nd which it
usually took a lifetime to master, Akiba made his own within the space
of a few years, and at an age when the mind is no longer fresh and
impressionable. Akiba's genius showed itself even more brilliantly in
his subsequent labors in the same field, which were marked by three
great achievements. These were his arrangement of the Oral Law into a
systematic code, the Mishnah (substantially as later edited by R.
Judah Ha-Nasi), his establishment of a logical foundation for each
Halakah, and his discovery and formulation of new and original methods
of hermeneutics and exegesis. To appreciate the magnitude of these
achievements, we must remember that up to and for some time after
Akiba's day, instruction in the rabbinical academies was oral. Each
teacher taught, as well as he could recall, exactly what he had heard
from the lips of his master, and his pupils in their turn did
likewise. Every great Rabbi therefore had his own set of Halakic
traditions, his own Mishnah.

The results of this system or rather lack of system were mainly two:
the reasons for many of the Halakoth were forgotten, and of the laws
that were taught an immense number were uncoordinated, confused and
often contradictory. The greatest fault, however, of these early
Mishnayoth (Mishnayoth Rishonoth) was their general lack of
arrangement. The Halakoth were usually strung together without
connection and without any logical grouping. It was Akiba who first
organized them into an orderly system. He put all the Halakoth dealing
with one particular subject in one group, and then he divided the
groups into the six general divisions that our Mishnah has today.
Besides this he introduced number mneumonics wherever possible, in
order to facilitate memorization. The second work that we owe to
Akiba's influence is the Tosephta or Supplement to the Mishnah, as
later edited by his pupil R. Nehemiah. Akiba's purpose in this
Supplement was to give explanatory matter on the Halakoth of the
Mishnah in the form of citations of cases, discussions, and opinions.
Here there was more room for originality than in the first work, for
when the reason for any law had been forgotten Akiba discovered it
again.

_"The Third Founder of Judaism after Moses and Ezra"_

THE achievement, however, in which Akiba's mind revealed itself in all
its brilliant originality, and which more than anything else delighted
and astonished his colleagues, was his new system of Biblical, o