270 A History of Judaism
relating to religious law, including purely ceremonial law, but, although
the Palestinian Talmud preserves traditions about the appointment of
judges in Palestine by patriarchs and the insistence of rabbis in the third
century that this must be done in conjunction with a court, such a clear-
cut notion of rabbinic authority is much harder to discern in the
Palestinian sources themselves. Even in Babylonia, the earliest disciple
circles, which formed around Abba bar Aivu (known as Rav) and Sam-
uel in the third century, seem to have been very informal. The view in
the Babylonian Talmud probably reflects the development in later cen-
turies of the influence of the Babylonian exilarch, whose authority
became necessary for the appointment of judges: ‘Said Rav, “Whosoever
wishes to decide monetary cases by himself and be free from liability in
case of an erroneous decision, should obtain sanction from the
Exilarch.” ’^11
Already in the Sasanian period, before the completion of the Talmud
in c. 600 ce, the exilarch in Babylonia, as political authority, was some-
times at variance with the heads of the academies as their institutions
grew in size and distinction. Rav founded the academy at Sura which
survived in one form or another for almost 800 years to the mid- eleventh
century. Samuel’s academy at Nehardea was forced to move in the
middle of the third century, but the Pumbedita academy, which saw
itself as its successor, continued to exist alongside Sura for the rest of the
first millennium, albeit with a move to Baghdad in c. 900 ce. The sages
of this school in the fourth century – especially Rabbah bar Nahmani,
Yosef b. Hiyya, Abbaye and Rava – are frequently mentioned in the
Babylonian Talmud as sources of the teachings and discussion which
make up the work. Most of what we know about Jewish life in the cities
where those academies were found is derived from the Babylonian Tal-
mud itself. Pumbedita, on the bank of the River Euphrates in northern
Babylonia and traversed by canals, had an excellent climate for agricul-
ture, especially dates and flax, and good connections to the caravan
route to Syria which gave the city an international commercial dimen-
sion, while Sura, further to the south, was known for its production of
grapes, wheat and barley, and its own busy world of craftsmen and
small traders.
These academies exercised great influence way beyond their own
confines, as we have already seen from the letter of Rav Sherira Gaon,
Gaon of Pumbedita in the tenth century. But their success as educational
institutions and producers of texts led in the final centuries of the first
millennium to the undercutting of their authority, as new centres of