264 A History of Judaism
Babylonian Talmud come from the twelfth century, and of the Palestin-
ian Talmud from the thirteenth century. Fragmentary texts from earlier
periods, such as a section of Sifre to Deuteronomy on the boundaries of
the land of Israel found in mosaic on the floor of the sixth- century syna-
gogue at Rehov, near Beth Shean in Palestine, or the numerous fragments,
some from as early as the eighth century, of both the Talmuds found in
the Cairo Genizah, demonstrate that these parts of the larger texts cer-
tainly had an earlier existence. But they cannot remove all doubt about
the possibility of medieval alterations to the surviving full manuscripts,
which were, after all, copied as religious texts of continuing significance
within a vibrant medieval rabbinic culture. Thus, for instance, some of
the texts which purport to refer to mystical experiences of rabbis in the
tannaitic period up to c. 200 ce may be pseudepigraphic and evidence
only for the mystical imaginations of the rabbinic circles who copied the
texts in medieval Germany.
By Sherira’s time, the discussions of the rabbis were taking place in
formal scholarly institutions which operated within what had become a
traditional structure based on a hierarchy of knowledge and authority,
attracting the enthusiastic support and admiration even of those Jews
who were unable to attend the academies full time and were forced to
undertake most of their study by themselves. The tenth- century chron-
icler Nathan the Babylonian described special periodic communal study
sessions (called, for reasons unknown, kallah or ‘bride’), for such home
students:
They gather together and come from everywhere in the kallah month,
which is the month of Elul in the summer and Adar in the winter. And dur-
ing the five months [since the previous kallah ] each one of the disciples
had been diligently studying at home the tractate announced to them by
the head of the academy when they left him. In Adar he would say, ‘We will
study tractate such and such in Elul.’ Likewise, in Elul he would announce
to them, ‘We will study tractate such and such in Adar.’ And they all come
and sit before the head of the yeshivas in Adar and Elul, and the head of
the academy supervises their study and tests them. And this is the order in
which they sit ...
By Nathan’s time, the heads of the academies of Sura and Pumbedita
in Babylonia had long been recognized by Jews across the rabbinic
world as the highest authority. Since at least the seventh century, they
were accorded the formal title gaon, ‘excellency’. These scholars were
often, by the time of their appointment, quite elderly: possession of