholars in the Galilee composed a vast anthology of rabbinic learning that came to be known as the Jerusalem Talmud (or simply, the Yerushalmi)—its name an homage to the holy city, from which Jews at the time were still banned. A century or so later, the rabbis of Persian Babylonia produced a more comprehensive Talmud of their own, which by the Middle Ages, would become the authoritative text of post-biblical Judaism. The latter Talmud’s success owes much to the geonim, heads of Mesopotamian academies who, from the 8th through the 11th centuries, were the Jewish world’s supreme religious authorities. Zvi Stampfer poses a question: