A most interesting picture of the inner life and organization of the Rabbinical schools or academies in which the Talmud was slowly and deliberately composed is given in the vast and scholarly Jewish Encyclopædia (completed in the year 1906). A very brief précis of this is attempted here. The date of the picture in question is as late as the tenth century, and refers especially to a comparatively late period in the Rabbinical work; but much of it goes back to the time of the Amoraim, the earliest Rabbis of the Gemara, who were the teachers from the first part of the third century.
It may be taken as an account and general description of the method in which the two versions of the Talmud were composed, in Palestine as well as in Babylonia, in such academical centres of Rabbinism as Sura and Tiberias. The picture especially refers to the Babylonian academies of Pumbeditha and Sura, but without doubt a very similar procedure was followed in the Palestinian academy of Tiberias.
The students or disciples appear to have assembled twice every year, the discussion and instruction lasting four weeks.
In the month Elah at the close of the summer, and in the month Adar at the end of the winter, the disciples desiring instruction in the sacred Law journeyed to the academy, say of Sura, or of Pumbeditha, from their various abodes, having carefully studied and prepared during the previous five months the special treatise of the Mishnah announced at the academy at the close of the preceding session by the head of the Rabbinic school as the subject for discussion at the next session.
They at once presented themselves on arriving at Sura to the head of the academy, who proceeded to examine them on the treatise of the Mishnah fixed beforehand.
They sat in the following order or rank: seventy of the senior or principal pupils were placed nearest to the head, or president, of the school, the number seventy being a reminiscence of the great Sanhedrim.
Behind these seventy sat the other disciples and members of the academy.
The foremost row—the seventy—recited aloud the subject-matter of the discussion and of instruction which were to
