ntre of Jewish learning. Huna
tilled his own fields for a living, and might often be met going home
with his spade over his shoulder. It was men like this who built up the
Jewish tradition. Huna's predecessor, however, had wider experience of
life, for Rab had been a student in Palestine, and was in touch with the
Jews of many parts. From Rab's time onwards, learning became the
property of the whole people, and the Talmud, besides being the
literature of the Jewish universities, may be called the book of the
masses. It contains, not only the legal and ethical results of the
investigations of the learned, but also the wisdom and superstition of
the masses. The Talmud is not exactly a national literature, but it was
a unique bond between the scattered Jews, an unparallelled spiritual and
literary instrument for maintaining the identity of Judaism amid the
many tribulations to which the Jews were subjected.

The Talmud owed much to many minds. Externally it was influenced by the
nations with which the Jews came into contact. From the inside, the
influences at work were equally various. Jochanan, Rab, and Samuel in
the third century prepared the material out of which the Talmud was
finally built. The actual building was done by scholars in the fourth
century. Rabba, the son of Nachmani (270-330), Abayi (280-338), and Rava
(299-352) gave the finishing touches to the method of the Talmud. Rabba
was a man of the people; he was a clear thinker, and loved to attract
all comers by an apt anecdote. Rava had a superior sense of his own
dignity, and rather neglected the needs of the ordinary man of his day.
Abayi was more of the type of the average Rabbi, acute, genial,
self-denying. Under the impulse of men of the most various gifts of mind
and heart, the Talmud was gradually constructed, but two names are
prominently associated with its actual compilation. These were Ashi
(352-427) and Rabina (died 499). Ashi combined massive learning with
keen logical ingenuity. He needed both for the task to which he devoted
half a century of his life. He possessed a vast memory, in which the
accumulated tradition of six centuries was stored, and he was gifted
with the mental orderliness which empowered him to deal with this
bewildering mass of materials.

It is hardly possible that after the compilation of the Talmud it
remained an oral book, though it must be remembered that memory played a
much greater part in earlier centuries than it does