Case file
Samuel ben Hofni
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “last gaon of sura”. Today it says “gaon of sura academy in mesopotamia”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2015 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.
Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now.
1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2015
Samuel ben Hofni ( Hebrew : שמואל בן חפני, or full name: רב שמואל בן חפני גאון [abbreviation: רשב"ח] or שמואל בן חפני הכהן; also: Samuel b. Hofni or Samuel ha-Kohen ben Hofni ; died 1034) was the last gaon of Sura .1 Bibl. xx. 132), and on whose death Samuel wrote an elegy. Samuel was the father-in-law of Hai ben Sherira Gaon , who is authority for the statement that Samuel, like many of his contemporaries, zealously pursued the study of non-Jewish literature. Beyond these few data, nothing is known of the events of Samuel's life.2
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 667833322.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “last gaon of sura”. Today it says “gaon of sura academy in mesopotamia”. Read the current article and compare.
| 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | Oct '23 | 2025 |
|---|
What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2010, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
last gaon of sura
Now
gaon of sura academy in mesopotamia
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.