[Avodah] Shabur Malka v Caesar

[Yisrael Dubitsky]

The following response I am forwarding with the permission of its
author, Prof Yaakov Elman, the world's authority on the interplay of
Talmudic law within its Persian context:


Who says that Rava quoted the pasuk and R. Yohanan's peshat?  The
conversation probably took place in the 340's, when Shapur II and the
Romans battled in Armenia and Northern Mesopotamia.  Please note: who
was fighting closer to home?  Did the Persians get to invade far into
the Roman Empire?  Note also that when Julian was killed he had  been
at the gates of Ctesiphon, the Persian winter capital, though that was
a decade after Rava's death, though R. Papa was still alive.
Kol tuv