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I heard that Bava Basra is the longest masechta in blatt but Brochos is the longest mesechta in words. Did anyone else hear anything about that?

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2 Answers

up vote 14 down vote

What most likely got this rumor started is that Brachos does have and lots of pages with minimal commentary. Brachos does in fact (according to my calculations) take the record for most Talmudic text per page.

words/daf      letters/daf       words      letters     daf     mesechta
ברכות       63      273260      70254           4337.46        1115.14
כריתות      27      102234      26328           3786.44         975.11
הוריות      13      49035       12632           3771.92         971.69
מגילה       31      115271      28939           3718.42         933.52
סנהדרין     112     406013      104357          3625.12         931.76
תענית       30      106087      26691           3536.23         889.7
מועד_קטן        28      89722       22554           3204.36         805.5
סוטה            48      152615      39149           3179.48         815.6
ערכין       33      98096       24815           2972.61         751.97
מכות            23      67782       17608           2947.04         765.57
שבת         156     447232      113820          2866.87         729.62
קידושין     81      231631      59256           2859.64         731.56
חגיגה       26      73506       18533           2827.15         712.81
בבא_מציעא       118     330417      84375           2800.14         715.04
בבא_קמא     118     328313      83973           2782.31         711.64
עבודה_זרה       75      207188      51851           2762.51         691.35
תמורה       33      91112       23065           2760.97         698.94
נידה            72      197171      50118           2738.49         696.08
יבמות       121     330319      84486           2729.91         698.23
ראש_השנה        34      92621       23376           2724.15         687.53
פסחים       120     324521      82335           2704.34         686.13
גיטין       89      238946      60832           2684.79         683.51
בכורות      60      160117      40587           2668.62         676.45
שבועות      48      127686      32717           2660.13         681.6
מנחות       109     288694      73203           2648.57         671.59
כתובות      111     288903      73398           2602.73         661.24
יומא            87      225512      57180           2592.09         657.24
עירובין     104     264202      67238           2540.4          646.52
ביצה            39      97777       24918           2507.1          638.92
חולין       141     351691      89555           2494.26         635.14
סוכה            55      127774      32302           2323.16         587.31
זבחים       119     273681      69345           2299.84         582.73
תמיד            9       18449       4610            2049.89         512.22
בבא_בתרא        175     346249      89044           1978.57         508.82
נזיר            65      108571      27984           1670.32         430.52
מעילה       21      32255       8064            1535.95         384
נדרים       90      134935      34475           1499.28         383.06
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Where did you find that? – SimchasTorah Aug 26 '10 at 23:14
14  
Downloaded the texts from mechon mamre, and wrote a computer program to count everything. – Shalom Aug 27 '10 at 1:20
1  
Thanks for doing some real empirical research, Shalom. – Tzvi Aug 27 '10 at 13:22
1  
How do I get that unbelievable spreadsheet you generated? – user1872 Sep 4 '12 at 19:45
Thanks for doing some real empirical research, Shalom. If you want to obrain this info in a spreadsheet format, please see: tallitstore.com/v/vspfiles/util/word_counts_mesechta.xls If you want the output in a cleaner format, please see: tallitstore.com/v/vspfiles/util/word_counts_mesechta.htm – user1887 Sep 9 '12 at 20:48
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up vote 2 down vote

No, Shabbos is the longest.

See the comments here: http://mi.yodeya.com/questions/2184/shelosha-veshishim-mi-yodeya/2208#2208

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So at least I'm not the only one who heard the debunked Brachos rumor ... I wonder where it came from. – Shalom Aug 26 '10 at 21:52

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