Throughout this series, we have looked at how destruction and catastrophe led to the growth of Judaism through text.
To find out if there was a cataclysm that led to the Talmud, we have to first ask when the Talmud was written.
Bava Metzia ways that Rav Ashi and Ravina were “the end of teaching” which is often understood as the compilation of the Talmud.
However, there are many rabbis mentioned in the Talmud who lived later than Ravina.
Rav Saadia Gaon wrote in 987 CE that the mishna and talmud were not written down but remained an oral tradition.
I suggest that the Talmud could only have been written after codices replaced scrolls. In the Jewish world, this happened several centuries after such “books” had been accepted and adopted by Christian and other cultures. It was only after the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 7th century that books becamse widespread in the Jewish world.
So perhaps it was the Muslim conquest that ultimately led to the compiling and wiring of the Talmud.
Rambam says in Laws of Kings, chapter 11, that Christianity and Islam were part of the Divine Plan leading to the Messianic Era. It may also be true that the books that define Judaism today also came from the Christian and Muslim conquests of the world.